Geoff Mumford, who has died aged 82, was a pioneer of the craft beer motion, co-founding the unbiased Burton Bridge Brewery in 1982, which helped result in a revival in pale ale within the UK.
Together with his enterprise accomplice, Bruce Wilkinson, Burton Bridge was launched underneath the noses of such big Burton brewers as Bass, Allied and Marston’s.
They produced their first beer, Bridge Bitter, the identical 12 months. “We’d seen a budget components used at Romford [where the pair had worked previously for Ind Coope] and we wished none of that,” Geoff mentioned. They purchased Maris Otter malting barley and “the best hops cash might purchase”.
One in all their earliest beers, Golden Scrumptious, made as a summer season particular for a pub group, Midsummer Inns, induced such curiosity that it turned a everlasting a part of the vary and was one of many first of the brand new wave of golden ales.
Their portfolio grew to incorporate Pageant Ale, Prime Canine Stout, Porter and Stairway to Heaven bitter, which had been delivered to pubs all through the Midlands and by way of wholesalers throughout the UK.
Born in Alfreton, Derbyshire, Geoff was the son of Doris (nee Renshaw) and Reginald Mumford, who labored in native collieries. Geoff went to Mortimer Wilson college within the city, then skilled as an engineer. He married Jenny Winstanley, a physiotherapist, in 1970 and so they had a son and a daughter.
He labored for Rolls-Royce in Portsmouth within the Nineteen Sixties earlier than becoming a member of the brewing trade in 1969 as an engineer with Tetley in Leeds. In 1961 Tetley had change into a part of the nationwide Allied Breweries group that included Ind Coope, with crops in Burton, and Romford in Essex.
Geoff transferred to Burton in 1972, then Romford in 1977, the place he turned engineering supervisor. There he met Bruce, a technical supervisor, and so they turned shut pals.
“Bruce and I had been heads of our departments at Romford and we might see the writing on the wall,” Geoff informed me in 2016. “Allied had closed Ansells in Birmingham and Romford was handled because the Siberia of brewing, so we determined to leap ship.”
They set about opening their very own brewery, occurring a small enterprise coaching course. Visiting Burton sooner or later, Geoff noticed a For Sale signal on the Fox & Goose pub whereas driving throughout the Trent. “It had loads of room on the again for a brewery,” he mentioned. They purchased the pub, renamed it the Bridge Inn and put in their brewing equipment.
Geoff was crucial on the time of many trendy interpretations of India Pale Ale that he mentioned owed an excessive amount of to over-hopped American variations. In 1996 he and Bruce designed a bottled Empire Pale Ale within the true Burton type. The beer was conditioned within the brewery for six months to copy the size of a journey by crusing ship to India within the nineteenth century, and was then bottled with reside yeast. It received a gold medal in a contest staged by the Guardian in affiliation with Camra, the Marketing campaign for Actual Ale.
The pair restored one other Burton custom once they brewed Draught Burton Ale in 2015. A beer of that title was first brewed within the late Seventies by Allied utilizing the Ind Coope title. Geoff and Bruce had urged turning a robust bottled beer, Double Diamond Export, right into a cask model. The draught beer was in such demand from shoppers that it helped increase the true ale revival began by Camra in 1971. When Allied Breweries was wound up and have become Carlsberg Tetley, manufacturing of Burton Ale was moved to Tetley in Leeds, after which phased out.
Inspired by native Camra branches, Geoff and Bruce brewed their model of the beer for the Burton Beer competition in 2015. It proved so in style that it turned a everlasting a part of the vary.
Once I requested Geoff if he was frightened Carlsberg may sue Burton Bridge, he chuckled and mentioned: “It’s draught, it’s ale and it’s brewed in Burton – so it’s Draught Burton Ale.”
By 2016, exhausted by the laborious slog of operating pubs – the pair purchased 4 morein Burton , although they had been offered just a few years in the past in an try to scale back their workload – and a brewery, Geoff and Bruce determined to retire. Nonetheless, they had been decided to promote solely to individuals who shared their imaginative and prescient of fine beer. This lastly got here within the form of the Heritage Brewery, which had been compelled to search for a brand new website when the Nationwide Brewery Centre in Burton, the place it was based mostly, closed in 2022.
Heritage has moved to Burton Bridge and says it is going to honour Geoff’s reminiscence by persevering with to brew his beers.
Jenny died in 2014. Geoff is survived by his daughter, Catherine, and son, Tim.
