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Christopher Claxton

Marketing Manager
  • Full member
  • Marketing
  • Yorkshire and Humber

What is the one thing you'd like to tell visitors to the Guild's website?

I am the Founder of Brewdidthat.com, a website that brings the latest news, brewery Q&As, industry updates, and more to our faithful beer loving community.

What you can offer as a writer/beer lover?

My writing, mainly advertorial projects, has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Mail and The Express newspapers and can be directly attributed to generating over £1m in income for my previous employers. So I would say that I can be incredibly persuasive when it comes to writing compelling copy. I am however incredibly impartial and factual, so I will write only what I believe to be true.

What do you like most about being a Guild of Beer Writers member?

Getting to learn about the industry from some of its best writers.

Pieces of work by Christopher:

  • Getting to know BREW: Little Monster Brewing Co.

    Have you ever wanted to start your own brewery? It’s a dream shared by many beer enthusiasts, but for others, it’s a dream that will never become a reality, not least due to the sheer costs of starting up your own brewery.

    The finances required to set up your brewery will depend on how much beer you intend to produce, the location and what equipment you wish to buy. Brewing equipment is very expensive, especially if you are brewing for commercial purposes. You would need to have a mash system, a fermentation system, a cooling system, a filter system, a controlling system and a cleaning system plus a canning or bottling machine. All this plus ingredients and a sizeable property to brew in would set you back hundreds of thousands of pounds…and that’s before you’ve even brewed your first beer.

    So, the next best thing to owning your own brewery is to brew in someone else’s, which is known as cuckoo or gypsy brewing.

  • Getting to know BREW: Hackney Brewery

    As some of you may know, the craft beer scene in the UK has changed a lot during the last decade and we’ve seen the number of micro breweries and pubs surge from just a handful in the late 2000’s to thousands.

    To be successful in the craft beer sector is very challenging and the sheer size of competition makes it harder for some breweries to survive, especially for breweries in London as there are 129 breweries around the capital alone.

    But there is one brewery in particular that’s been competing and succeeding over the last decade – Hackney Brewery, nestled in the heart of Hackney Borough, underneath historic railway arches between Haggerston and Hoxton tube stations.

  • Crushing it! Narragansett Beer and JAWS

    Beer goes into Quint, Quint goes into shark, beer goes into Shark…Our Shark. 

    What do hardened shark fishermen from Amity Island drink? ‘Gansett’ of course, but was it by accident that this Rhode Island brewed beer ended up in an iconic scene in the first major summer blockbuster? Kind of, but it depends who you ask. 

    So, how did Narragansett Beer end up getting crushed on the deck of the Orca by actor Captain Quint? Well, according to BJ Mansuetti, Brand Director at Narragansett Brewing Company the story is one of pure chance.

    BJ said: “It actually wasn’t by accident, but it wasn’t by our doing either. As the story goes, Steven Spielberg wanted the film to feel authentic. He and his team went to talk to local fisherman on the docks at Martha’s Vineyard to see what they were drinking. It was ‘Gansett’ and the rest is pretty much history. We were a pretty big company back then and it was by far the most popular beer in New England, so it’s not a surprise that he found it in the hands of fishermen.”

    The beer actually had the potential to play a larger role in the film, had the iconic scene been more like that of the original Benchley book. In the book, rather than crushing the can to intimidate Matt Hooper, Quint shoots beer cans on deck of the Orca using a makeshift skeet launcher, taunting Hooper for not joining in. It may have been decided that this scene was possibly too long so a quick can crush did the job instead.