Obituary: Warren R.D. Quilliam 1959 – 2019

It was with deep sadness that the brewing community learnt of the passing of Warren Quilliam on the 6th May 2019. Warren was well known and respected in global brewing circles and will be missed by many friends around the world.

Warren was born in South Africa in 1959 and did his tertiary education at the University of the Witwatersrand where he was awarded a B.Sc. degree in microbiology and botany. He joined the South African Breweries (SAB) in January 1983 as a brewing trainee. After completing his training, he held a number of positions at SAB including quality manager at the Chamdor Brewery, Packaging and Brewing Manager at the Alrode Brewery both reporting to Albert Lubbe. At Alrode, he oversaw the significant expansion of the Brewery that was commissioned in 1994. He was also intimately involved with one of the Rosslyn brewery expansions as well as the design of the yeast handling system for the new {then} iBhayi brewery near Port Elizabeth.

In 1995, Warren moved to the companies’ central office as a Brewing Consultant working for Gordon Den. He became a senior Brewing Consultant in my group in 1998. He obtained a post-graduate diploma in malting and brewing science from Heriot-Watt University during this time having played a catalytic role in persuading Professor Graham Stewart to develop a distance learning M.Sc in Brewing and Distilling for SAB employees. This eventually became a world-wide course that has over 250 active students. During this period of time, Warren and I travelled together to many parts of the world as SAB started to expand internationally. Warren became a good friend and was passionate about beer and brewing. Foremost though, he was a family man who worshipped his wife, Barbara and his two daughters Megan and Adrienne.

He had a great sense of humour and was a prankster of note. He had learnt to mimic the voice of our managing director at the time and phoned many an unsuspecting colleague telling them to go and do something or other. At first, many people were fooled into believing it was the M.D. speaking but of course his reputation in mimicking spread, to the point where the M.D. actually said people were asking him if it was Warren on the line when he called!

One occasion, Warren and I were in Japan visiting colleagues from Suntory. Our host Dr. Kazuo Nakatani took us one evening to a whiskey bar (Suntory – of course) which we found doubled up as a Karaoke bar. Dr. Nakatani started proceedings with a beautiful rendition of a Japanese folk song that scored an impressive 98% on the adjudication machine. Warren and I finely found some songs in English and we settled on the Beatles song – Hey Jude. We were going along great at about 95% until Warren did the McCartney ad lib in the middle and I think we ended up with a record low of about 6%. After that, we stuck to the script!

Warren was also a founding member of the Shadow Parliament at SAB, a group of like-minded raconteurs that met regularly to drink at different pubs in the Johannesburg area. The group still meets to this day and Warren remained a Whatsapp honorary member.

In 2001, Warren and his family left for the USA where he joined Coors Brewing Company as Director of Corporate Brewing and Process Design reporting to Dennis Puffer. In 2005, he became V.P. of Brewing and Q.A. and in 2007 V.P. of Technical Services. I was also fortunate to still see Warren regularly when I visited the USA at either conferences or in Golden, Colorado. The passion for brewing never changed, nor did the humour. Many reading this article will have been involved in evenings filled with humorous stories and beer in different States all over the US – often in various Hooters bars.

Warren was instrumental in the development of technical brewing operations and quality systems design for the Shenandoah Brewery in Virginia and was responsible for the building of the new Malthouse on the Golden campus. He led brewing and malting for MillerCoors reporting to Dr. David Ryder. After the ABInBev take-over of SABMiller, Warren became the Senior Director of Global Brewing Governance for MolsonCoors building capabilities across the global brewing community.

Then in July 2017 we heard the news that Warren was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. This came as a shock to us all as up to then, Warren had not taken a days sick leave in 36 years. However, he was always so positive that this just seemed like a small inconvenience that he would soon overcome. He said that humour helped him with all his various treatments so jokes were exchanged on an even more frequent basis. Unfortunately, after a two year battle, the chemo took its toll and Warren passed away earlier this month surrounded by his family.

To say that Warren will be missed in the global brewing community is an understatement. He personified the modern brewer and was one of the most likeable guys I’ve had the pleasure to meet.

R.I.P