Husband and wife who transformed home-brewing hobby in garage into £5 million business say ‘beer brought us even closer’

A husband and wife who have transformed a home-brewing hobby in their garage into a £5 million business have said beer has brought them “even closer together”.

Luci and Mike Clayton-Jones, from Caversham in Berkshire, created their first “Mr and Mrs home-brew” in their garage called “Ginger Beered” as a wedding favour for their guests in 2015.

After receiving positive feedback, Luci, 36, and Mike, 37, got a “little taste” for what it could be like on a larger scale, and thus the idea for Double-Barrelled Brewery was born.

After moving from their garage into a warehouse in 2018, the business has gone from strength-to-strength, turning over a total figure of £5 million to date and partnering with retailers like Waitrose, John Lewis and Tesco.

Luci and Mike now brew up to 1.3 million pints a year and specialise in small batch beers, including some “experimental” flavours like rhubarb and custard and an espresso martini-inspired imperial stout.

With their business mantra being “continuous improvement”, the couple, who are working with Three Business, want to carry on trying new things and hope to be “one of the big family brewers the UK down the line”.

Luci told PA Real Life: “I can’t see us running a business together with anything else.

“The beer industry is amazing, it’s full of lovely people who are hugely passionate about what they do, and we’re really lucky in that sense that, yes, it was beer that brought us even closer together.”

Luci and Mike first met at Lancaster University in 2006 and this was “the start of a never-ending story”.

Mike, who worked in supply chain consultancy and logistics management at the time, later “lovingly proposed” to Luci, who worked in food and drink marketing, in Paris, and the couple got married in 2015.

With Mike being a “keen home-brewer”, the pair created a beer for their wedding guests called “Ginger Beered” and this sparked a conversation about setting up a business together.

“It wasn’t a plan to go into business together, we hadn’t had any discussions like that before, it wasn’t a long-term dream,” Luci explained.

“But in going through the process of creating this beer, we realised that actually we had these strengths…. and we continued the conversation on our honeymoon.”

As soon as they returned from their honeymoon in the Seychelles, Luci and Mike said they registered their business on Companies House, naming it after their double-barrelled surname.

They converted their garage into an official HMRC-registered production room and travelled the world for research in 2016, visiting breweries and bars across the world in Japan, Australia, the USA and Canada.

After purchasing a small commercial kit, they started producing small batches of beer – 100 litres at a time – from their garage, focusing on a distinct range of kettle sours and imperial stouts.

Luci said: “The biggest thing we learned from home-brewing is, it’s so hard to make good home-brews on that basic set-up.

“You’re in buckets and you move it from your fridge to your airing cupboard to control the temperature, which, the more you get into the brewing science of it, you realise how critical it is to get right.”

In February 2018, they decided to launch their home-brewed beers at the BrewLDN festival, but they made a “conscious decision” not to bring any pale ales or IPAs.

They took an imperial stout and a raspberry and beetroot sour beer, and they believe this helped them stand out among the competition.

“We were in a room with 200 breweries, no-one had heard of us, and we had Waitrose’s head of beer and wine come over to our stand because she’d been dragged by her colleagues to try our beer,” Luci said.

“This was such a key part of our business because it took us from a dream to, ‘Hold on, we’ve got something here, let’s do it’.”

With Luci and Mike’s dream now seeming a reality, they moved from their garage in Caversham to a 6,400sqft warehouse in Reading, Berkshire, with a new 3,000-litre brewhouse.

This meant they could now produce 3,000 litres of beer at a time, and this is where they created their best-seller pale ale called Parka and opened their on-site taproom.

Speaking about reactions from friends and family, Luci said: “There was some scepticism, but we had the attitude of, you only regret what you didn’t do.”

In 2019, Luci and Mike hired their first employee and won Pride Of Reading’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, which felt surreal, and they opened their online shop in 2020.

The business has since gone from strength-to-strength and their beers are now sold in pubs and shops across the UK and in retailers like Waitrose, John Lewis and Tesco.

Luci said: “I think one of the greatest things about running your own brewery is being in a pub, hearing someone order your beer that you don’t know, and them drinking it and enjoying it.

“There’s no better feeling than that.”

Ahead of Valentine’s Day, new research from Three Business shows nearly nine in 10 Britons think their romantic partner plays a vital role in their career success, with 50% open to starting a business together.

Luci and Mike said “there’s pride in everything” they do and, although they find it difficult to switch off, they love working together.

They realise it might not be for every couple but, with beer “always around (them)” in work and social settings, running Double-Barrelled Brewery has been a dream come true.

Mike said: “It has been our life for the last six to eight years, so it’s hard to picture what it would be like differently now.

“With traditional couples, you wake up, go your separate ways to work, have a couple hours in the evening together, then go to bed and that cycle repeats, and you don’t actually see very much of each other.

“We’re the opposite. We see each other all the time and we absolutely love that.”

Luci added: “Beer has very much been part of our relationship – going to beer festivals, going to breweries – and we feel really lucky to work in this industry.”

For more information, visit: doublebarrelled.co.uk.