TWO northern towns, both alike in industry, where we lay the scene of a new brewery mined from the earth and forged in steel.
With a nod to both his birth and adopted home towns, Liam Senior has set up Salt Steel Brewing, an independent brewery with roots that stretch from the salt mines of Cheshire to the steel mills of Teesside.
Following in the footsteps of his late grandfather Syd Senior, who worked for ICI and often made the journey from the north west to Teesside, Liam left Davenham to settle in Middlesbrough, the home of his new brewing enterprise.
He might be known to Northwich music fans through his stint on Cheshire FM or as a member of local bands Thought Explode and Man Made, but Liam is hoping to become more renowned for his beer crafting skills.
His debut beer, Strip Tees, promises a full-flavoured bitter blast of citrus, grapefruit and pine with floral hop aromas and it’s already been a hit with ale aficionados.
The 32-year-old said: “It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind. Craft beer drinking is a passion, and this started as a bit of a passion project for me – it’s grown much quicker than I expected.”
Creating a brewery which honoured his past and present has certainly been a labour of love for Liam, who was previously self-employed and working in finance, and what could have remained a homebrew project quickly took flight.
He explained: “Working with lots of small businesses and entrepreneurs, I used to wonder what my own business would look like, and I gave a lot of thought to how I could make it work.
“I was having a beer one afternoon when the brewery idea came to me. After that, I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and things just grew from there. I started to learn from home brewing and going to brew days and then one day, last year, I thought, ‘I’m going to go for this’.
“It’s been nerve-wracking, especially launching in a year like the one we’ve had but it’s going well.”
So well, that Liam is already planning how to expand and would eventually love to open a bar in each of his home towns.
He said: “I do miss Northwich, I get back as often as I can. It would be great to have a bar there one day.”
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