What We Learned From Our Lockdown Doorstep Visits

First up: Keep your distance!

Here’s our Sales & Business Development Director Alice painstakingly making sure we were two meters apart before we drank a cold can of Pils and caught up on her doorstep.

Even though we had a laugh cracking out the measuring tape, strict adherence to social distancing recommendations was really important in taking all of these photos, even if the natural response was to want to give people a handshake or hug after a few weeks away from the brewery!

Everyone’s been baking

From Porter brownies to vegan puddings, banana bread to Finnish pasties, loads of us have been using the extra time at home to start baking.

Even though Lead Brewer Rory has been turning out lemon drizzle cake like there’s no tomorrow and Marketing Manager Tom is sourdough baking his way through a 15kg bag of flour, Finance Assistant Tiki was the only one brave enough to show off the fruits of her labour – these freshly baked Karelian pies.

We all love our pets

While being away from the brewery has made us miss our furry friend Ms Floofs, a lot of us have absolutely loved spending a little bit more time with our pets at home.

Luke, Keely and Rachel from the Pembury Tavern have been spending much more time with their cats, dogs and, er, turtles, and drayman Bradley’s dog Rocky stole the show when we knocked on his door a couple of weeks ago. 

But of all the Five Points crew in Hackney, it’s Sales & Demand Analyst Greg who’s been nailing lockdown life at home with his cat:

“I was planning to use lockdown to start writing my novel, but then I stumbled upon a video about how to train your cat to shake hands, so I’ve mostly been working on that.” 

Love it Greg, love it.

Bradders has a killer record collection

Bradley’s probably the coolest drayman around, he DJs Soul, Funk, Rocksteady and Ska, and couldn’t resist bringing out his record collection when we visited to snap his portrait. 

He says that old lemonade crates are much better than cases of beer for keeping records in, and despite spending a lot of time in pub cellars over the years he’s yet to find himself any. That’s why he picked these vintage ones up on Ebay. 

Brad’s been writing a blog with his daughter called Musical Oddities, it’s an ABC of music events that have happened in their family. You can check it out here!

We really miss cask beer

Well, we did. Luckily, we’ve just dropped our first batch of mini casks of both Best and Ordinary on our online shop, so for the first time ever you can enjoy our cask beer from the comfort of your own home. It’s not quite the Pembury Tavern, but it’s about as close as it gets right now!

Before that, we were having to make do with firkins liberated from the warehouse like the one Greg has in the picture below (Head Brewer perks!). Turns out 72 pints is a bit much for one household, even if it is a bank holiday weekend.

Family is everything

It’s been great finding time to catch up with our Five Points family over the last few weeks, but the reality is that for a lot of us lockdown has made us find new ways of keeping up with our own families and friends. 

Together and apart, we’re making a good go of it: from playing the Pembury Tavern pub quiz together on Mondays to sending our parents boxes of beer through the webstore, we’ve managed to keep up with each other pretty well even though we can’t always be together in person.

For some of us, it’s brought us even closer too: below is our Co-Founder and Managing Director Ed with his two children. He’s been juggling running a brewery in these difficult, fast-moving times with homeschooling the kids since lockdown started. Here’s how he’s finding it:

“Being able to spend more time with the kids has been an incredibly positive experience (most of the time!). My wife Tara has been teaching the kids baking, and being treating to home-baked cakes on a regular basis has been a right treat.”

See, even the kids are at it! Maybe we should start the Five Points Baking Company when this is all over.