THE Fat Brewer grows apace, off this week on a trade mission to sell good beer to the Latvians. “It’s quite exciting. One of the companies involved is the Harrods of Latvia,” says Christian Burns, the eponymous gentleman of the outsize small brewery.

It’s a British month, organised by the embassy in Riga, about 30 companies represented. They’re even showing James Bond films. “We’ve come quite a long way in a short time, but I wasn’t expecting to get to Latvia just yet,” says Christian.

The Fat Brewer operates from an industrial estate in Crook, perhaps not strictly a micro-brewery – there are micro-breweries much more minimalist than that – but not yet what you’d call corporately corpulent, either.

It went into production in May, already sells to pub giants like Wetherspoons – Witherspoons, as the world will insist – has had 51 brews and made a dozen different beers. A Christmas ale sits merrily fermenting: smell it, says Christian, pick up the nutmeg, the cinnamon, the candy peel, the chocolate.

A happy, hoppy Christmas? “Well, we’ll know a bit better when we get back from Riga, but it’s been a pretty good old year.”

NOT what you’d call big fat – big boned, perhaps – he was born in Darlington, was brought up in the south, qualified as an auto-electrician, followed his father and grandfather into the licensed trade, had pubs in the Bishop Auckland area and is chairman of the local Licensed Victuallers’ Association.

They’d been trying for ages to think of a name for the brewery until one night he saw something about My Fat Greek Restaurant on television.

The company also owns the Kings Head in Crook, the nearby Brewery Tap – where throughout November their own ale is selling for £1.50 a pint – and a hospitality industry training school on what Crook folk still call Royal Corner which in six months has already seen 97 graduates and won its first award.

Pubs plummet, breweries burgeon – numbers in Britain doubled in the last six years, with 11,000 different real ales now available.

On his state visit two weeks ago, President Xi of China is said particularly to have been taken by the Greene King IPA offered in David Cameron’s local – so much so that he wanted to stop for another. Now the rest of China can’t get enough.

“People these days have a more discerning palate,” says Christian. “A lot will no longer just walk into a pub and settle for mass produced keg beer. They want craft beers: there’s lots of evidence.”

So why do so many pubs call eternal last orders and why do so many seemingly level headed people still take them on? “It’s the model the pub companies work on and it’s criminal,” says Christian.

“Pubcos have the freehold and they can do what they want. You have pub couples working 80/90 hours a week and earning £300. The pubcos should be prosecuted under the minimum wage act.

“I’m not saying it’s easy. I’ve put every penny I have and every hour I have into this, but I still get a lump in my throat when I say a Fat Brewer pump clip. It means a lot, does that.”

CHRISTIAN gives much of the credit for Fat Brewer’s early success to head brewer Brian Yortson, who spent 15 years with Vaux in Sunderland and has two degrees in brewing.

“He’s world class, brilliant, has done an amazing job for us,” he says.

“You still have to sell the stuff and he could sell fridges in Greenland,” says Brian.

After Vaux he worked in Middlesbrough – “a bit of soft drinks” – before pursuing his craft at three major breweries in the south. The Fat Brewer appealed partly because he and his wife, a retired senior nurse, wanted to return to the North-East. They’re moving to Barnard Castle.

“It’s been really good fun,” Brian insists. “People say I’m just going back to where I started, but it’s been quite an adventure. You can have all these fancy beers but it’s no good if they’re not drinkable.

“Some craft beers aren’t balanced. You might enjoy one, but you wouldn’t want another one.

“It’s an exciting time in the brewing industry. Some will always fall by the wayside but there are some fascinating things happening.”

A beer called Rouge – reddish, not rogue-ish – has quickly become the best seller. “It’s a North-East beer,” says Brian. “Around here they prefer their beer darker, sweeter, more malty.”

His favourite was made with Himalayan gogi berries and became an immediate favourite with the more sophisticated drinkers of city centre Newcastle. (Their virtues notwithstanding, Crook’s drinkers may not always be supposed sophisticated.)

“It was fabulous, something out of this world,” says the Fat Brewer himself.

“It was very interesting,” says Brian who, it should be made clear isn’t fat in the least. The only problem, he adds, is that Christian wanted to promote how health giving his new ale could be.

“You can’t link beer and health any more,” says Brian. “You could never claim that Guinness is good for you.”

Nor, apparently, are brewers allowed to say that their product is more-ish, for fear that someone on the road to perdition might want to have a second.

The Fat Brewer’s little worried by that one. “The way our beer’s been attracting repeat orders, people must be having a second. You know what they say: actions speak louder than words.”

Ends

So we have a sniff around the brewery – that Christmas ale might be a cracker – learn a bit more at the training centre and then, anything that turns you on, head across the road to the Tap.

£1.50 a pint? “There are no middle men,” says Christian. “I can’t understand it when so-called brewery taps are still charging £3 or more for a pint.”

There’s Rouge, White (“a double hopped fruity little number”) and Blonde, an IPA and something exotic called Naranja – “pumpkin infused using cinnamon, spices, ginger and nutmeg.”

As well as his brewer, Christian’s also keen to credit his bank – Lloyd’s. “It’s been hard work but I’ve been surprised at how well everything has started. It’s quirky, a fresh approach – a crowded market, but I really believe we can do it.”

Then he had to drink up. The Fat Brewer was off for his dinner.