I’ve won a few awards here and there for beers, cider and mead but won’t go into details as I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but was stoked late last year when a few of my meads medalled – recently I have refocussed from craft beer brewing to mead-making to try and play in an area I don’t have a lot of experience and this was my first attempt at mead-making for about eight years.

My passion for brewing comes from doing things yourself and also both trying to replicate beers/meads I taste but also create new things or twists to traditional offerings.

My advice to any new brewer is to master the basics instead of wanting to jump in the deep end. Cleanliness, sanitisation and temperature control cannot be mentioned enough, once you have that down pat then you really can do anything.

I don’t have any brewing mentors, but have always looked up at the old school brewers from the good old days on AHB but also people like John Palmer, Jamil Z, Tasty McDole and Charlie P who have done so much good for our hobby.

The worst brewing mistake I’ve ever made is hard to really say, there has never been anything I could clearly label as the worse but it’s always a pain when you leave the tap open to the fermenter when transferring from the kettle, hydrometers don’t need to be mentioned…