How we make our core beers
For this slightly belated update, we’d like to give you a sneak peak behind the scenes at how we developed the recipes for our core beers - something we hope many of you will by now have tasted! All of our recipes have been through multiple iterations on a small scale, tasting and refining multiple times - it really is the best part of the job.
For every brew we start with a target body, flavour and aroma in mind. From here we then spend time tweaking malt ratios, mash temperatures, hop timing and amounts and finally, the yeast varieties to hit the sweet spot (in our opinion!). Once the beers were exactly where we wanted, we scaled them up to our 1000L system on which they’ll continue to evolve.
So which of these various different ingredients have we settled on in each of our beers?
Beer starts with malt, and from the off we wanted to use organic British malt in line with our ethos for brewing responsibly. Warminster Maltings fitted the bill by providing the range and quality of organic malt we were after, as well being relatively local, operating from the west of England, reducing transport miles as much as possible.
On top of British malts we also wanted to create a lager with British hops and yeast. Showcasing a range of local ingredients and to highlight the fantastic flavours to be found in some of these often overlooked varieties. We kept the malt bill simple, using organic lager malt along with a dash of Caramalt to add some depth to the body. Our desire to utilise British hops led to some interesting trials, before we settled on Challenger for bittering and Archer for flavour and aroma, although Olicana also deserves an honourable mention. This combination offers a lightly floral and refreshing finish. For the yeast we settled on Fermentis, which brings the typical ‘lager’ taste into the mix to draw everything together.
When planning the perfect pale ale, refreshing, citrusy and sessionable led the way. Munich malt, wheat malt and oats all build on the base of pale malt to get the desired body from which the hops can shine. Our original desire was to use British hops in this beer, and although we had some early successes, which we will certainly revisit and build upon in the future, we weren’t quite achieving the aroma we desired. So, we cast the net a little wider and turned to some fantastic American hops, with Cashmere and Azacca laying a tropical foundation on which Citra adds the final flourish.
Finally, our IPA recipe goes all the way back to 2016, and to one of our first brew sessions together in a back garden in London. It was a great success then, and only a couple of tweaks have been made, based on experience in brewing and drinking over the intervening years! Pale malt again forms the base, with Vienna malt and Caramalt bringing some colour and extra flavour to balance the hops. Chinook is used in the boil to lay the foundation of bitterness, with decent additions of Simcoe, Amarillo and Mosaic (something of a holy trinity of hops) in the whirlpool and dry hop. Lastly, both the pale ale and IPA use Lallemand Nottingham ale yeast for a clean and vigorous ferment.
So, those are our core beers.
They will continue to evolve batch to batch as we strive to refine them further as we learn and grow as a brewery. We hope you enjoyed reading a bit more about what goes into them, and, more importantly, enjoy drinking them!