George Thompson

In late 2007 George joined Strangford Lough Brewing Company as Operations Director.  One of his first tasks was to review and improve SLBCs range of beers and to ensure they reflected the best traditions of Irish brewing.  George was also instrumental in developing the SLBC technical strategy for exporting immigrant beers – starting in Ireland and finishing in North America. To achieve a product with these attributes George has developed the vision of using locally grown barley which is then malted and brewed into a concentrate in County Down before it is exported and reconstituted close to the consumer. These beers have an authentic Irish pedigree but are as fresh as any locally produced North American products.

George is a respected international brewing professional whose previous experience includes supplying brewing equipment, training brewers and developing gold medal winning beers for brewing customers from the northern tip of Norway to the Campo de Gibraltar and from Sunny Beach, Bulgaria to Vancouver Island, Canada. As a brewer George has enjoyed success winning both BIIA and BBI beer competition gold medals. His brewery design and build activities has a long list of commercially successful customers producing world class quality beers.  He has worked on the design and build of over 50% of the micro breweries in Ireland.

George entered the brewing industry having studied engineering, industrial microbiology and brewing at university.  He has held a succession of important roles in Brewery Production Management culminating in the position of Production Manager of Belhaven Brewery plc in 1987.  From 1992 to1997 George was employed as a brewing consultant by Savilles Clarification where he supplied brewing advice to brewers in the UK and Spain. In 1997 George joined with micro brewing guru Brendan Dobbin to create George Thompson & Dobbin Ltd – an international design and build micro-brewery business offering turnkey brewing solutions.

George has also developed a small scale on farm malting systems, a small-scale whisky distilling design and a post-mix alco-pops system as diversification developments which compliment his brewing equipment design business.