13 Steps to Perfection

For every beer we make, there’s a lengthy period beforehand spent getting the recipe and brewing process just right. We taste, smell, prod and pore over every aspect of the beer’s creation. Finally, after making test batch aftertest batch, and we know the beer inside and out, it’s ready for production.

1

We take fresh filtered water and carefully adjust its mineral content to suit each individual beer style.

2

This is heated up to the correct temperature in our Hot Liquor Tank. (It’s as impressive as it sounds.)

3

Each recipe requires a carefully selected blend of malts in order to achieve the desired colour, flavour, aroma and body.

4

We mix our grain and water by hand in the mash tun. Then we stir it, until we achieve the correct consistency and all-important strike temperature. This is definitely our favourite part of the process, because of the wonderful smells and the sight of a sweet porridge mash in the morning. It’s hands-on, and requires an eye for perfection.

5

The mash is left whilst the starches are converted to sugars by the enzymatic conversion process. It’s the sugars that will later turn to alcohol. Each recipe produces a unique ‘wort’ of liquid, with its own particular level of sugars - and that gives an individual ABV for each beer.

6

When conversion is complete, we re-circulate the wort to create an efficient grain filter bed. This filters and clears the wort of sediment, ready for what brewers call ‘sparging’.

7

Sparging heats water to a desired temperature, then gently rinses it through the grain bed - washing the sweet, sugary wort out of the grains and into a boil kettle. We’re now half-way through the steps in the brewing process.

8

When the correct amount of sweet wort has been collected in the boil kettle, we then bring it all to a vigorous rolling boil.

9

Depending on the beer style, we then add a complex blend of fine choicest hops and fruit, to create the wonderful taste and aroma that our beers are famous for. The hops give our beers their own distinct balance of sweetness and bitterness, whilst enhancing the character.Each addition of hops fills the brewery with a heady mix of complex aromas, ranging from spice to fruit, floral to citrus.

10

Once the boil is complete, we transfer the wort through a bed of finishing hops. This fine-tunes the beer’s character. Then the wort goes to one of our fermenters via a wort chiller, which brings the wort down to the correct temperature for ‘pitching’ our yeast. (Or in layman’s terms, adding the yeast to the fermenter.)

11

We select a yeast for each of our beers that match the ingredients, to complete the flavour and body profile. It’s details like this that really bring out the character of our beers.

12

The yeast is pitched into the wort in the fermenter, and fermentation starts to take place. During fermentation, the yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. We carefully control the temperature during this phase, to provide the perfect taste and quality.

13

When fermentation is complete and the beer is conditioned, it is then transferred into casks, kegs or bottles.

Then you drink it. Think of us, and enjoy.