Lovatt agrees, who believes that collaborations are often an exercise in marketing, whereby one party is “standing on the shoulder of giants”.

“For us it is a discussion and a relationship. Look at our barrel ageing setup, it’s something we want to grow. We want to grow that and do it the right way. Too many people are doing it cynically and doing it to sell their beer for more money, the beer needs to be better than when it went in but so many actually taste worse,” he says.

“It is labour intensive and should be that way. Too many are not doing that, and of course, storage is important too. It is justified that you charge more but many others are doing that and the product is far from special and can frankly taste awful, woody and sour, which is not good at all.”

Though Lovatt is a man of few words in public, his brewing career, the beers he has helped create, brew, and develop have reached drinkers far and wide. Starting his career at London’s Meantime back in 2001, Lovatt found himself brewing predominantly Germanic beers, popular with the company’s founder Alastair Hook.

“But the conversations we had early on were that people were ready for big US beers. At first I thought maybe that some of those flavours from the States were maybe a bit too much, too over the top, but I found myself wanting more.”

Lovatt played an important role in the creation of some of Meantime’s core beers, though he be loathed to take credit, such is his humble nature. But his career eventually saw him commissioned by the Camden Town team to put together their brewery, a project that has elevated that particular concern to a near £100m business in a few years.

However, like many others, he found that London life was no longer for him, and when the Thornbridge opportunity came calling, it was hard to turn down.

“I had a relationship with Thornbridge and respected them. I knew they were well capitalised and so I moved there five years ago. I went back to basics, reviewed brew dates, ingredients, the tea and the setup. You have to be thorough and as a result, you can’t always be everyone’s friend. But we want to do things properly here, that’s what we are respected for,” he says.