Welcome to this week’s Fyne Folk, our blog introducing Fyne Ales team members and talking to them about their experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. We want to introduce you to the folk who make our brewery what it is, and share their stories from lockdown, how they’ve been coping with the new normal and what their hopes are for a post-pandemic brewery and world.

This week in part two of our sales-team-double-bill, we caught up with our National Sales Manager, Matt Thomasson. Matt leads our fearless sales team, pulling the strings, calling the shots and making the big deals to help get our brews out to as many people as possible. Matt, who is based just outside Edinburgh, is used to setting his own work schedule, but we caught up with him to find out how he and his family coped with making a new type of schedule to fill their days and how he’s feeling about the future for brewing and hospitality.

FYNE ALES ONLINE SHOP

Thinking back to when things kicked off eight months ago – what do you remember from that time?
It’s crazy that it’s been eight months since it all kicked off – I think very few people would have predicted the reality we’ve been living this year. I think most people failed to anticipate the impact this would have – not just on the brewery but on our lives. I remember back at the start thinking okay, this’ll be a tough few months but definitely saw it as more of a speed bump than the roadblock it’s turned out to be.

How did you fill your days when you were away from the brewery?
For me my time away from work was all about spending time with my family – we’ve got two girls, who maybe aren’t old enough to fully understand why they couldn’t go to school or do certain things – but we tried to fill the days with good quality family time. For me it was a bit of an escape from the stress, and the weather was so beautiful we were outside almost constantly –  in the garden, out for walks or cycles – we tried to enjoy it as much as we could.

Did you have to become ‘teacher’ as well as ‘dad’?
I did, I did the home-teacher thing and as much as I’d love to say I covered myself in glory, after a couple of months of doing my best, I have to take my hat off to teachers – it’s not something I’m cut out for. I think a big part of the challenge was getting the kids into the mindset that they have to do their school work at home – for most kids school is where they do the learning and home is for play – so that was tough.

As parents we’re both worried about the effect all this is having on the kids in terms of their education – there’s an argument that this is a ‘lost year’ for kids and you can’t help but feel that’s unfair because you only get so many.

Let’s talk about beer then – what was your go-to during lockdown when the pubs were closed?
My go-to was Easy Trail, by quite some distance, but at the start my stash took a proper hammering – I’ve definitely eased off and tried to get a bit fitter again, going out on the bike – but at the start I was raiding the cupboards for all the special beers I had tucked away. I had quite a good stock of Origins Brewing bottles from the past few years that I opened and enjoyed – some of them have aged spectacularly – and now we’ve put some of them back on sale as cellar releases so I can replenish my stash.

FYNE ALES ONLINE SHOP – ORIGINS BREWING

How did you feel about coming back to work properly as the pubs opened up again in the summer?
It was a relief to get back to work, to be honest, and it was impressive to see how so many hospitality businesses adapted to the restrictions and took them seriously – pubs spent a lot of time and effort, and ultimately investment, into opening up again in a safe way so you had to take your hat off to them. There was a real bounce of positivity in July when things started to open up again and we were able to get pints of cask and see our friends again.

And what are you feelings about the latest rules and restrictions, and the idea of a difficult winter ahead?
The most difficult thing has been the constantly changing restrictions and the uncertainty – it feels like we’ve been in a cycle of new rule introduced, we adapt and find ways to keep the business going, and then just as we figure things out and see a bit of hope on the horizon, the rules change again and we’re back at square one facing a whole new set of challenges. It’s been exhausting, trying to keep up and trying to stay positive because the goalposts feel like they’re constantly shifting. This week – extending the temporary restrictions in Scotland with a few days notice – is just the latest example of that.

If someone could put a circle around a date on a calendar and say ‘that’s when the vaccine will be ready’, everything would be fine, but that’s not going to happen, so we’ll just keep going the way we have been – getting our heads down and working hard and doing our best to find positivity wherever we can.

Anything else that you’ll look back on about 2020?
There has been times when the pandemic has been a great reminder of how good the beer industry can be – how it’s not just an industry, it’s a community. There’s been so many examples over the past six months of breweries and hospitality working together to help each other out and find ways to overcome all the challenges that have been thrown at us – it’s easy to get caught up in the negativity of the situation, but I honestly think it’s brought out the best in a lot of people and businesses.

FYNE ALES ONLINE SHOP