Bature Brewery: Behind the Curtains

Meet the Sailors of Bature Brewery

Bature Brewery is the pioneer of craft beer in Nigeria. The team at Bature is inspired by the Naija hustle & energy, and has a passion for creating unique beers using local ingredients. It is your verified spot for the best beers in town as well as entertainment!

 

KEVIN CONROY

Co-Founder and Innovation Commander at Bature Brewery

For over 14 years, Kevin invested in business consulting across Africa and Asia. However, he gave this up because of his love for craft beer. He turned Bature Brewery from an idea into a thriving business in no time. A consummate innovator, he is constantly searching for new ingredients and exciting flavours he can share with beer fans. His favourite Bature Beer is the Black Gold, their international award-winning Nigerian Coffee Stout.

Kevin Conroy @ Instagram and LinkedIn

BAYO IJASAN

Head of Brewing and Brewmaster at Bature Brewery

Bayo studied Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh because of his love for the extraordinary. His career journey took him through four industries and now, back to his true love. Bayo enjoys creating beers with lots of standout flavours and drinking them with friends and customers! Bayo claims he can rightly guess the ingredients of any beer by just looking at it. His favourite Bature brew is the, and yes, it’s high time he brewed it again.

Bayo Ijasan @ Instagram and LinkedIn

Dialogue With Kevin Conroy and Bayo Ijasan:

The NAVI team visited the first craft brewery in Nigeria, Bature Brewery, and had an interview with the co-founder, Kevin Conroy and the brewmaster, Bayo Ijasan.

NAVI: Why did you start a Craft Brewery?

KEVIN: We decided to start our own craft brewery (Bature Brewery) because we got really bored with drinking mainstream lagers all the time and missing out on many fresh fruits and ingredients around us. What if we could just put them in a beer? We could make an award-winning world beer. That was the cool idea behind Bature Brewery.

We do a range of beers, most of which are based on seasons or influences we find around us. Our top-selling award-winning beer is Black Gold Stout made with Nigerian Coffee beans from Taraba. Then, we have a new beer – the Lagos Lager. We’ve got ‘Harmattan Haze”, a naturally cloudy beer like the Harmattan. Last but not least is the ‘Founders’, one of our top-selling beers named after the founders of Bature Brewery.

NAVI: What makes Bature so special?

KEVIN: The three things that make Bature Brewery special are innovation, quality, and use of local content.

Innovation: We are always looking to do things differently. We have the bar restaurant. So, come down, enjoy yourself, have some live music, or drink the freshest beer you may ever taste in your life straight from the tank.

Quality: The second thing is quality. We are always looking for the freshest ingredients all around us that are fresh, flavourful, and bring us so much joy when we get to taste them.

Local Content: Thirdly, we use as much local content as possible. We use a lot of coffee beans from Taraba, we use mangoes during the mango season. We have even done a coconut stout and put ‘Zobo’ in one of our beers.

NAVI: What is your role as the Brewmaster?

BAYO: My role as the Brewmaster is to create the concept of the beer and make sure that we produce the beer to the best quality possible for us. So, right from getting the supplies for the ingredients up to where you taste the beer when you come to the taproom – that’s the responsibility of the Brewmaster.

Particularly, when you come into our taproom, we want you to have that taste of freshness. So, yes, we could go into the individual differences between the beers. For example, if you have our Keke beer, we want that lemon grass to be very prominent. We want the Lager to have that crisp flavour. You will get a fresh flavour if you come to the Bature taproom. It should seem similar to having it straight from the tank.

NAVI: What Beer Flavours Do You Make?

KEVIN:  There are a lot of different flavours of beer. There are IPAs that are really fruity and flavourful. We also have the Lagers that are crisp, and there are dark and chocolatey stouts.

Each beer can be paired with a different type of food. One of our favourites in the taproom here in Lagos and Abuja is the Harmattan Haze. The Harmattan Haze has nice fruity flavours, with a spicy chicken burger. I think that the balance of fruitiness and sweetness with spicy food works so well.

NAVI: Does spicy food go well with Beer?

BAYO: Of course it can! So there is, of course, the grilled fish, or you can have ‘Asun’, which is the peppered goat meat, or have chicken wings. Real Spicy! But I would say it’s very good to try it with Black Gold. So, you have that load of spices, and then you push it down with something really mellow and easy for you to drink. So, you’ll probably try our ‘asun’ and our Black Gold.

NAVI: What are the things to do at Bature Brewery

KEVIN: When you come down here, there are always lots to do. Our best night is Friday night. It’s filled with live music, great beer, and great people – and that’s the most important thing to us. Otherwise, choose Thirsty Thursdays when you get the best prices on our beers. Come down and enjoy.

BAYO: At Bature, we always want to make sure you have this experience where whenever you come to the taproom, there is always a different beer other than the regular ones you are used to. So, I am inviting people to come and try it out! Whenever you come to the taproom, there is always a special beer, so keep an eye out for that too.

KEVIN & BAYO: Thank you, NAVI. Cheers for coming down to Bature Brewery!

Check out their website to find out more.

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