“What a difference a year makes” – JOE catches up with the CEO of Manor Brewing Company, Michael Cowan

Remember Michael Cowan? Of course you do.

One year ago, we brought you a series of Start-up diaries containing personal thoughts and tips from the Irish entrepreneur and Head Boy who founded the Manor Brewing Company. You can read those previous diary entries by clicking here. We now check in with Michael 12 months later to see how his first year of business has gone – the good side and the bad – what it takes to manage both funds and employees, and what it's like to stand in the middle of a freezing cold river when your brewery's heat-exchanger breaks down. We've all been there, right? OK, so maybe we all haven't been in that exact situation, but Michael has. Here's his fascinating story...

“What a difference a year makes”

A year ago, when I was invited to contribute to JOE.ie’s original Start-Up Diaries, I could not have imagined what the first 12 months of our fledgling craft brewing company's adventure would hold. As we prepare for the official launch of our MONT™ Irish Mountain Beer at this weekend’s 5th annual Irish Craft Beer Festival at the RDS in Dublin (27-29 August), it’s a great time to reflect on our first year, and hopefully demonstrate to other early stage start-ups or employees considering their own ‘leap of faith’ that, with a bit of tenacity and dogged persistence, your vision can really become reality. Let’s start with our mistakes. Boy, we made a few! It would be fair to say our journey so far has not been ‘all beer & skittles’! Our biggest mistake was over-complicating our original business plan. We wanted to get ahead of the game, so whilst we developed our beer recipes and brewing process and beer consistency, we started our own distribution arm, Manor Brands. Our strategy was to eventually ‘push through an open door’ in trade with MONT™, ensuring we had a strong route to market when the time came for our launch. In principle it could have been a shrewd move, but the reality was it over-stretched us too early in our life-stage, tied up working capital on other people’s brands, and quickly made us ‘employees of Customs & Excise’ (creating & collecting excise duty for the Revenue), instead of getting our beer to market as quickly as possible. This was then compounded by some bad hiring decisions; leading to our promoters’ funds being chewed up by unnecessary sales costs, rather than on vital raw materials and brewery equipment. Along with several more comical errors (including a broken heat-exchanger during our December batch brew, resulting in me standing in the freezing Brittas River with our fermenter trying to rapidly cool the wort down!), we have certainly had a steep learning curve, and evolved rapidly in our first year in business. It’s not all been a comedy of errors though. Most importantly, our beer (‘the liquid’) has met with widespread beer-drinker approval during our market test phase, and in February, our first batch of MONT™ Irish Mountain Lager won a Gold medal at the Alltech Dublin Craft Beer Cup 2015; the only lager beer style to do so out of over 500 total entries. It is in these moments that all the hard work and sacrifices seem justified. And all mistakes forgotten. So, with lesson learnt and medicine swallowed, we have simplified our business plan: No more importing other people’s beers, wines, and spirits. No more ‘Manor Brands’. We are now simply the Manor Brewing Company: Ireland’s highest microbrewery and brewers of MONT™ Irish Mountain Beer. Our goal is create an export quality premium lager for both the local and international markets, that Irish beer drinkers around the globe would be proud to call one of their own. We will be pouring our first commercial batch at the RDS this weekend, so please come say hello, and help us celebrate the launch of MONT™ Irish Mountain Beer, and raise a glass to the eponymous ‘Errol Mont’ and the divilment in all of us! #whoiserrolmont? Don't forget to visit our brand new website by clicking here and follow us on Twitter here for loads of behind-the-scenes updates. Yours in craft, Michael