About us

As flatmates in Hamburg, Thomas and Chris found themselves without much to do one summer and thought they'd try their hand at brewing a beer for them and their friends. That beer wasn't terrible, and soon multiple beers were being produced and tasted by rounds of friends at home 'beer tastings.

Like all great start-up stories, a garage gets involved in some way. Brewing began on a 100L kettle and 200L Fermentation Tank in a rented garage in west Hamburg, and work began in earnest on the first recipes and business plan for The Baby Goat. Thomas and Chris were at this stage working full-time jobs, brewing most evenings and weekends, and studying a Masters in brewing and distilling on the side. Surprisingly they were single.

In 2019 the first two ‘large-scale' recipes were ready and the Woolly-Headed Weizen and Looking Goat IPAs were brewed on a 10 HL system at our first partner brewery in Enschede, Netherlands. Brewing days started at 4am to make the drive to Holland, brew and return happy to Hamburg by 10pm. In celebration of our first scaled beers, we hosted 2 Pop-Up events with our friend Dirk at his Art gallery in the Bismarkstraße, Hamburg. Those events gave the first taste of hosting guests, and inspiration for the real launch of the company.

Through the lockdown phase of the Pandemic, the guys ran a home-delivery service via a WhatsApp order system. Then, in April 2020, they signed the lease on a small gastronomic space in Grindel, which would open in August 2020 as The Baby Goat House.

The pub was built by friends and staffed solely by Thomas, Chris and a handful of volunteers & minijobbers. Great times. A pub requires more than 2 beers, and so a further 5 styles were quickly added to make up the Core Range of beers. Those beers survive as our best runners to-date.

Another lockdown turned the pub into a bottle shop for a short amount of time before in May 2021 the world sprung back into action with a bang, and planning for the second Baby Goat Pub began. After a summer of Sport, Fun and events (and a release of our first anniversary beer), we signed the rental contract for location 2 in Dec 2021, ready to start properly in 2022.

The Baby Goat Barn opened in May 2022, and along with it came another injection of new beers to the menu. Our yearly production settled to 6 core, consistent beers and 10 seasonals across the year.

In line with Pub 2, a Crowdfund was launched to fund the major structural work in the location and engage an existing, loyal tribe of GOATs. We gathered 150 funders who collectively invested over €150.000 in the business in exchange for equity. That Tribe remains so valuable to us, and alongside our shareholders, the tribe as a community grew to 1.500 active members.

A year of learning and growing, spending all time and energy honing our craft of brewing and gastronomy, whilst taking every opportunity to spread the GOAT word around Hamburg. Be it Festivals, Private parties, Pop-Up stands or Sponsorship, we made a commitment to being everywhere we could, and continued to build a network of valued customers and friends around the city.

In September 2023 talks began with our soon-to-be landlords at the new Westfield Überseequartier, where the third Baby Goat location will open in April 2024.