A bubbly personality

Beer brewer Stephen Plowman says he has long had a passion for the amber liquid.

"When ever I have been in one place for more than six months I would always do a bit of brewing. At one point before I went overseas I had a bit of a hairdressing set up. "The lads would come over for a trim and got to drink homebrew while the clippers came out. You could have it short or really short."

It was this zeal that saw him take a range of brewing courses by correspondence. This soon led to a postgraduate Diploma in Microbrewery Management, fondly renamed 'beer school' by Plowman, and a brewing qualification from the Institute of Brewing and Distilling in London.

While he was studying he worked for free at a local Perth microbrewery and also managed to get a day's work experience at most of the breweries in and around Perth.

"The only way to get work in a brewery with limited experience is to work for free and I did plenty of that," he said.

"Although I was busy, It never seemed like hard work. It never seemed like I was doing something that may not work out. Changing careers seemed to be the most logical thing in the world. I am having a good time and that's important."