I opened a French brewery in Cornwall and it was utter chaos | Books | Entertainment

For most people it’s the secluded, tiara shaped coves scalloped out of slate cliffs that attract people to Cornwall. It’s evenings spent on the beaches sat on fine golden sand watching the sun gently plunge into the Atlantic. Beaches that tiptoe so gently into the sea that you could walk a hundred yards out into the water and still only be up to your waist. It’s the wild, unspoilt coast with gorgeous villages smuggled into little corners out of the wind, full of old fishermen’s cottages huddled together, leaning against each other for support. It’s the gentle Cornish way of life.

That’s most people. What attracted me to Cornwall was Big Job – a 7.2% double IPA, my favourite beer brewed by my favourite brewery – St Austell. The other things helped, but it was definitely Big Job that sealed the deal.

Back in 2016 my wife and I had escaped the rat race in London for a new life in France. I spent six years founding and running the Braslou Biere microbrewery in the Loire Valley and it was easily the most chaotic six years of my life. Because at the time I had no real idea how to brew beer, we were in deepest French wine country, we didn’t speak particularly good French, two young children arrived as well as an army of animals including Burt the dog who it turned out was a limb of satan and who was hell bent on destroying me and everything I stood for.

Disaster followed catastrophe followed disaster as documented in my books, A Beer in the Loire and Trouble Brewing in the Loire. We were comfortably the worst-run microbrewery in France if not the world, and so when Covid hit and we were ready to move back to the UK, St Austell offered me a job on their brew team and the thought of working at the very brewery that made my favourite beer was too much to turn down.

We gave up our big old house in the Loire valley, packed off all our animals to new homes (the highlight was shoulder-charging Gadget, our grumpy miniature horse, into the back of his new owners little Peugeot hatchback to be driven two hours down the motorway with his head out of the window to Angers) and moved back with our two young children to live stay with my mother-in-law in her cottage in the heart of the old fishing village of Padstow.

I lasted six months at St Austell Brewery. I met some wonderful Cornish brewers, ate some vast Cornish pasties – honestly they were the size of the moon – but I couldn’t cope with the shift pattern and truthfully I just wasn’t competent enough to do my job.

I would drive back to Padstow after a nightshift and instead of going to bed I would walk up to the monument that looked out over the camel estuary that widened and narrowed like a Phoenician vase and I would watch the sun rise and know that this was not the life. I would look at the almost unimaginable beauty around me and I wouldn’t see it. Instead I would wonder with terror at what I was going to do next.

I spent the summer working in the legendary Padstow wine bar – Bin Two. I loved the people but my customer service was appalling. After accidentally dropping a crab roll into a customer’s designer handbag it became clear it was time to do something different. I missed France so I decided that, if I couldn’t go back to France, I would try and bring a little bit of France to Cornwall.

Retrieving my old brewing kit that had been gathering dust in my friend’s hanger in Marigny Marmande in deepest darkest France, I found a little unit outside of Padstow and armed with everything I learned from St Austell I began brewing beer again. It turned out I hadn’t learnt that much. The beers were definitely better, in fact the beers were superb, but my propensity for avoidable blunders remained and so the brewery was flooded with alarming regularity, heating elements blew up, the ceiling fell in.

Summer was glorious – the sun shone, customers flocked to the coast, we barbecued on the beach, we walked the cliffs, but in winter the customers disappeared and we were left cold and soaked to the bone by rain sweeping relentlessly from the Atlantic from January to May, never quite making enough from the summer months to see us through.

Finally the nadir – in March, just when I needed to be working my hardest to keep the brewery open I slipped a disc and was left unable to brew, unable to move.

It seemed that the brewery was going to fold until George, the head brewer of Bluntrock, rival brewers from over the estuary, came to the rescue. He came to my brewery and brewed the beer for me – an act of generosity and humanity that stays with me to this day. The brewery was saved, my back healed and we were into summer again.

I thought I’d be able to leave France and start a new life in Cornwall without consequence, but I think as you get older it’s harder to drop one life and start a new one. Memories cling to you more, sentimentality sticks to you like treacle where once it ran off.

And so I began to get the gang back together – Burt my nemesis dog grudgingly came back from an idyllic life with my cousin and I retrieved the Tub of Thunder, my old 1980’s Peugeot Van from its retirement in my neighbour’s field in France – and together we terrorised the little back lanes of Cornwall in the same way we once had the roads of the Pays de Richelais.

The next winter was bleak again, but when times were at their toughest I found refuge in the unit next door to my brewery – RP Restorations – the antique restorers, Rob and Sam. We’d huddle in their unit surrounded by old pieces of furniture drinking tea to keep warm as rain beat down outside and along with those guys and Burt and the Tub of Thunder we pulled through.

Now at last we have a thriving little French style bar built by Rob and Sam at the Braslou Beer café in Hawksfield Artisan Village outside Wadebridge on the A39.

I have failed to learn to surf (largely because getting into a wetsuit for me is like trying to put a rubber glove over a balloon) and I’m planning on failing to learn to sail. You learn a lot about yourself when you do what we did. You are forced to face uncomfortable truths about your nature and your capabilities but equally you discover amazing things about yourself – resilience that you didn’t know you had – creativity, backbone in the face of extreme pressure. And you realise that you can’t do things alone, no matter how much you want to.

For me, just as in France when my neighbours came to the rescue, back in Cornwall it was the generosity of people like George from Bluntrock and Rob and Sam, the antiques restorers that got me through.

We’re making all sorts of delicious beers, a saffron-infused lager, a port and walnut stout and we’ve found our niche selling to the upmarket bars and restaurants around Cornwall. I still flood the brewery with alarming regularity.

It’s funny, no matter how beautiful your surroundings, if you’re unhappy you won’t appreciate them. Now, after four years in Cornwall, I can finally love the little coves, the wild unspoilt coast, the Cornish way of life. More than anything I can finally enjoy the Big Job.

Come and visit us at the Braslou Beer Café, Hawksfield Artisan Village, A39 and I’ll tell you all about it.

• Something Brewing in Cornwall by Tommy Barnes (Muswell Press, £12.99) is published on June 11