Cheers! Master brewer’s 25 years on the job

When he was faced with the challenge of coming up with a new product to counter the concern that some people developed potbellies from drinking beer, the master brewer had to craft a plan.

The task fell on Mr Peter Maina Kiguru, the brewing manager at East African Breweries Limited (EABL), who sometimes calls himself the man who “pikas pombe (cooks beer)” at the country’s oldest brewer, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

“It came from an observation of what was happening around us,” he tells Lifestyle during our interview at the EABL offices in Ruaraka.

“There is this association of beer with vitambi (potbellies). So, some consumers were looking for a beer that has that kick but is low on calories. And this was the first time that this trend was hitting the market, around 2011 or 2012. And I was tasked with coming up with something that would meet that profile. I put on my technical skills on it and that’s how Tusker Lite came into being. I have watched it grow over the years and it has beaten other products. Were it my own company, I would have signed my name (on the bottle),” he adds, laughing.

Mr Maina is what you would call a sparkling personality. He knows when to get serious with the conversation and when to make things light. And when to sneak in the information that his daughter, Brandy, is an upcoming musician whom we should really check out for. He’s like a good beer, this 50-year-old father of three.

Speaking of good beer, Mr Maina says it is best enjoyed cold -- not that many Kenyans agree with him.

“One of the greatest struggles I have with our products and how they are consumed in Kenya is that our people like their beers ‘warm’. Ordinarily, if you read the label, we say: ‘Best served chilled.’. In most places in the world, even during winter in Europe, people like their beer chilled. This way, you are able to feel all those flavours and you’ll be able to feel it in your palate and you feel the goodness in your beer,” he says, adding that each market has its unique. features and Kenya is no different.

You’ve heard it from the man who is charged with ensuring that beer reaches you tasting like it did when you first liked it.

In his position, Mr Maina is the master brewer in charge of all the beers made by EABL.

“My role is to convert grain or any starch into a pleasant liquid that would appeal to the consumer. Through that, you ensure that it has a balance of flavours,” he says when we ask him to describe his responsibility as he would to a 10-year-old.

He is paid to worry about many things, from the farm where the barley and sorghum that they use to make beer are grown to the “kick” in the substance poured into each bottle that leaves the production line.

“We start from the sourcing of the raw material,” he says.

“The grains must meet certain quality parameters or standards for us to accept them. The farmers that grow our barley and sorghum, must apply certain standards for us to buy that grain,” he adds.

He goes on: “Once we receive them here, there’s what we call a post-harvest treatment of the grains. And once it comes to the actual production, we have gate processes from each stage to the final stage. And at every stage, we have bare minimums. We cannot allow it to move to the next stage if it doesn’t meet that quality.”

He heads a team of about 60 brewers. The company used to have as many as 500 brewers at a time, he says, but with the refining of processes, the workforce has reduced but it is actually producing more.

At any time when drinks are being made in the factory, there have to be roughly 20 brewers present; and so the workforce works in shifts. They test, observe, stir, smell and all to ensure adherence to standards.

There are times when these brewers can order a stoppage of the production process if the progress points at a substandard end-product. It can mean pouring out some considerable amount of raw material. Anything that can harm consumers or be damaging to EABL’s reputation, Mr Maina says, will have to be disposed of if it can’t be corrected satisfactorily.

They have internal governance systems that govern how such situations are handled. And when those on the floor can’t handle them, they escalate them to him. There are times he also has to consult his superiors.

“We call it a graduated way of making decisions. It’s a hierarchical way in terms of product release and control. So, if you find that the non-conformance is of a certain aspect, then it’s for you to escalate to the next level. And even me, there are decisions I can't make. I have to escalate to the next level,” he says.

Brewers at EABL are usually people with a background in the sciences who are then trained in-house on the secrets of making good beer then sent abroad for further studies. Their tongues are also trained on how to judge alcoholic products and how to tell what is in something.

Such education of palates helps Mr Maina answer a question from one of the listeners on what the difference is between Tusker Malt and Tusker Lite, for example.

“As a trained beer taster, there are descriptors that you use for beers. If you compare Tusker Lite with Tusker Malt, you find that Tusker Malt has a heavy body on your tongue. Tusker Lite, if you taste it, will be lighter (demonstrates using his glass of water) in terms of how it feels on your tongue. As a technical brewer, you design a recipe that will end up with a beer that feels heavy on your tongue and another one that will still give you all the attributes of a beer but still ends up feeling very light in your tongue,” he says.

“On the same aspect, you have seen Guinness, which is our stout. If you put it in your tongue, that one at least you can feel; it’s quite heavy on your tongue. But now it’s like a graduated level of heaviness; so Guinness Stout could be the heaviest, but these other brands are somewhere below there,” he says.

Mr Maina studied biochemistry at Kenyatta University, graduating in 1995 with a first class honours degree, then later did a master’s in organic chemistry through a scholarship from the university.

The alumnus of Olenguruone Secondary School in Nakuru County joined EABL on July 1, 1997 after obtaining his master’s degree.

“I saw an advert in the newspaper; thanks to the Nation newspaper. And I dropped my application. I didn’t know anyone, but lucky enough, I got an invite to attend an interview. And the rest is history,” he says.

He was eventually hired alongside five others as a graduate trainee brewer.

“As a trainee brewer, you join and go through what I’d call apprenticeship. You are attached to the existing brewers and master brewers and they show you the trade. As you grow, you develop your leadership skills, how you manage people, how you do your stuff, how you create your thinking. And that’s what has kept me here,” Mr Maina tells Lifestyle.

He admits that at the time he was hired, he had never tasted beer.

“I didn’t even know how beer is made, apart from what we read in books. But there was this desire to just be able to be in an institution where I could create a product and have that personal attachment,” he says.

He went through the journey brewers usually take in the company.

“For you to get to this level, first of all you need a science-based degree. Then once you enter here, there is on-the-job training which is done by our experienced brewers and master brewers. From there, after about three years, we send people to brewing school either in Germany or Scotland. There, we have renowned brewing schools with a lot of heritage around brewing, malting and distillation. So, when you go here as an amateur brewer, they are able to harness your skills through practical and theories, interacting with renowned professors in the world in the brewing industry,” says Mr Maina.

“So, once you come back here, you come back as a master brewer and you are able to interact with the products that we make. You are able to create new ones, you are able to interpret consumer research or feedback and be able to know what our consumers are looking for. When you also interact with our marketers, you are also able to digest what their thoughts are and convert their thoughts into something that you can touch and feel,” he adds.

He joined EABL when there were only a few products. Today, it boasts more than 16 brands pushed out of its factory on a 24-hour basis all-year-round.

Many of the company’s products have been created during his time. The Tusker bottle has evolved throughout the 25 years he has been at the company, starting from what was known as the dumpy bottle then to the Euro bottle to the current Everest one.

The design of a bottle, Mr Maina says, is a big deal to a beer maker because it needs to be in sync with the market demands.

“If you have even a brilliant product and it doesn't appeal to the consumer, it is as good as useless,” he says.

Mr Maina says the creation of a new product is informed by consumer feedback, global trends and keeping tabs with the competition. Sometimes, he says, marketers sit down with target groups and ask questions on a product they desire.

“You call people to a session. And they have to be from a certain age. We classify beers according to age groups because a young person’s palate and that of an old one differ. So, you call the target group then you give them a sample liquid maybe, or you start from ideation where you ask them: ‘If I was to offer you an alcoholic drink, what are the parameters or attributes that you’ll be looking for?’” he says.

Once they have collected ideas or observed drinking trends in Kenya and abroad, they create a product that they think can compete in the targeted segment.

“Once we have a liquid as a technical department, we give it to the marketers. Or we call ourselves together, sample it and say: ‘Does it mimic what we had in mind?’ If it doesn’t, we go back to the drawing board. We refresh it and redesign it until we come up with something that we feel can meet that need out there. At that stage, then we call the target group again. We do blind tasting, where we just come with cups and give them and ask them to describe this and that; whether it meets their expectations, whether they would buy it if they found it out there. At that point, you also have a presentation of how it would appear in the final pack,” says Mr Maina.

Such feedback informs the flavours, packaging, among other aspects.

But even as target audiences are engaged, internal gate-keeping also happens to ensure quality. Mr Maina says there are four gates a product has to pass through before it is taken to the market, the fourth being the commercialisation stage while the third involves a review by the management and regulatory bodies.

As he explains why he thinks EABL has been around for that long, touching on points like allowing its staff the freedom to succeed, hiring the best brains, valuing its customers and relating well with the authorities and customers, he shares something farmers would be interested in: “We’re still looking for more farmers (for sorghum) because the demand for the product is still going up.”

“It is a crop that was so marginalised that we could not get sufficient quantity to keep us brewing. But because of our relationship with the farmers, we were able to get out there and speak to them and they were able to buy that idea and they started growing sorghum,” he adds.

One of Mr Maina’s contemporaries in the industry is Mr Ashok Datta, the general manager of the London Distillers distillery, based at their premises in Athi River.

In an interview with Lifestyle in April, Mr Datta also described the thrill that comes with minting new products from London Distillers.

Unlike EABL that mainly banks on fermentation, London Distillers produce drinks from fermentation and distillation. Its main raw material is molasses. The company also carry their product innovation seriously, Mr Datta said.

“When you sit in the lab and develop new products, that’s the time you’re relaxed. That needs time,” he said.

“We develop the product in the lab. We have one or two people. Then we give the samples to our marketing team. When they approve there, then we make a slightly bigger batch, then it goes to the market for tasting before finally we go for the commercial production,” added Mr Datta.

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