The Story of a Craft Brewery Success...
...and a Heavy Metal Tribute Beer
As a seeker of Heavy Metal and Craft Beer connections, there is a particular kind of pleasure in sitting down with a cask pour of Stirchley Brown Ale and discovering that the marketing executive across from you is married to the bassist of a black/death/doom band called Deathfiend. Jo Farn, Marketing Executive at Attic Brew Co., is a metalhead — a fact that turns out to illuminate rather a lot about the brewery she works for.
Attic Brew Co. is one of Birmingham’s most celebrated independent craft breweries, with an origin story as unpretentious as the city it calls home. Co-founders Sam Back and Oli Hurlow met at university in Cardiff, where Sam began brewing beer in his bedroom — partly out of curiosity, partly out of frustration with the cheap lager on offer. After graduating, Sam returned to his hometown of Birmingham and converted the attic of his house into a homebrew setup. The name was already writing itself.
Oli, meanwhile, was building a career in online advertising in London. When Sam rang to ask if he wanted to open a brewery, Oli didn’t hesitate. He left his job in the capital, moved to Birmingham, and the pair took out a loan, rented a run-down industrial unit on Mary Vale Road on the Stirchley trading estate, and bought a brew kit that was older than either of them. After several months of painting, building, and finally brewing, the taproom doors opened on 23 November 2018.
Building a Brewery, Building a Community
Ask Jo what was missing from the beer landscape before Attic existed and her answer is unfussy. “It came down to taste, quality, and freshness,” she says. “Having a brewery on site gives you complete control over all three, and that makes a huge difference in the final pint.” She is equally clear about the cultural gap the brewery set out to fill. “There was a gap for something a bit different from the macro lagers that dominate so many venues, especially in our great city, Birmingham — or Brum, as the locals call it. We wanted to offer beers with more character and care behind them, while still being accessible and enjoyable to drink.”
That balance — character without obscurity, depth without showboating — is the line Attic has spent seven years walking. The brewery’s flagship beer, Intuition, a hop-forward pale ale defined by balance and drinkability, has become one of the most popular beers on taps across the city. Since opening, Attic has brewed over 200 different beers across hundreds of batches, and production has grown by roughly thirty-fold. By 2022 the team had scaled from producing 800 litres of beer per week to a capacity of 12,000 litres — representing 1,400% growth in just four years, two of which were navigated through a global pandemic.
When asked about other breweries she appreciates, the brewery she names as her personal compass is The Kernel, the celebrated Bermondsey operation. “Their beers are consistently excellent, and that level of quality is something I really admire. They show that you don’t need to overcomplicate things to make great beer — it’s about getting the fundamentals right every time and letting the ingredients speak for themselves.”
Attic is also a fully vegan brewery, a commitment that runs through every beer they produce. In 2023 the brewery added cask ales to its offering, with up to three handpumps now available at the Stirchley taproom alongside a wall of keg fonts pouring their own and guest beers.
But ask Jo what separates a merely good beer from an Attic beer, and the answer isn’t about volume.
“A good beer does what it’s supposed to — it tastes right and you enjoy it. But an Attic beer should go a step further. It should feel considered from start to finish, with everything in balance. It’s about clarity of flavour, drinkability, and a sense that you’d happily go back for another without thinking twice. There’s also a consistency to it — a reliability that what’s in the glass reflects exactly what we set out to brew.”
The Barrel Store: Under the Arches of the Jewellery Quarter
The brewery’s second venue, The Barrel Store, opened on Saturday 13 May 2023 at Arch 32 Water Street, in Birmingham’s historic Jewellery Quarter — a three-minute walk from Snow Hill station. Funded in part through a Crowdfunder campaign, the venue occupies a former railway arch that stays cool year-round, making it ideal for the barrel-ageing programme the team had long wanted to pursue.
The Barrel Store holds the distinction of being the only bar in Birmingham where drinkers can enjoy their pint next to 24 oak barrels actively ageing beer on site. In late 2023 the team brewed 4,000 litres of wort using a traditional lambic-style process, filling 21 neutral wine barrels with a blend of wild yeasts and bacteria to mature over time. As well as these mixed-fermentation and aged beers, the bar pours the full Attic range alongside wine, cider, spirits, cocktails, and coffee.
Paranoid: a Black Lager, a Black Sabbath City
Photo courtesy of Attic Brewing - Photography by Angela Grabowska
Paranoid cans were stocked at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery as part of the Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition. The beer poured on draft exclusively at both Attic venues from Friday 4 July, with the launch culminating in a full Sabbath-themed night at The Barrel Store. Alongside the beer, Attic released a limited run of Sabbath-inspired T-shirts, with a portion of proceeds going to Metal For Good, a charity that uses music to create positive change in communities. The harder question, when you tie a beer to a cultural giant, is making sure it doesn’t coast on the name. Jo is firm on this point:
“For us, the beer always comes first. The concept or collaboration might spark the idea, but it has to stand on its own in the glass. We approach it in exactly the same way as any other brew, focusing on balance, flavour, and drinkability. If it didn’t have the name or the story attached, it still needs to be something people would come back to. The theme should add to the experience, not carry it.”
Photo courtesy of Attic Brewing - Photography by Angela Grabowska
Photo courtesy of Attic Brewing - Photography by Angela Grabowska
In June 2025, Attic released one of their most talked-about beers to date: Paranoid, a 5% black lager brewed as a tribute to Black Sabbath. The timing was deliberate. Black Sabbath — Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy Osbourne — formed in the Aston area of Birmingham in 1968 and spent the early 1970s more or less inventing heavy metal. The band’s farewell show at Villa Park in July 2025, alongside the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery’s Ozzy Osbourne: Working Class Hero exhibition, gave the city a once-in-a-generation moment to mark what those four men created.
Jo traces the idea to the team’s DNA as much as to timing. “We’ve got a few big music fans in the team, and Black Sabbath in particular are such an important part of Birmingham’s identity. As a brewery, we’ve always been about supporting and showcasing the city, so creating something that celebrates that heritage felt like a natural fit. With everything happening around the event, it was the perfect moment to highlight Brum and be part of that wider story.”
Rooted in Birmingham’s Creative Scene
Attic has consistently positioned itself as part of the city’s cultural fabric rather than a business simply located within it. The brewery has collaborated with arts organisations including The Atlantic Players, and poured at festivals such as CocoMad and Supersonic — Birmingham’s long-running experimental music festival. This year the team is also working with Mostly Jazz and Moseley Folk Festival. “Collaborating with people in the local music and creative scene is something we really enjoy,” says Jo, “so we’d love to keep building on that and finding new ways to bring beer and creativity together.”
Food: Deathrow Pizza
Both the Stirchley taproom and The Barrel Store are served by Deathrow Pizza, a Birmingham food operator whose concept — every pizza is a “last meal,” fully customizable, one fixed price regardless of toppings — is a natural fit for the brewery’s irreverent house style. The Stirchley taproom has a custom-built kitchen firing pizzas across the week, while The Barrel Store offers two-for-one pizzas on Wednesdays. Vegetarian and vegan options. are available at both sites.
My went quite well with a Helles.
What is interesting, sitting in the taproom with a "Intuition" Hazy Pale (I've moved on...) in front of you and the marketing executive of a Sabbath-tribute brewery talking about her husband’s "filthy primal black / death / doom" band, is how unforced all of this feels. Attic Brew Co. didn’t have to invent a connection to Birmingham’s musical lineage. They grew up inside it.
The Stirchley taproom at 29B Mary Vale Road, B30 2DA, remains what the founders consider their forever home — the permanent anchor of a brewery built from the ground up, one batch at a time.
Cheers!
Stirchley Taproom: 29B Mary Vale Road, Stirchley, Birmingham, B30 2DA. Open Thursday–Sunday.
The Barrel Store: Arch 32 Water Street, Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, B3 1HL. Open Tuesday–Saturday.
The Metal Connection: I had visited The Cart & Horses just 5 days earlier, too bad I couldn't make this show!
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