When it comes to brewing, what excites you? The beautiful thing about beer is that we all come at it from different directions, with different passions, different opinions.

And for Red Kellie, she loves making a wealth of different beers that end up in cask, keg, bottle and can. But it’s working with wild and foraged ingredients where her and team really come into their own.

Red is joint owner and head brewer of the First & Last Brewery. Founded with husband Sam, First & Last is a family-run brewery, taproom and event space situated in rural Northumberland.

The brewery doubles as a community space used for everything from art workshops to gigs and literature events. They brew a wide range of styles from hazy IPAs, through to sours, wheat beers, stouts and Belgian beers.

At their core, they enjoy brewing well-balanced beers that you want to have another sip of. They also create those using locally sourced & foraged ingredients to produce seasonal specialty beers that offer a true taste of Northumberland.

After helping to establish Stu Brew at Newcastle University, Europe’s first student run brewery, and then Twice Brewed Brewery, Red set up the First & Last Brewery in 2016. 

Here, her driving passion is for pairing wild ingredients from the local hedgerows and forests with beer styles, so that their qualities complement and accentuate each other.

Experimentation and innovation of working with fresh, hand-picked ingredients such as gorseflowers, sprucetips, bullaces and wild raspberries also give her the perfect excuse to be outside soaking up the beautiful local landscape.

And in 2026, the team mark 10 years since the brewery was incorporated. In this episode, we speak to Red about her storied journey in beer which would eventually lead to opening a brewery to call her own.

We discuss the impact Stu Brew continues to have on the wider UK brewing industry, the love of fermentation she shares with husband and co-founder Sam, and why in a crowded beverage landscape she feels that wild and foraged beers are simply special.

Photo Credit: First & Last Brewery