David is a leading, York based, brewing consultant working with small independent breweries the length and breadth of the UK. Having started his brewing career in 1976 as a trainee brewer at Samuel Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster eventually, after seven years working as shift brewer in production, went to work in the Quality Control Department.
During the late Seventies and early eighties the number of larger breweries continually declined and the numbers of small independent breweries gradually increased. So in July 1988 David decided to leave Samuel Smith’s and start up his own brewing consultancy business as D A Smith Brewing Services, later brewing Services & Consultancy Ltd, offering quality assurance services and general technical consultancy to these burgeoning new breweries.
This was undoubtedly a smart move as, over the past 25 years, David has been involved with setting up over 120 new breweries around the UK, and a number abroad, plus assisted many more breweries with solving their day to day technical problems. These have included many well known local breweries such as Hambleton, York, Leeds, Treboom, Wold Top and Yorkshire Heart to name but a few. In addition David has produced recipes many famous beers including the current Champion Beer of Britain, Coniston No.9 Barley Wine.
Along the way David also started The Fundamentals of Mini-Brewing, a training course designed to help practising brewers working in the small breweries understand more of the theory which underpins their day to day brewing activities. This successful course continues to run twice a year at York Brewery.
As the numbers of small breweries continues its meteoric rise there is no shortage of new clients and no let up in the day to day problems that need solving; so for the foreseeable future it continues to be business as usual with no end in sight for a busy brewer.