Become a beer tour guide
Freelance guiding work in Bristol and across the UK Brewery Tours network — for people who know beer and can hold a room for four hours.
Get paid to talk about beer for a living. Partly.
Across the UK Brewery Tours network our guides include Cicerone-certified beer sommeliers, IBD-qualified brewers, beer writers, bloggers and World Beer Awards judges. Most of them guide alongside something else — brewing, writing, acting, studying, running their own tours — as one strand of a portfolio career.
That's the honest shape of this work: it's freelance, it's tour by tour, and it won't replace a salary. What it will do is pay you to spend an afternoon sharing something you already know a great deal about, with people who chose to be there.
We're recruiting for Bristol, and for cities across the UK and Europe.
What you'd actually be doing
You'd be engaged as a freelance guide — self-employed or through your own limited company — working tour by tour, responsible for delivering the experience to our guests.
You're hired to entertain and inform: to give a group a well-rounded afternoon out of your own knowledge, in your own style. We don't hand you a script and we don't stand over your shoulder. You'll be free from supervision and expected to be ready to go from day one.
Practically, that means meeting the group, running the route, working with venue staff at each stop, keeping to time, keeping people safe, and making sure everyone — the beer nerd and the person dragged along by their partner — leaves having enjoyed themselves.
You might already be
- A professional or home brewer
- Someone who's worked in pubs or bars with a serious beer range
- A beer writer, blogger, judge or sommelier
- A tour guide with a genuine love of beer
- A properly knowledgeable enthusiast — the qualification matters less than the knowledge
You'll need to be
- Reliable on time — you cannot be late for a tour
- Comfortable speaking to a group so everyone can hear you
- Good with all sorts, from civilised stag groups to corporate away days
- Still learning — beer moves, and so should your knowledge
- Easy to work with for brewery and bar staff
- Polite, friendly and genuinely inclusive
- Able to think on your feet when a plan falls over
- Focused on keeping guests safe throughout
Cities we cover
London, Bristol, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham and Liverpool, plus private group tours in plenty of other cities on request.
We're accepting applications for all UK cities, and for Europe and North America. New tours launch regularly, and existing tours frequently need extra guides to cover.
How it works from here
Fill in the form and we'll be in touch if your application looks like a fit. The usual next step is getting you out on one of our existing tours as a guest, so you can see how we run things before you run one yourself.
One thing to be upfront about: we can't respond to every application. If you don't hear back from us, we're sorry — and genuinely, good luck with it.
Guide application
Tell us about your beer background and where you're based.
Not applying — just want to come on a tour?
Fair enough. It's a good way to find out whether the job would suit you anyway.