ABOUT SIMPLE THINGS FERMENTATIONS
A small independent brewery based in Glasgow's Southside, established 2019. We value quality, tradition, innovation, and doing things a bit differently.
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Simple Things is about brewing beer with a sense of place, exploring beer styles that aren't always easy to find and using ingredients that extend the flavour spectrum beyond current trends. The beers are often modern takes on traditional styles, or contemporary styles with a twist.
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Exploring beer styles and ingredients that are not so well represented is what gets us excited. Our Big Ideas Series is where it all began; a range of styles that includes crowd-pleasing favourites such as Golden Ale, Table Beer and Session Stout alongside the more esoteric likes of Wheat Wine, Scottish Light, Peated Pale and Bretted 80/-. Our Core Range, comprises a hazy Pale Ale brewed with only European hops and a Czech-style Pilsner. Our Seasonals range is where you’ll find beers that are right for the time of year.
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All our beers are vegan friendly, unfiltered, unpasteurised and naturally carbonated through re-fermentation. We hope you enjoy them.
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For more detailed information on how the brewery came about,
check out the Q&A below, or take a look at this Brewer's Journal article.
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And to stay up to date with new releases and other STF news, sign up
for email updates using the form at the bottom of this page.
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Cheers!
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Phil & Ewan.
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Q&A with Phil Sisson, owner and founder of STF
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When was STF founded and how did it come to be?
We sold our first beers in December 2019; I (Phil) started on my own and brought Ewan in around a year later when I realised that it wasn’t going to be possible to both get the beer quality right and run an efficient business single handedly. It’s still just the two of us to this day, working as a team to decide what to brew and how to brew it with Ewan handling all production related duties and me doing everything else.
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How did you come to work in beer?
I began brewing as a hobby while living in London. When we moved up to Glasgow I started taking it more seriously and was accepted onto the Brewing & Distilling Masters at Heriot Watt. It was around that time that I won a Thornbridge home brew competition that saw my beer listed in Waitrose stores nationwide, which felt like fate telling me I was on the right track!
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How did you land on the name?
That came about through many hours of contemplating the type of brewery I wanted to run, mostly while digging out mash tuns or doing some other laborious task at the brewery I worked at previously. Keeping things simple and exploring the vast range of possibilities offered by just the traditional four brewing ingredients was and remains a big part of what we do.
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And why Glasgow?
Why not?! Lots of reasons, most unrelated to beer and brewing, but it did strike me as a place that wasn’t particularly well served by craft breweries, compared to many other large towns and cities. And I now realise that the water is also a huge plus of brewing here; it’s very low in minerals and super-soft, really good water to brew with.
How many people are there at STF?
Just two - Ewan and me. And Neil the designer is an honorary third member of staff; he’s an independent entity but a huge part of the business.
How would you describe your approach to and ethos on brewing beer?
Keep it simple! We like to let the ingredients shine and where possible explore some of the lesser explored corners of the brewing world - we love to cast a light on styles that have a lot to offer but are maybe a bit overlooked. There’s a book called Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher which is full of interesting styles you don't’ tend to see on the shelves and that was a big part of the inspiration in the early days. We do hazy, hoppy beers now but we deliberately avoided them for quite a while. It was three years before we brewed with Citra! Over the last year or two we’ve added more mainstream stuff to our range but we still do things our own way - we keep it on the dry and bitter side, and everything we do is naturally carbonated through re-fermentation. I’m a firm believer in the benefits this brings in terms of flavour and mouthfeel.
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What are the non-negotiables for you when it comes to brewing and serving beer?
For our beers, natural carbonation is probably the biggest thing. I strongly believe it’s the best way to produce beer and it's central to our signature flavour. And while it sounds like a lazy marketing trope, I’m also a big believer in using the very best ingredients available. The difference in cost is marginal really and it makes a huge impact on the flavour.
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Any other interesting tidbits about STF?
The first beer we ever released was ‘European Pale Ale’, a 5.6% hazy pale brewed with fruity European hops. This has evolved into our core range Pale Ale and is one of the two beers we always have available.
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