University friends combine studying with brewing exceptional beer

It was the original aim of Tom Hebden and Sam Hipwell to make beer that their friends at university would like.

Since then, however, Masquerade has grown to have its own premises, its beer poured at pubs across the city, collaborations with fellow Bristol breweries in the pipeline and several new recipes in development.

Sam has just come to the end of his third and final year of an English Literature degree at the University of Bristol, while Tom is midway through a medicine degree.

The pair, who met as first years at Hiatt Baker hall in Stoke Bishop and currently live in a shared house in Clifton, had to put their fledgling brewing career on hold while taking end of year exams.

But when Bristol24/7 visited their Fishponds brewery on a recent Friday afternoon they were busy cleaning their equipment ready for ramping up production.

Tom has been a home brew enthusiast for some years while Sam’s speciality is in design: all of the Masquerade pump clips feature characters representing each beer which have so far been Virtuoso (a session IPA), Touchstone (a tropical IPA with pineapple and white peach) and Soma (a chocolate and raspberry milk stout).

These first three beers have been on tap at the Bag of Nails in Hotwells, Brewdog on Baldwin Street, the Tobacco Factory bar on North Street and Wild Beer in Wapping Wharf, with more kegs due to be delivered this weekend to the Bag of Nails and Wild Beer.

“We just wanted to give it a go,” said Sam, 22, speaking in their small brewery premises in an industrial estate on Clay Hill close to Rajani’s supermarket which was most recently a sauna.

“We’re passionate about creating a product that we can be really proud of, and massively inspired by Breaking Bad if I’m honest!

“We wanted to give a lot of our lager-drinking friends the chance to drink something good.”

It is Tom and Sam’s ambition to brew juicy and hoppy beers, with a large container of mango puree recently imported from India ready to be used as an ingredient in a future beer.

Other future plans are to put their beers into cans and bottles, move to larger premises, and possibly make a career out of Masquerade which has already had Bristol’s beer fans hunting down their brews so far.

These initial batches made on their gleaming SS Brew Tech kit from California have seen Tom and Sam work long into the night while combining it with their university studies, but what Tom describes as an “intense” schedule has recently led to their first repeat order from Wild Beer.

“That was a massive sense of relief as well to see that what we were doing was working,” said 21-year-old Tom. “And it makes us want to come back and brew more.”

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