An Irish man left “in pretty bad shape” after contracting a parasite from dirty water in Nepal is helping to save lives around the world with the profit from his eco-brewery.
Alan Mahon founded Brewgooder in 2016 with business partner James Hughes.
Clean water, the environment and social justice are at the heart of the company, which he says has helped around 100,000 people through 140 projects worldwide, providing clean water and food to those in need.
And the £2 million B Corp-rated brewery has been such a success, the 32-year-old now dreams of opening his own Brewgooder bar at home.
He said: “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 and had a fairly common parasite, something that was easy to get rid of with a course of antibiotics.
“That same illness could have taken somebody before their fifth birthday.
“From that point of view I knew I wanted to get into water - 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.
“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 he worked for at Scotland’s ‘Social Bite’ cafes which “helped homeless people to access food”.
“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 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 £2 million business now.
“We work in a super environmentally friendly way... we don’t work in one brewery. We work in four.
“There’s spare capacity in other breweries so we don’t have to constantly build new equipment and the carbon footprint keeps increasing.”
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.
“In the past six years.. we have invested £100,000 into different projects at home and abroad.
“There’s water internationally and foodbank access in the UK... all the way through to environmental projects. It’s something we have done from day one.”
Alan added: “We are becoming quite a decent player within the craft beer space.
“A personal highlight of mine would be to open a bar in Belfast. It would be an awesome thing to get to that stage in life.”
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