Brewlab beer 'school' with an international reputation

Dec 11 2011 by Michael Brown, Sunday Sun

FOR customers to back their local boozer it helps if they have something decent to drink.

And while the art of brewing has been around for thousands of years, many of today’s Northern breweries can trace their expertise back to just one “school” in Sunderland.

But after a £75,000 investment and a new home on the banks of the Wear, Brewlab have their sights set somewhat further afield.

“It’s true that a lot of breweries in the North involve people who’ve either trained here or who we do analysis work for – Tyne Bank, Black Paw in Bishop Auckland, the new one at Tynemouth called Cullercoats Brewery and the Ship Inn at Newton, among others,” said the company’s Piero Alberici.

“We help teach people how to brew and what to brew – we provide the ‘toolkit’ of skills to create beer then it’s up to them to determine the recipes.

“To have somewhere like this in the North is very unusual but, for this type of work, we are one of the leading teaching facilities in the UK. But our goal is to bring more and more international students into the region.”

For a company that has had such a profound effect on the region’s resurgent micro-brewing industry, it seems odd that most drinkers will have never have heard of the firm, which was set up as part of the University of Sunderland in 1986 and based, since September, in West Quay Court, off the city’s Washington Way.