We're a small independent beverage dispense business, specialising in modern beer dispense, but with experience in most dispense equipment used in the UK. Cellar Squid began life as a function of the business Jolly Good Beer, which was acquired by Drink Fresh Ltd in 2023 but sadly was wound up in Augut 2024. Yvan, the founder of Jolly Good Beer, trained as a dispense technician during the whole Jolly Good Beer journey as it turned out modern independent keg beer needed a level of technical support that was missig in the industry. Then beyond assisting wholesale customers with install work and troubleshooting we ended up doing complete installs for bars and breweries such as Cloudwater and DEYA.

Yvan learnt about dispense initially as a result of doing the CAMRA festival organiser training, obviously in that case with a focus on cask. But Yvan was also key to pushing modern keg beer as an option for CAMRA festivals and supported festivals in the East Anglia region, to this end he built and supplied keg dispense equipment to festivals. When Jolly Good Beer was founded Yvan did additional training in the form of the BIIAB Level 2 Award in Beer and Cellar Quality (Cask and Keg) (ABCQ) and IBD Beer Academy "Advanced Course" (discontinued) to ensure he had sound understanding of beer and cellar quality good practice. In addition to these he completed the Certified Beer Server exam and got his personal license (ALPH) to broaden his understanding of beer and licensing. Finally as the need to do more complete cellar installation work increased Yvan completed the BIIAB Level 2 Certificate in Cellar Service Installation and Maintenance (NCCSIM) to ensure we had all elements of dispense and gas safety covered.

As such across his 10 years in the beer industry Yvan as a unique combination of beer wholesale, quality, and dispense knowledge — combined with experience running licensed events and beer festivals, as well pub licensing and management. Cellar Squid is about far more than just your beer lines and can offer you a full consultancy service in launching a bar or event if need be.

Yvan and Kat also happen to be computer scientists and software engineers — so we're here for your tech needs as well. We can assist with software integrations, website development and hosting, and would love to assist with any IoT and control systems projects you may have in mind.

We should talk about the squid in the room…

The squid is Colin, he's a collossal squid from New Zealand who we met at Te Papa museum in Wellington. Colin ended up catching a ride to the UK with us and since 2011 has been a feature of the UK "craft beer" scene throughout its development to the present day. Colin is often seen at craft beer events across the county and is always up for adding a new badge to his collection. Colin's favourite hop is Riwaka. When we span-out the beer dispense business from the remains of Jolly Good Beer we decided it was time to promote Colin to a role as an official mascot. Colin is the Cellar Squid — and he has opinions about your dispense system.