Welcome to our blog series, Meet the Brewery, where we showcase the skilled brewers behind some of the finest craft beers on the market. As dedicated partners with leading independent breweries, we’re excited to delve into the stories of those who craft your favourite IPAs, stouts, sours, and more. In each edition, we introduce a standout brewery, exploring their journey, brewing philosophy, and the creativity and passion that shape every beer. Today, we’re thrilled to feature Pomona Island, an iconic brewery founded in 2017 in Salford, Manchester, renowned for its innovative and boundary-pushing beers.

Name of Brewery?

Pomona Island.

Name and position within the brewery of person completing the questionnaire?

Nick Greenhalgh, one of four directors.

Can you share the story behind the Brewery name?

It's a horrible job naming things, particularly something as important as a brewery name, only slightly less important than a child and only slightly less terrifying. It sticks with you for as long as you're around. We spent ages, and looked at it from all angles until we were driving each other mad. One good way to go is always location as it gives you some grounding in your local area and we didn't expect to grow much beyond Manchester at the time. Our brewery is near to Pomona Island, it's actually in Weaste, but Weaste Brewery doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

Pomona Island is a man-made feature, formed when they built the shipping canal from Liverpool to Manchester and created a border between the boroughs of Manchester, Salford and Trafford which have all been a big part of our lives in the area, so it made a bit of sense for us in the end. Fun fact, the Pomona logo depicts the shipping canal and the three boroughs, impress your friends with that!

What was the first beer you brewed commercially and how did it turn out?

When we started, we were wary of consistency, being a brand-new brewery and all, so we opted for a naming scheme of style and hops. Our first ever beer was PALE CITRA (brave!) it was really well received, as I think is typical in this industry for new breweries. There's an incredibly supportive community out there and they're very generous and kind. Of course, when you get bigger and the beers go further afield people get a little more critical but that's how you improve. If you talk to a brewer and they tell you how great they are, they're probably pretty bad. Good brewers focus on fixing problems so they're usually going to chat about issues they're having. If you hear a brewer talking about how bad their beer is, go order a pint right away, it's probably great! In saying that, I'm going to attempt to talk us up for the rest of this article as we're not traditionally great at selling ourselves, it's not really our personalities, but we've been told we should be better at it, so here goes!

I'd love to try that first beer again now, exactly as it was. I suspect we'd think it was really poor, but we were happy enough at the time, just relieved it wasn't a disaster and we'd have to dump it. We didn't have any reserves of cash, so we couldn't afford too many mistakes. 

Which of your beers are you most proud of and why?

The answer to this question would probably change week to week, we aim to be the sort of brewery that makes a lot of styles well. Our bread and butter's the pale and hoppy stuff, but within the brewery everyone loves our Best Bitter CRUFFATIN as it's a really classic example of the style and there's nowhere to hide with those kinds of beers. For me, I'm really proud of our Mixed Fermentation range. Lots of breweries launch these beers after 6-12 months for the obvious financial reasons, but we waited around three years, building up stock so we have lots of interesting beers to play with, we can blend young and old, add fruit and other ingredients and generally have fun with it. The beers coming out are definitely worth trying if that's your bag. The barrel character is really great, and they started with super clean wort which has allowed the bugs to be the star of the show.

What would you say is your signature beer that you brew, brewed by your brewery?

Easy one, FACTOTUM. We only make four 'core' beers, two pales and two lagers, but by far the biggest seller is Factotum. We only started making this beer after the pandemic but it's an evolution of the PALE beer that we started with. It's not got the hopping rate of our special pales, so it has to be on point. Trying to get better extraction with lower hopping rates is something a lot of breweries focus on, as it saves money for the brewery and therefore the consumer. There's an awful lot of bang for your buck with this, which is why it's proved so popular for us in a crowded core beer market. We'll take the Pepsi challenge with any like for like core beer on the market!

How do you go about naming your beers?

As I say, naming things can be a lot of work! It's a good idea to have some sort of format, as it's easier to work with some boundaries. A blank canvas for every beer name would be a nightmare and would probably mean turning to AI in this day and age as many breweries do. Our names are all references to whatever takes our fancy. From music, to film, to memes that have tickled us. We drop in the odd obvious one, but we try to be a little bit elusive. They need to work as a name, but apart from that there are no other rules. We have a WhatsApp group that everyone contributes to, so it's a  team effort.

How do you decide on what beers to brew when?

What you guys’ drink is the main factor in what we brew. The number of times I'm told we should brew more Red Ales or such. Vote with your cans! If you want em, drink em when you see em. If they sell, we'll make em.

Most brewers are creative, so easily bored. They want to test themselves with brewing interesting styles and when you have a lot of the pale and hoppy stuff in tank it's not that thrilling for them. We let them brew the odd interesting style, but it has to sell out before they can brew the next one. Spoiler... they're usually slow sellers. Other than that, it's just maintaining numbers, too many Pales, brew an IPA, too many IPAs brew a DIPA, we're running low on Sours etc etc. Boring eh!

Sometimes when we collab with other breweries, if the schedule permits, we'll get to discuss new ideas and put them into practice. That's always fun!

Is there a particular beer style that you feel represents your brewery’s identity?

Honestly, no. I've had people tell me they thought we were a just a sour brewery and other people who've been drinking our beer for years but only Factotum in their local. People will have their own ideas about what we are, but inside the brewery we are focused on making every beer style as good as it can be. We regular do blind tastings of a beer style, where one member of staff will buy several beers from different breweries in the same style and we'll try them next to ours. It's a really useful exercise to let you know how you're doing vs other breweries when you strip away brand and expectation. The best results we've had in adapting our recipes was from a West Coast IPA trial we did sometime ago. One beer stood out massively from the pack and it was a classic old school brand of US IPA. We ditched the slightly hazy 'no coasty' beers we were making and went back to the source (so to speak). We've had bottle shops tell us they've done blind tastings with our West Coast beers since and they've won convincingly. Everyone has preconceived notions about beers and breweries, it's good to challenge those. Doing this sort of stuff has opened our eyes to some brilliant breweries out there who fly under the radar and more importantly, helped us improve our own work.

What is the strangest ingredient you have used in a beer and how did it work out?

We use a lot of teas and herbs in our sour beers. We quickly worked up a way of creating very clean sours (traditional techniques can leave a lot of nasty off flavours). On their own, they're fun beers, but we wanted to play around with them and create more layers of flavour. These sorts of ingredients have tannins which are drying. Sour and dry are very similar in the flavour spectrum so you have to be quite delicate with the ingredients. Our sour beers are, chemically, extremely sour so we have to sweeten them up (naturally, we don't use any fake adjuncts) and make sure we're creating balance, but when you get it right you create structured beers which are very rewarding to drink!

You asked for one ingredient though, so I'll say Meadowsweet which has a slight almond flavour to it. It's used by fancy chefs in a lot of puddings. Gaz tells people I chip in with these things after watching episodes of Master Chef which is not true, I'm very cultured, but I do love a bit of Great British Menu. We actually used this in a stout and I really enjoyed the results.

How do you see the “Craft” beer scene evolving?

It's a challenging industry for sure! A lot of breweries have gone in the last few years and we haven't been helped by some of the decisions made by the previous government. I suppose it depends on how you define 'craft', if it includes some of the huge breweries who've sold out to big companies over the years then it's still very much a growing sector. I'll be positive and say that these beers can be a gateway to the more interesting stuff. A lot of 'smaller' breweries (and I include breweries much bigger than us in that) have moved to more core stuff to try and compete and I think you'll see plenty of that, but as long as there are great bottle shops and bars out there run by passionate people, I think we're in a pretty healthy position. It's definitely a 'use it or lose it' situation but I think people are using it plenty still. How experimental we can be in the future will probably be led by the economy though, which isn't the most thrilling prospect but there will be plenty of delicious beer to drink regardless so don't worry there!

How do you stay creative and inspired in your brewing?

The industry at large. We're lucky in that we get to travel the world going to beer festivals and speaking to brewers from here there and everywhere. If we lost the passion for it, we'd be left miles behind, because the creativity around us is mind blowing. We knew when we started, we wouldn't be the best day one. We started in 2017 with 16 grand investment. If you're starting with less the half a million now then good luck to you! We're probably one of the last DIY breweries who clawed their way up. We had to adopt a philosophy of continual improvement because we had to reengineer our equipment from scratch to make the sorts of beers we wanted to make (never mind the recipes!). We reinvested everything back into the brewery and worked second jobs (and third in one case!) to get it to a base level. Hopefully you'll feel we've kicked on from there! That sort of thing never stops, you've always got to try and improve because tastes shift. When we started, hazy New England beers were just starting to be brewed in this country and now they're a staple. If you don't like a challenge, this isn't the industry for you! It doesn't make things easy, but it does make them fun.

What’s your favourite Beer (from another brewery) and why?

There's so much change in the industry, it's always nice to try new things and see what people are doing. We live in Manchester and it's a big cask town, so I always look out for Redwillow, but everything they do is great. I'll buy a Beak or Verdant without asking for a sip because they're both very consistent. We have a war of words with Rivington as they're of a similar sense of humour, so it galls me to shout them out, but they're doing some passable beers. If I had to pick one though (and I do) I'd go for Odell IPA as it was the first beer I tried that really inspired me. I'd drunk a lot of American stuff, but that just seemed next level at the time. Must have been around 2010 give or take. 

If you could have a beer with anyone dead or alive who would it be and why?

Good question. I'm tempted to say one of the great hellraisers but I don't think I could keep up. I'll go with Bob Mortimer a bona fide national treasure and a craft beer drinker who could do with some pointers! Possibly the funniest and most charming man around so I'd stick to the drinking and listening.

See our full range of Pomona beers here.