‘We want to create a rallying cry’: Beavertown Brewery’s frontman on reopening after coronavirus

Logan Plant speaks to Andy Martin about swapping Black Country psychedelic rock for craft beer, social distancing poetry and his ‘love affair’ with pubs

Plant began homebrewing in 2010 after a craft beer ‘epiphany’ (Beavertown)

Logan Plant hit the road with a rock star career in mind, following in the footsteps of his father, Robert Plant, formerly frontman of Led Zeppelin. But he found more takers for his beer than his music. So he quit the Black Country Bandits in favour of Beavertown. “Creating a new beer is like writing a song. You start with a blank sheet of paper and a dream. I guess I became the front man for a brewery.”

There is a long tradition of pub-going in his family. His great grandad had a fatal heart attack down the pub, pint in hand. “It was the Dudley Port Tavern. He loved his beer and that was his local, so I reckon he died while enjoying one of his favourite pastimes.” Logan Plant was born in Bromsgrove and brought up in Stourbridge. “The West Midlands has so many good pubs. It’s the land of the pub,” he says. “At the end of the day we’d all go down the pub to laugh or cry. You live and die in the pub.”

He harks back fondly to Bathams Brewery in the Black Country. Having consumed a fair bit of their product, at the age of 20 he had a vision that one day he would open a brewery. But he was a keen footballer, got distracted by sports science at university, and is still a “massive fan” of Wolverhampton Wanderers. After graduating he set out with his best friend James and a guitar to go busking around New Zealand. Over the next eight years their brand of psychedelic rock took them right around the world. “We never signed with a label,” says Plant, “but it solidified my love affair with beer”.