A Belfast man left "in pretty bad shape" after contracting a parasite from dirty water in Nepal is now helping save lives around the world with the profit from his eco-brewery.
Alan Mahon started Brewgooder in Scotland with business partner James Hughes in 2016.
Water, the environment and social justice are at the heart of company, which he says has helped around 100,000 people through 140 projects worldwide, providing clean water and food to those in need.
Read more: Drinking water in NI not complying with lead, E.coli and pesticide standards
And the £2million B Corp-rated brewery has been such a success, the 32-year-old now dreams of one day opening his own Brewgooder bar at home.
Originally from the west of the city, Alan’s family moved to Ballycastle when he was 11. He then left NI to study in Glasgow as it “had all the bands he wanted to see” before a volunteering job abroad left him in no doubt about the importance of clean water.
His said: “I decided I wanted to do some volunteer work abroad so I ended up working in Nepal and got sick with a parasite. I stopped work and by the end of the term I was in pretty bad shape.
“I came home and took some tests to see what was wrong with me and had a fairly common parasite, something that was easy to get rid of with a course of antibiotics.
“From that point of view I knew I wanted to get into water - I wanted to get into helping people. We take water for granted with the rain we get but I never had to imagine my life without taps, both hot and cold.
“If you imagine communities that don’t have access to this water, then ultimately they can’t have access to the education, healthcare, the ambition, the desire to have a better life. That extends into my interest, having been sparked by water.
“There are other things that prevent people from having great lives as well - increasingly the access to food in the UK. I love the fact you can work on a project selling great beer and have that impact on people’s lives.”
Alan says his mother Elizabeth’s drive to help others was an inspiration alongside his university mate’s big brother, who started Scotland’s 'Social Bite' cafes which “helped homeless people to access food”.
After being rejected from a series of jobs in the charity sector, Alan started working for him.
“Eventually we ended up building bridges for helping homeless and vulnerable people to get back on their feet,” he explained. “We did some amazing things... we organised street events.
“It was part of the process. I went from poor student to poor graduate and I loved the notion of craft beer. I thought it would be amazing if we combined that with the passion I had in the area of water.
“I started brewing back in 2016 in Scotland and we’ve gone on quite a cool journey. We are ultimately just shy of a £2million business now selling beer all across the UK.
“In the past six years we have funded over 140 different projects in different parts of the world that’s probably helped over 100,000 people. We are becoming quite a decent player within the craft beer space,” he added.
“We make awesome beer here in Scotland, selling to the UK and we are looking to make steps into Northern Ireland because of its vibrant hospitality culture.
“We are looking forward to pushing into Northern Ireland and seeing Brewgooder drunk in the bars I go to.”
But for Alan “it’s all about people”.
He said: “I don’t think I would do it if it didn’t have that human purpose.
“Whenever I think about when I got sick, it wasn’t bad, but that same illness could have potentially taken somebody before their fifth birthday. I’ve done nothing to deserve better luck than they would have had and that notion of trying to be a business that tries to help people.
“If that didn’t exist there would be no Brewgooder and I certainly wouldn’t be selling beer.
“We have invested £100,000 into different projects at home and abroad. There’s water internationally and foodbank access in the UK and other stuff around inclusion... all the way through to doing environmental projects to try and help. It’s something we have done from day one.”
B Corporation recognises firms that work in a way that’s good for the world and Brewgooder has been a B Corp company since 2018, rated ‘best for the world’ because of its community values.
With the worldwide accolade already under his belt, Alan says “a personal highlight of mine would be to open a bar in Belfast”.
He added: “I would love to open a bar back home. It would be an awesome thing to get to that stage in life.”
But it will still be focused on the social justice and environmental values on which Brewgooder was built.
“We work in a super environmentally friendly way... we don’t work in one brewery. We work in four,” he explained.
“There’s spare capacity in other breweries so we don’t have to constantly build new equipment and the carbon footprint keeps increasing.
“We work with three breweries in Scotland and then in Kent as well for the English market. It’s something that we are very proud of as it’s as environmentally friendly as possible.”
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