As you might imagine in a house with 11 children, mealtimes at the McAvoy’s on Derby Road in Salford were a hectic affair. At breakfast, cereal came from comically oversized boxes of Cornflakes from the cash and carry, and you’d need two people to lift the catering-size ketchup bottles.
Their dad Eric, a multi-skilled, self-employed builder, worked tirelessly on extending their four-bedroom end terrace upwards, outwards, any way possible to fit them all in, and at various points during childhood the seven brothers and four sisters would be stacked up on top of each other in bunk beds.
Mum Freda, who later somehow also managed to run a DIY shop and grocery business too, simply ‘wanted a big family’. As well as the 11 children she had herself, she now has 29 grandchildren.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, Eric could often be found hiding away in the basement, brewing his own beer, and even the occasional foray into wine. The smells of yeast, hops and malt would on occasion entice the children into his subterranean refuge, as would the sound of ‘the odd explosion’ from over-fermented bottles popping and fizzing, leaving the walls and ceilings soaked with beer.
These experiences, and those dark bitters made from homebrew kits bought at the chemist, were clearly formative ones. When Keith McAvoy, an engineer by trade, spent some time living in Oslo in the late aughts, those formative experiences were rekindled by the nascent craft beer revolution going on there.
“I was blown away by the scene over there,” he says. “I’d seen nothing like it, definitely not in Manchester. The main craft brewer at the time [in the UK] was Brewdog. Brewdog were an inspiration, Marble were an inspiration, so were [London’s] Meantime. We were looking at what Camden were doing too. A brew pub was the initial idea, with all the brewing equipment in the bar, up there front and centre.” Let’s say they rather exceeded those early modest plans.
Back then in Manchester, there were the heritage brewers – the Holts, the Lees, the Hydes, the Robinsons – and a few other shoestring operations, including Seven Brothers and Cloudwater, who opened about a month before the Salford lads did, across town on the trading estates of Piccadilly. They formed the beginnings of a new community of indie Manchester brewers with not much else but some begged-and-borrowed brewing gear and some fancy looking cans.
Once Keith was back in the UK, it didn’t take much for him to persuade the family to get involved in his plans for a brew pub. Each of the brothers brought different skills to bear, from engineering to chemistry. Kit, who was a secondary school science teacher, was the first head brewer, having been probably the most intrigued of all the brothers by their dad’s basement experiments.
“I’d help him,” Kit says. “Lifting the buckets up and down the stairs. The process from doing that to doing this is exactly the same. It’s four ingredients.”
Kit and Nathan, the former England-capped rugby league player for Salford, Wigan and Leeds, were the first to take the leap and start working full-time for the newly minted Seven Bro7hers (what else would they call it?)
Gradually, they all got involved; Guy, the eldest, as estate manager, Luke creating the IT systems, Dan head of warehouse and operations, and Greg, the youngest, as the brewer.
These days, four of the brothers work full time, along with two of their sisters, while the larger business is run as a cooperative with all of them having a say. From those early runs of IPAs, their first bar – on Ancoats’ then emerging Cutting Room Square – opened in 2015, when there was only Rudy’s pizza and, well, nothing much else.
Three years ago, the sisters, Kerry, Hayley, Kate and Lucy, decided that it was time to start their own project – the Four Sisters distillery, making spirits from gin and vodka to spiced rum. “They saw us and thought ‘we can do that,’” says Kit. “And probably do it better.”
“We have further ambition. We want to make brandies. We want to embark on a whiskey programme,” says Keith. “Big plans.”
They’ve weathered the joint catastrophes of Brexit and Covid, but as a family have grown the business organically. You can buy their beers nationwide thanks to the Co-op and Aldi – the latter under their Hop Foundry brand – and now hundreds of thousands of travellers through Manchester Airport can get a pint of Seven Brothers at their own bar in Terminal 2.
The Co-op Live arena also chose them as their craft supplier, and there’s other bars at Middlewood Locks in Salford, opposite Aviva Studios, and Square Chapel in Halifax.
Last year, they went a step further, opening 11 Central, a bar, kitchen, tasting room, music venue, cocktail spot – another shopfront for their pretty exceptional achievements. With all those vital skills learned from their dad Eric – he sadly passed away five years ago – they’ve fitted out all these venues themselves.
From the early days of trying to work out how to scale up production, they now brew twice a day, every day, for everything from the supermarkets to the bars. Kit does the sums quickly on his phone. “It’s about 15,000 pints a week that we can bang out,” he says. “We’ve maybe produced about seven million litres in all.”
As one of the elder statesmen of the city’s craft brewing scene, they’ve seen it all grow up around them. Track, Sureshot, Squawk, Blackjack, Shindigger, First Chop, Manchester Union. Pomona Island next door took on their unit and bought the first Seven Brothers brewing kit of them when the McAvoys moved to their bigger premises 50 metres away.
“It’s a family too,” says Kit. “It’s super collaborative. There’s not a single brewery who has not offered help or support. In the beginning, if you wanted to borrow some yeast, or chat to the Pomona guys and get some advice about barrel aging beers, everyone’s always been there.”
“It’s been eventful,” says Keith about the journey so far, perhaps understating it. “Every business has its ups and downs. You throw family into it, and it adds another level of complexity. But working with your family has huge advantages too. Once we’re all pulling or pushing in the same direction, it’s a really powerful thing.”
Across a steel beam on the brewery floor is the message ‘Family is the heart of everything that we do’. From that initial nucleus of 11, there are now more than 90 people working across the Seven Brothers and Four Sisters businesses. But then, Freda McAvoy always said she wanted a big family.
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