EP-233 Patrick Jones of Pilot Beer
Even if you barely dip your toe in the shark-infested waters of Beer Twitter, there\u2019s a chance you\u2019ve heard of Pilot Beer. You don\u2019t even have to follow the brewery for it to regularly hit your timeline, as its pithy, satirical, and self-deprecating posts are retweeted and liked hundreds of times.
So you\u2019d be forgiven for thinking that Pilot is much bigger than it is. It\u2019s still a five-man operation and its Twitter account is more an extension of one of the founder\u2019s personalities than any attempt at a social-media strategy. In fact, cofounder Patrick Jones is as surprised and delighted as anyone about the success they have found online by tweeting things like: \u201cWe're only stuck with this stupid brewery because of a typo when we tried selling a load of artisan bees.\u201d
The irony is the brewery still sells almost all of its beer in its hometown of Leith, a port suburb of Edinburgh. Despite being part of the inner Twitter bubble, its beer doesn\u2019t reach many markets, and the dry, session styles it brews certainly don\u2019t cater to them either.
We caught up at the London Craft Beer Festival, an event Patrick freely admits he and Pilot wouldn\u2019t have been invited to if it weren\u2019t for their social presence. The party hasn\u2019t started yet and they\u2019re still setting up\u2014so excuse the old bang or rumble\u2014but it was heartening to see how Pilot\u2019s session beers were loved by the public later on, despite their stall being opposite some of the buzzy American brewers. It turns out if you talk honestly and with humor, session beer and open conversation are all you really need.
This is Patrick Jones of Pilot Beer. Listen in.