Informed Interview: Dougal Sharp, Innis & Gunn Brewing Co.

Dougal Sharp is the Managing Director of Innis & Gunn, the innovative Edinburgh-based brewing company known for pioneering the world’s first commercially brewed oak-aged beer.

He took time out of his busy schedule to tell us the unusual story of Innis & Gunn’s creation, the secret’s of the brand’s almost instantaneous success, and what it’s like to work with Gordon Ramsay…

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Tell us about how Innis & Gunn came to be – it seems it was almost an accidental business.

Well, it was. It all started back in 2002, when I was working for a family company in Edinburgh, a brewery. William Grant & Sons, Distillers, approached us because they were looking to make an ale to flavour whisky. They had many other brewers and distillers try to do this process, but none had succeeded in making this ale-finished whisky. So we proposed to them a special recipe and process, then we brewed them some beer, and they put this beer into oak barrels that they used in the distillery. After a period of 30 days the beer was taken out, and they filled those same barrels with mature whisky to finish. What was hoped was that the whisky barrels would impart to the whisky inside the beery character that they had absorbed during the maturation of the beer. So, this process worked, and the oak-cask preserved whisky that was the product of that process went on to be a huge success. This was wonderful for us, because we were producing all this beer, sending it out to William Grant & Sons – but then once they’d used it to season inside these barrels, the beer was regarded as a by-product and thrown away.

So how did this by-product turn into a marketable product?

Well, after many months of this happening, we got a phone call one day to say, you’re not going to believe what’s happened here. The beer that we’ve been throwing away, well, the workers tell us they’ve been drinking it – and they say it’s absolutely fantastic. So we put it to our brewery tasting panel, and everyone gave it 9 out of 9. And I thought, well, there’s definitely something in this, because at that time we were brewing the champion beer of Britain, and even that wasn’t getting 9 out of 9 from our taste panel. So we knew we had something special – it was an unforgettable moment. The flavour of this beer had been completely transformed by its time in the oak. So I phoned Grants back and said, you really need to do something with that beer, because I think it’s exceptional. At that time I was about to leave Caledonian, the company I was working for, to do an MBA, but on my last day I got a call from Grants. They said, why don’t you come and tell us what you would do with this beer? So I did a presentation for their executive board, and two weeks later their chief exec flew back into Scotland and said, okey doke, let’s go, let’s set this company up – you can have some shares in it, and you bring it to market. So I thought about that for about one micro-second and abandoned my MBA posthaste. It took a further 12 months of development, working on how to best get the flavours from the oak barrels and how to perfect the process for doing it time after time, and at that time we also designed the packaging and came up with the name. So there was lots and lots of development work that was done in that 12 months, and then in 2003 in August we launched Innis & Gunn.

Where did the name Innis & Gunn come from?

Well, it’s the middle names of me and my brother.

Are you Innis or Gunn?

I’m the Gunn. And it was actually Dad who came up with the idea. We had all sorts of names, and we put them through many rounds of research, and every time we did that, it completely bombed. And it was two weeks before we were due to launch, and all of the names bombed again, and in a panic I phoned up my dad and said, look, we’re in the shit here, we don’t have a name for this product. And he said, funnily enough, I was thinking about it, and I think you should call it the middle names of you and your brother – Innis and Gunn. At first I didn’t like the idea, but he said, well, what options do you have? And he was right – we were out of options. So we tested the name again all over the UK, and everyone in the focus groups that we tested said, oh yeah, Innis & Gunn, we’ve heard of them, they’re a really high-quality producer in Scotland. There was a sort of implied history to the name that we were keen not to disavow anyone of.

It is quite a catchy name – it was fortuitous you had those middle names.

Very lucky. I mean, they’re very old family names, which gives it that sense of implied history. But yeah, really, the whole discovery of Innis & Gunn was just a moment of serendipity. But judging by the reaction from consumers and beer critics around the world, it was meant to be, because the reaction has been phenomenal. In every market that we’ve placed this product, it’s succeeded beyond all measure. It’s a brand with such an exciting future that it’s a great privilege to have been associated with its creation and ongoing success.

Why do you think it has taken off so dramatically?

The flavour is unlike anything else. It’s not like other beers. The oak aging process that we’ve used imparts flavours that you simply cannot find in any other method. You cannot get these flavours using any other techniques.

How would you describe that flavour?

The oak aging does a number of things. It imparts flavours of vanilla and toffee, and it also mellows and better integrates the alcohol with the beer – it’s like when you have a really well oak-aged wine, the alcohol seems to be better integrated with the wine than perhaps something which hasn’t been aged using oak. I think our beer is most definitely like that. So it’s deep and complex and flavoursome, but at the same time it’s very mellow, it’s smooth. It’s all about balance – it’s that quality that you can’t find in things that have been matured in stainless steel. Plus I think we arrived in the marketplace at a time when consumers were beginning to reject mass market products. Consumers are now far more aware of what they’re spending – everyone’s got a little less money in their pockets to spend – so a lot of consumers these days are spending it on products which they perceive to have a higher value, that deliver more taste, more flavour, a local provenance or a history or an interesting story that they can get behind. I think there’s a big shift in the marketplace, and that will only accelerate as time goes on. I think that’s why it’s been such a success.

And you’ve taken quite an unusual approach in that you don’t actually have your own brewery, do you?

No, we outsource production. We had a limited budget to start, so we decided to spend all of that money in making a brand, rather than building a brewery and coming up with a brand as an afterthought. And I think the success of Innis & Gunn bears that strategy out fully, because Innis & Gunn is the fourth best-selling speciality beer in the UK, the second best imported beer in Sweden, the bestselling British bottled beer in Canada – it has really achieved significant strides in very few years. So we actually believe that our outsourced brewing strategy is one of the fundamental pillars of success that this company has. We’re placing our recipe, our raw materials, our yeast, our techniques – we’re placing all that into breweries that we could never afford to buy. So we’re brewing it in breweries with far greater, more advanced technology than we could ever dream of having currently, and we get the very best of all the materials and our process. And at the end of it, we still do the oak aging bit, which is where the vast majority of the flavour of our product comes from. So I think that strategy has worked particularly well for us, although as you rightly say, it is unusual in the industry.

You’ve appeared on The F Word with Gordon Ramsay – what was that like?

Oh yeah, that was great fun. He’s quite a character.

You were teaching him brewing techniques?

Yeah, it was an extraordinary phonecall. In 2008, the production company that made that programme got in touch and said, look, Gordon and his team absolutely love your beer, they stock it in the restaurants, and we would like to emulate it as part of this series of The F Word and would like to pair it with veal that Janet Street-Porter is rearing. So we set about sourcing a little micro-brewery that we could set up in Gordon’s house – actually, in his back garden. So we brewed the beer, then we shipped a barrel down for filming and filled it with the beer that we brewed, and then we matured it in his garage. And then we bottled it and served it to diners at The F Word restaurant in the last episode of that series. I went down with my wife and we sat in The F Word restaurant and had dinner, and it was a real knock-out, the combination of the veal with the beer – he really nailed the pairing, and we really nailed the beer. But it was great fun to work with him, and given his status as a mega-celebrity chef, he actually did a lot to endorse our product. He was on the radio talking about it, and I’ve kept in touch with some of his then-team. There’s lots of support for the brand amongst that group, just because it pairs so well with the food and it’s so unusual and so fully flavoured for a beer.

So what’s up next for Innis & Gunn?

Well, we set up a business in the US last year, and that continues to develop and grow very rapidly, so really we’re just focusing on our existing markets and maybe one or two new markets. We’ve certainly got some very interesting new products in the pipeline, too. We’ve recently been testing a fruit beer in the market called Melville’s, which is absolutely delicious, made with real fruit. So that’s been a very interesting learning experience, and we’ll launch that very soon more formally. We’re also focusing on the roll-out of draft, because we’ve recently introduced Innis & Gunn Original on draft, and that really seems to be picking up a lot of momentum now. Drinkers in pubs are really taking to this brand, and in many of the outlets that stock it, it’s become the number one-selling keg. So it’s a very exciting time for the business.

What are some of your favourite hang-outs in Edinburgh?

Teuchters, and Indigo Yard is just around the road from the office; Tigerlily, obviously, is a nice place to go; and I love the Bow Bar for a nice pint – it doesn’t stock our draft yet, but hopefully it will someday. And then, places like Ondine for eating out – I think it’s outstanding. It’s one of those restaurants I love to go to – I love the place, I love the service and the food is amazing, and Roy Brett, the chef there – that man is on fire.