What Cut Loose Means To Me, by John Magill
Mar 17, 2026
As we bid farewell to our dry-hopped pilsner, it’s only fitting to say a few words about what has been a cornerstone of our brewery since 2015.
To understand what this particular brew signifies requires some context. Back in 2006 I was living in Sydney, Australia when I decided I was going to start a brewery. I returned to the UK and spent the next seven years learning the art, learning the science and learning the business – often learning it the hard way. Then in 2014, I quit my last brewing job. That day I said I wouldn’t work for other people any more. That day, I started my revolution.
Devon beer at that point was still very much in the traditional space. There were a few tiny nanobrewers doing interesting things (Occasional Brewery, Moonchild – we remember you!), but there were no commercial breweries doing what we wanted to do, and we were going to have to make that space for ourselves.
The creative juices were flowing and, having always been a fan, I really wanted to bring a premium lager to the market. But that wasn’t where the market was at all at the time. At that point, only a handful of small breweries in the country were making lagers. Craft beer was ignoring lager entirely - It was all about DIPAs. Annoyingly, obsessively so.
But Cut Loose was a truly craft lager - a six-week process and a Motueka dry hop was unheard of. As far as I know it was a bit of a first. It was pure inspiration at the time. Equally it was total folly on my part – as a beer it was never going to make commercial sense in the long run. It was a passion project, it was the beer I had really always wanted to brew. Bone-dry but still flavourful. A sophisticated lager that would bring something entirely new to the style.
So Cut Loose was born. ‘Cutty’ to its friends. It was me in a glass. It was still early days but, in some ways, it was the culmination of the project. The fulfilling of the ambition. It was my heart on my sleeve.
Fast forward a couple of months and Cutty won World’s Best Lager at the Beer Awards. Soon after that it won at the South West Indy beer awards and then it went on to win Champion at the UK finals. Buyers for a couple of major national companies came to me. Heady days for a start-up brewery.
But then reality kicked in. Actually, Cutty didn’t sell well. At all. And we had no budget to try and make it happen. It carried on winning every award going. It was and still is a critical darling, but it never found a market. We had some great supporters who tried to push it (special shout out to the legendary Pig & Pallet), but it was too challenging to be a mass market lager and not hoppy enough for the first wave of craft beer enthusiasts. As a beer, it didn’t fit in a box. It fell between the cracks.
A few years later craft lager became the next big thing of course. When the plaudits were handed out to the new wave of ‘innovators’, Powderkeg and Cut Loose were never in the conversation. But that’s life. We know what we did.
Cut Loose has been a massive part of the story of Powderkeg and my life. It was the culmination of years of dreaming, years of striving. So it’s really hard to let it go. And I do so with a heavy heart. Of course It was brewed to my exact taste so, for me, among all the beers in all the world, Cutty is The One. But also it is a part of me. It was me sharing myself with the world. It meant and means so much to me, now and always.
So to Cutty’s die-hard followers - I salute you - You are true connoisseurs! I am sorry. I wish it had gone differently.
But! Absence makes the heart grow fonder. And there’s no way I’m going to choose to never drink it again, so we’ll bring it back once in a while. Fresh and fun again, when we have the time and when we’ve all had the chance to miss it. Until then, we do make other great beers you know?
