The Story
How a homebrew experiment became something worth investing in.
The Origin
It started the way most good ideas start — with a kitchen that smelled terrible and a partner asking what on earth was fermenting in the cupboard.
Homebrew experiments. Batches that exploded. Batches that tasted like fire. And then, eventually, batches that tasted like something people actually wanted to drink. The more I made it, the more I noticed something obvious: nobody was doing this properly. Not for pubs. Not on tap. Not with real fermentation.
Every “ginger beer” on the market was either a soft drink pretending to be interesting, or a mixer designed to hide behind vodka. None of them were the thing itself — a proper, naturally fermented, alcoholic ginger beer you could order on its own and enjoy like you would a craft cider or a good pale ale.
[PLACEHOLDER — Kealan’s Founding Narrative]
200–300 words. The personal story: what sparked the obsession, the moment it went from hobby to business idea, the conviction that this gap in the market was real. Written in first person, pub-anecdote tone — honest, a bit self-deprecating, but with genuine belief underneath.
The Product
Grassroots is naturally fermented alcoholic ginger beer. Not force-carbonated syrup with alcohol tipped in. Not a mixer. Not a soft drink with ideas above its station.
It’s made with real ginger — proper amounts of it — and fermented the way ginger beer was always meant to be made: slowly, with a live culture, until the yeast has done what yeast does. The carbonation comes from the fermentation itself. The flavour comes from the ginger itself.
4.5%
ABV
Natural
Fermentation
Tap
Permanent Lines
The goal isn’t a guest slot or a seasonal novelty. Grassroots is built for permanent tap lines — sitting alongside craft ciders and premium lagers as a genuine alternative for people who want something with character.
The Method
We use a two-stage process: decoction, then fermentation. It sounds technical. It isn’t, really. It’s just the proper way to do it.
Stage One: Decoction
Fresh ginger is slow-cooked to extract maximum flavour and heat. This creates a concentrated ginger base — intensely aromatic, properly spicy — that becomes the foundation of everything that follows.
Stage Two: Fermentation
The decoction is combined with fermentable sugars and pitched with yeast. Over days, the yeast converts sugar into alcohol and natural carbonation. No force-carbonation. No shortcuts. The fizz and the strength both come from the same process.
The result is a drink with genuine depth — ginger heat up front, a dry finish, and the kind of natural effervescence you can’t fake with a CO₂ tank.
The Founder
[PLACEHOLDER]
Photo of Kealan
Kealan isn’t coming from a brewing dynasty. There’s no family recipe passed down through generations. He’s someone who got obsessed with making something, spent a long time getting it right, and now wants to see if the rest of the world agrees it was worth the effort.
The background is in tech and product — which, honestly, is more useful than you’d think when you’re trying to turn a homebrew hobby into a real business. Understanding how to build something, test it, iterate on it, and get it in front of people — that translates.
What doesn’t translate is the smell of your kitchen when a five-gallon batch decides to over-ferment at 3am. But you learn from those too.
The Brewery
Grassroots is contract brewed with a SALSA-Plus accredited craft brewery in the South West. Contract brewing is how you do this sensibly — you get access to professional-grade equipment, quality assurance, and food safety accreditation without sinking six figures into your own kit before you’ve sold a single pint.
SALSA-Plus accreditation matters. It means the brewery meets the food safety standards required to supply pubs, bars, and retailers. It’s the baseline for being taken seriously by the on-trade — and it’s something most homebrewers-turned-founders have to spend months and thousands of pounds achieving on their own.
Brewery partnership pending final confirmation with Powderkeg.