katie, temperance street brewery & taproom
Katie, manager and brewery owner, Temperance Street Brewery & Taproom, Manchester
“I bought Temperance Street from the previous owner, Steve, who still does a lot of our brewing and will be teaching me how to brew. So Steve makes all the beer; Matthew makes all the cider and I make all the decisions! My full-time job is in the NHS: I’m a mental health nurse and this is my side hustle. Basically I used to come here as a customer when it was previously known as Beer Nouveau. Steve wanted to sell, but he wanted to keep it the same kind of vibe – cosy and welcoming. We were going to lose a community venue, a community space, so I stepped in.
My father passed away about 18 months ago and he was really into real ale: he was in CAMRA, he was heavily involved in the GBBF down in London. I thought it would be a nice way to remember him and honour his legacy. So I kind of bought the place for him, but also for me. I wanted to save it because it’s a really nice community space. I wanted to keep that going, keep the venue open for the games nights and things like Pint of Science, our annual science lecture in the bar.
We’re seeing breweries closing at the rate of 2-3 a week for the last 18 months and that’s really sad. We have cuckoo brewers coming in because we’re passionate about getting new brewers into brewing and we want to keep brewing alive. People are able to come in and make a beer that maybe they’ve made at home on a 5-litre scale, but now they can make 25 litres with us. It’s so important to support these brewers and we get weird and wonderful beers – someone came in and made a bamboo rice lager. They’d made it on a small scale at home and it was really nice. They paid for their time in the brewery, made 25 litres of it, I tasted it, and then we bought it off them at trade price and sold it on - it flew out. I enjoy helping people find new and interesting things to drink that they wouldn’t otherwise have found.
Our regulars know I own this place, but say we get someone coming in for the first time, they’ll automatically assume that if I’m behind the bar with my partner or Matthew who does the cider, that the brewery belongs to one of them. Why can’t women brew? Why can’t women run a brewery? I relish seeing the surprise in their face when they find out they’ve got a femme business owner; someone who knows how to look after beer and knows how to recommend beer. The biggest challenge of running this place though is money, especially at the moment as the bills are ridiculous - the cost of living is having a huge impact on breweries like ours.”