PROMINENT at the Derby Winter Beer Festival was the foyer bar featuring the Blue Monkey Brewery.

It is a measure of how far this Ilkeston microbrewery has come in a short space of time.

Brewer John Hickling gave up his job with a bank to do something different in September 2008 – it wasn't a bad time to get out of banking, actually – and life has been a rollercoaster ever since.

Today, apart from appearing at most East Midlands beer festivals, Blue Monkey beers are to be found pretty regularly in more than 100 pubs around Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

John is getting busier still. New, bigger premises than his starter unit at the Manners Industrial Estate were always a likely next step and he is now fitting out a unit four times as big, near Ikea at Giltbrook. It is an ideal location in that both Derby and Nottingham drinkers see the beers as "local."

Blue Monkey will move there in April and John says: "I want it to be a showpiece. We'll do bottling there and brewery tours and of course we'll have a higher capacity."

As he moves the permanent staff up to three shortly, John also likes the idea that, a little further down the line, he might be able to employ as few more people not very far from where the historic Hardys & Hansons brewery at Kimberley was closed down a couple of years ago.

If there is a secret to Blue Monkey's success, apart from the obvious hard work, it is that John does not brew an enormous number of different beers.

His Original is an exceptionally tasty 3.6% bitter which remains his main product but there are still only three core beers, the others being BG Sips, a gold, very hoppy beer at 4.0%, and Evolution, a fruity 4.3% pale ale.

"Coming up with new beers is the exciting part of the job for a brewer but you have to have some self-control," says John.

"Rather than launch with a massive range I started with one, made sure I got it right and then brewed a second and then a third."

Blue Monkey is a company heading in the right direction. Have a look at the website www.blue monkeybrewery.com for interesting facts about its name and stuff you may not know about hops.