SIBA East Region

Counties:
Bedfordshire
Cambridgeshire
Essex
Hertfordshire
Lincolnshire
Norfolk
North Lincolnshire
Peterborough
Suffolk

Representative to the East Region

Steve Banfield

Steve Banfield

Steve Banfield. Buntingford Brewery

Born, raised & educated on the edge of the Chilterns Hills,  Steve first forays in the world of work – after a few long trips around Europe -  involved manure, and then the drugs trade (yes, legal…).  After a brief spell in IT where he realised he hated computers, a night in a rural Leicestershire pub saw him take on a small brewery (so small you had to go outside to turn round).

After a period of working for other breweries, Steve co-founded the Buntingford Brewery Company, which has grown steadily and now employs several people from it’s rural base in the North Hertfordshire Mountains (next highest point east is apparently Siberia…).  When not brewing, filling out tax forms or finding new ways of filing things, Steve is not averse to visiting the pub, amongst other less interesting things.

Nigel Sadler

Nigel started studying brewing some 27 years ago. He was probably one of the first people to attend Keith Thomas’s fledgling Brewlab courses back in 1986 and like many people dabbled in home brewing.

As well as being Commercial Manager at Wibblers Brewery in Essex he runs craft brewing courses in his spare time (www.learn2brew.co.uk).

Nigel is a member of The Institute of Brewing & Distilling, The Brewery History Society (He is keen on beer/brewing history in the Essex area), CAMRA and just for a change from beer The Farm Machinery Preservation Society and The British Beard Club.

His preferred beer styles are darker stronger porters, old ales and stouts.

Steve Chroscicki – Front Street Brewery

Even before leaving school I knew life would be…interesting! I was playing in bands since I was 14 and a life in music seemed likely, but family came first and although the music was in me, it clearly wasn’t paying the bills! So I left the band (they went on to bigger and better things!!) and I settled down to an apprenticeship with London Transport Executive as an apprentice engineer. The next decade or so went on, got married to the lovely Alex, flirted with the music business a bit more (this time for charity). Finally the beer bug got me, the inevitable home brewing (always full mash – no kits for me!) then came redundancy from LT and finally with a chance meeting with a Firkin Brewer (remember that chain?) and I was hooked, went on to brew for a cafe bar chain called Parisa, another redundancy there and I got to try another interesting job experience The Test Driver! Did that for 18 months, mostly very boring, but those long days/evenings/nights driving at stupid miles an hour got me to thinking, what if I was to start my own brewery!! (I can hear the Bank Manager crying even now!) Anyway in 2003 we bought the lease on The Chequers Inn in the picturesque village of Binham near the North Norfolk coast and 18 months later Front Street Brewery began and the rest, as they say, is history!

News articles from the East Region: