Peter started life in the explosives business and nearly finished it too, on several occasions. .

This tendency engendered in him a taste for a steadying beer.
A love of pubs drove him to write, and The English Pub: A History, now republished as An Inebriated History of Britain is still the definitive work on the evolution of drinking and drinking places in the UK.

This writing experience brought him into contact with Alastair at The Grist - the microbrewers' journal. Peter followed Alastair into the editor's chair, from whence he became General Secretary of the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA).

In that post Peter's main role was to lobby the government for a change in the UK beer duty regime. In this he was successful and in 2002 the law changed allowing smaller brewers to pay less duty than bigger ones.

Job done Peter left SIBA, and, raiding his piggy bank decided, the time was right to put his life savings into the Meantime Brewery.