“It was time to decide whether to keep the day job in the water industry that paid pretty well, or go for inspiration and passion and take a big pay cut. With support from my family, I went for passion and haven’t looked back since”

Meet Jordan the man the master behind Unbarred the micro brewers in Sussex making amazing Ale’s & Ipa’s to cater for all. 

Heres his story…  Brewing started from a passion for food and ingredients. Even though my wife and I lived in a tiny flat in Hove, we managed to have big Deep South BBQs and smoke meats on our balcony.  In an effort to save some money to buy a house, I started to home-brew. The idea was to save money on beer by making our own, which turned out to be the most expensive way to try and save money! Once I had done my first brew, the obsession took off. I was heavily influenced by Dogfish Head who took a whole new approach to beer. What if we added food ingredients to a base beer? Which ingredients could I source that contain sugars, to create something new? I would wake up in the night thinking of the next possibility. 

When we bought our first house in 2013, it was time to build a summer house to put all my home brew equipment in. Then in 2014 UnBarred was born. Living in the Brighton area, I’ve always been inspired by the creativity and individuality that the City promotes - everyone is welcome and everyone is embraced. This became one of the core values for UnBarred. We’re creating beer without limits, with big flavours that everyone can drink to, we’re UnBarred!

UnBarred was registered as Hove’s first Nano Brewery in recent times, and became my creative kitchen at evenings and weekends. In 2015 I won the Bev Robbins shield at the Sussex Beer festival with the first cask produced on the small 100L kit. It was time to decide whether to keep the day job in the water industry that paid pretty well, or go for inspiration and passion and take a big pay cut. With support from my family, I went for passion and haven’t looked back since. I worked at every brewery I could for free to learn as much as possible, sent out bottles of test batches to get feedback and finally got a job in a local brewery where I soon worked my way up to Head Brewer and started my qualifications at the Institute for Brewing and Distilling.

Missing Link Brewing were opening down the road with an idea of opening a home brew school. I saw the site, registered UnBarred there and took advantage of brewing 600L batches. With my commercial brewing experience, and a lot of hard work, Missing Link was soon turned into a commercial brewery. The 600L kit was soon upgraded to 1200L. I was brewing for UnBarred and contract brewing for Missing Link and other breweries. The concept of Missing Link is to offer that step for brewers without having to invest in a full brewery first. It’s been the perfect step of getting UnBarred to where it is today, and we are eternally grateful for the support from Missing Link Brewing.

UnBarred has always been a small team of amazingly talented and dedicated individuals who have played in an integral role in building the brand.  Our next steps will be to expand so UnBarred can deliver our vision of beer with big flavour, without limits.  

keep in touch at www.unbarredbrewery.com, you can subscribe to find out more.