FERMENTwww.beer52.com / Issue #1 / £4

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENTS

OUR REVIEW OF THE MOST PIONEERING AND EXPERIMENTAL MICROBREWERIES NORTH OF THE BORDER

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EXPERIMENTS IN THE GLOBAL CRAFT ALCOHOL MOVEMENT

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SCOTTISHINDEPENDENTS

I LOVE CRAFT BEER

A MIDDLE FINGER TO THE MAN

COMING UP NEXT:SUMMER

THE TINY BUT PASSIONATE BREWERIES NORTH OF THE BORDER EXPORTING THEIR SMALL BATCH BEERS AROUND THE WORLD

This month’s box of Beer52 is all about Scottish craft beer and gourmet food. We’re profilling some of the hippest brewers in one of the world’s leading micro-brewing states. We explore the virtues of the ‘picnic day’ and

how craft beer can help us enjoy the occasional days of sunshine that bless our year.

A non-descript industrial shed on the outskirts of Edinburgh is home to the duo behind Top Out, makers of beers that are pushing the envelope in terms of flavour.

With sunshine finally upon us, our partners have started brewing a great selection of beers to enjoy on a hot day.

Editor: Fraser DohertyPhotography: Kiva BrynaaBeer Taster: Chris Miller

We catch up with one of the tiniest breweries we’ve ever featured in a Beer52 box. St Andrew’s Brewing has been flat out brewing bottles for us all to try..

THE STORY OF ONE MAN, A MOTORBIKE AND A DREAM TO BRING CRAFT BEER TO THE LIPS OF MILLIONS

DRINKING IN STYLE MEET THE BREWER:TOP OUT BREWERY

MEET THE BREWER: ST ANDREW’S BREWING

WE SAY: TELL TESCO WHERE THEY CAN STICK THERE BOGOFS AND LEAVE WETHERSPOONS FOR THE DESTITUTE

WE GIVE YOU A TASTE OF WHAT’S COMING IN OUR NEXT BOX. A TASTE OF SUMMER.

CREDITS

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FERMENT MAGAZINE

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I LOVECRAFTBEER

WE TASTE BEER (FOR A JOB)

FRASER DOHERTY CHRIS MILLER ANDREW BREDON

A WORD FROM OUR FOUNDER

I’m really exited to be holding the first issue of Ferment in my hands.

What started for me as a craft beer road trip around the UK on the back of my Dad’s Harley Davidson a little over a year ago has grown into an already life-changing experience.

After traveling around the UK with my Dad, I discovered that I wanted to make a living out of something I love: craft beer.

And, it turns out I’m not the only one with a passion for small batch, independently produced brews.

Armed with little more than an idea to start a craft beer club, I got in touch with Fraser Doherty, one of the UK’s leading food and drink entrepreneurs and founder of 100% fruit jam company, SuperJam.

With Fraser’s help, I began work on creating the Beer52 brand and website and also met with some of my favourite breweries.

It was important for me when I started Beer52 that I had the full support of the breweries - I wanted to create a business

that not only delivered a great monthly experience to its customers, but that also helped small brewers to grow.

I believe that by promoting and fostering the delicate ecosystem that is the craft beer movement, we can all drink better beers together, discover new flavours and support experimental brew-ers who are creating exciting new beers for us to discover.

Earlier this year, we invited our members to invest in our business, raising over £100,000 in investment from people who, just like us, were passionate about the idea of building a com-munity around craft beer.

With the help of this invest-ment, we have rapidly grown to become not on the largest craft beer community in the UK, but in the world, with well over 10,000 members.

As a community, we’ve already been given access to some test batch, experimental and new to market beers that nobody else has had the privilege of enjoying.

It’s this access to the best beer that makes Beer52 special.

JAMES BROWNFounder of Beer52

“For me, Beer52 represents an exciting chance to be part of what is nothing short of a revolution.

There are more than 12,000 craft brewers in the world, with new ones setting up shop every week.

This proliferation of inventive minds is contributing to an incredibly fast rate of change in one of the world’s oldest industries.”

The Ideas Guy

“What Beer52 is about is find-ing the best beers in the world, no mean feat when there are currently over 5,500 individual brews in production in the UK alone.

It’s my job as Beer52’s beer buyer to sort the wheat from the chaff, making sure that only the best breweries get the opportunity of having their products featured in our boxes.

Because of the experimental nature of craft beer, some brews work while others don’t. There are plenty of beers that don’t get past my desk; I’m happy to take one for the team to make sure that our members don’t have to drink bad craft beers again.”

The Beer Guy

“The Internet has revolution-ised all kinds of industries and in my previous businesses I have seen its impact on the travel sector.

I believe that Beer52 is one the most innovative players in the drinks arena and as a member I definitely look forward to receiving my box every month.

We’re using tech to connect people around beer. When you think about it, drinking beer has always been the original social network - an opportuni-ty to catch up with friends or just talk nonsense.”

The Web Guy

HOW BEER52 HAS CHANGED MY LIFE AND HELPED ME MAKE A CAREER OUT OF WHAT I LOVE: CRAFT BEER

CONTRIBUTORS

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A MIDDLEFINGER TO THE MAN

The way I see it, alcohol is a key ingredient in the human experi-ence of life itself. It should be a happy thing; an opportunity for our soul’s to shine. It should be an occasional tipple, a weekend indulgence, the crack of a bottle cap at the end of a hard week and the pop of a cork at life’s milestones and ‘good news days’.

Quality beers should be a con-versation starter at a party; beer is something that everyone has a story about. Drinking beer should be a social occasion, a chance to have a laugh with friends and be silly together.

CORPO-PUBS.

What alcohol definitely shouldn’t be is a faceless brewing corpora-tion ripping out the soul of a local pub and filling it with slot ma-chines, pork scratchings and spe-cial offers, designed to make the chore of being a daily pub-going alcoholic more economical and less socially unacceptable.

There are few pubs that aren’t owned by a brew-corp these days and fewer pubs still that serve beer of any merit. Instead, they let their customers drown their sorrows in Tennents, Stella and Heineken.

SUPERMARKETSSomewhere along the way, people stopped caring about what was in the shiny packets they bought at the grocery store. Maybe the supermarkets made it that way or maybe we did it to ourselves, but one thing is for sure and it’s that they’ve kept good taste hidden away from us for too long.

Now, we’ve all discovered that those giant strawberries and curvaceous chickens are most-

ly just water. Mostly just a lie. Mostly just a load of shit that they thought we’d continue to be gullible enough to buy forever.

When it comes to beer, their shelves are lined with low-fla-vour, low-passion, low-offence

bottles, as full of addi-tives as they are with ad men’s pro-jected male insecurities, stereotypi-cal football-ing iconog-raphy and ill-conceived notions of “British Patriotism”

towards brands that are owned by international banks and pri-vate equity funds in the Middle East.

CLEAN-UP IN AISLE FIVETurns out we’re not stupid. Sales of craft cheese, craft spirits, craft chocolate and micro-roasted coffee are all growing in double digits. Sales of big brand beer, meanwhile, are falling through the supermarket floor. In fact, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons share prices are at record lows; even the stock market is sick of their short-term tricksterism.

No wonder they are in trouble; we’re sick and tired of being lied to and taken for fools.

HANDLE WITH CAREFinally, the production and dis-tribution of beer can be given the care and attention it deserves.

Something as important as beer aught not to be controlled by the bad guys, it should be controlled by you and I.

We should drink it at home, with our friends, not under the gaze of Mr Wetherspoon and his army of microwave-oper-ating, barcode-reading, share price-tracking asshole friends.

MICROBREWING IS ABOUT DOING SOMETHING FOR THE LOVE. NOT BECAUSE YOU’RE SHACKLED TO THE TITS OF THE CORPORATIONS THAT RUN THE SHOW.

OUR FRIENDS ARE BREWING BEERS THAT THEY WANT TO DRINK, NOT WHAT TESCO WANTS TO SELL.

LIKE THEM, WE’RE DOING WHATEV-ER THE HELL WE LIKE. WE DON’T DO THIS FOR SHAREHOLDER PROFIT; WE DO IT BECAUSE WE WANT TO BUILD SOMETHING REALLY COOL.

WE’RE BUILDING SOMETHING WE CAN BE PROUD OF, UNLIKE THE PEOPLE WHO PUSH HIGH ALCOHOL CIDERS ON TEENAGERS.

TELL TESCO WHERE TO STICK IT

SUPERMARKETS HAVE GIVEN US £2 CHICKENS AND A HUNDRED WA-TERED-DOWN TINS CANS OF FIZZY NOTHINGNESS.

BEAT UP STELLA.BOYCOTTWETHERSPOONS’EMPORIUMS OF ALCOHOLISM.AND, F*CKSUPERMARKETS.

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CRAFT BEER FROM WHISKY COUNTRYSPEYSIDE CRAFT BREWERY

A SUCCESSFUL BATCH OF HOMEBREW FOR HIS MUM’S BIRTHDAY PARTY LED TO SEB’S CRAFT BEER ADVENTURE - HE NOW RUNS SPEYSIDE’S ONLY CRAFT BREWERY.

SPEYSIDE

After its first 18 months of trading, the first commercial brewery in the heart of Speyside whisky country is getting into its stride.Starting from scratch in a former food-pro-cessing unit in Forres, Moray Speyside, Speyside Craft Brewery is gaining more fans every week. It’s Moray IPA is featured else-where in this magazine, but its stable mates of Randolph’s Leap Lager, Bottlenose Bitter and Bow Fiddle Blonde are all well worth a try. All distinctively different from each other, but all having that certain something that can only come with the brewer being passionate about the beer.

MD of the brewery is Seb Jones, a 27-year-old former Aberdeen University chemistry student. He left university not knowing what he wanted to do with his training and education, but a short spell working in an industrial laboratory quickly convinced him it wasn’t that.

50TH BIRTHDAY HOMEBREW Coming home to help celebrate his mum’s 50th birthday, he made a beer for the oc-casion – he and his dad had always brewed beer in the family shed (with variable degrees of success). Armed with his chem-istry knowledge and training he brewed an ale guests at the birthday bash liked so much one suggested that Seb should open his own brewery.

“That was my ‘eureka!’ moment,” says Seb.“A light went on in my head and from that moment on there was only one focus – get a brewery going.”

But it was to be 18 months of hard slog raising funding, securing premises, get-

SEB JONES» The man behind the beer.

SPEYSIDE» Craft beer from

Scotland’s prime

whisky region.

ting equipment, perfecting recipes, studying business and the craft beer market before he was able to open for business. From the start he wanted to associate the quality in his beers with the brand-leading whiskies the area is famous for.

“I live in a fabulous part of Scotland – Moray Speyside – and we have some of the world’s most famous food and drink producers here, as well as being home to more single malt whisky distilleries than anywhere else in the country. Brands such as Tamdhu, The Macallan and Glenfiddich are all on my doorstep, and they all use the same water as me.

“It’s inevitable that having great water to start with is going to make a differ-ence. Tests on our supply showed that nothing needed to be done to improve its purity or taste, and you can’t get better than that.”

LOCAL ICONSIt’s clear that Seb’s just as passionate about the Moray Speyside area as he is about his beers. All the beers are named after local icons, and the labels provide a brief explanation as their origin. Recently he produced a limited bottle run of a strong, summer ale called Lady Macbeth, designed to both promote Moray Speyside’s strong historical association with Shakespeare’s char-acters and a looming arts festival with the Macbeth tale at its heart. The 2000

bottles sold out in a few short weeks, with customers begging for a re-run.

“Using the beer names feels a good opportunity to spread the word about my beer and the area I live in,” he said. “I like to think that while people are en-joying one of my beers they’re reading the label and looking it up on the map.”

“But the beer comes first, and it’s a great feeling that people are coming back for seconds and thirds – and more.”

Like other new breweries, Seb is look-ing to the future and expanding into foreign markets. A recent fact-finding trip to Singapore showed that there is demand out there for what he’s produc-ing.

But for now he’s keen to develop the Speyside Craft Brewery’s presence in the indigenous market, expand the customer base and make sure there’s enough beer for everyone.

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DRINKINGIN STYLE

IT’S ONE THING TO DRINK THE COOLEST CRAFT BEER FROM A HIPSTER EAST LONDON NANOBREWERY, BUT HOW BEST DO YOU LOOK THE PART DOING IT?

WE’LL BE SHARING SOME OF OUR BEST PICNIC RECIPES IN NEXT MONTH’S ISSUE

One of my all time favourite drinking occasions is the picnic. And by ‘picnic’ I think we all know that I

just mean drinking outside with some obligatory food items present. ‘Pic-nic days’ are one of life’s real simple pleasures, given how rare it is that the British summer treats us with some-thing worth going al fresco for. Whether it’s just some bits and pieces from M&S, sitting on the Meadows in Edinburgh, or some over-priced vegan Scotch eggs and hand-filled salted caramel chocolate pralines, bought from Broadway Market, sitting in London Fields, a picnic is a joyous moment. A sunny day only blesses Glasgow’s skyline when all the planets of the universe are perfectly aligned - a moment in time where Glaswegians have no choice but to drop all their cares and head to Kelvingrove with a ‘carry out’ of beers and enjoy the sense of festivity that arrives with the help of nothing more than a few degrees of heat.

Somehow the beer tastes sweet-er and more refreshing having battled the other picnic-goers for the last tub of hummus and

trekked across the sweating tarmac of the city to find the perfect spot in which to absorb the sun’s rays. Urban picnicking shouldn’t be all Dor-itos and minispeakers, it aught to be a chance to drink in optimal style, to unplug from the digital world and sit around a blanket, having low-intensi-ty chatter all afternoon. I recommend

buying one of these hipster-friendly eco-friendly cardboard picnic boxes, complete with their own personal sets of cutlery and crockery. Available from Boxsal.com in either a ‘beat box’ or ‘briefcase’ design.

Not so much for the posh-ness, as would be the case with its wicker cousin, but for the single-function

luxury that these items represent. Designed solely and perfectly for the picnic, they’re a set of paraphernalia we might only use once a year and have sitting around the house the oth-er 364, waiting patiently for the next picnic day to come around.

A real picnic is about gourmet finger food. Not so much a meal as a series of snacks to pick on all day - there

needs to be an abundance of delicacies for new friends and old to snack on whenever they stop by. Some of my favourite recipes include beetroot salad, falafel and tzatziki, bhajis & mint yoghurt dip, black bean and goats’ cheese empanadas and ap-ple tart & clotted cream - but never ice cream for a picnic, otherwise before you’ve eaten half a bhaji you’ll be the owner of a bowl of vanilla cream soup. But, of course, more important than the food is what to drink. On a hot summer’s day, there’s nothing more refreshing than a light, hoppy IPA. Something like Speyside brewery’s IPA from this month’s box will be just the ticket.

DRINKING IN STYLE

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SCO

TLA

ND

ALREADY WORLD FAMOUS FOR WHISKY, SCOTLAND HAS MADE A NAME FOR ITSELF IN CRAFT BEER TOO

PHOTO.» Scotland today is a

kooky mix of tradition-

al and modern.

SCOTCH.» Whisky is distilled in

the beautiful Scottish

countryside.

HUMOUR.» Brewers here aren’t

shy to use homour to

sell their brands.

Scotland seemed like a great focus for the first edition of our craft beer magazine. Not only is Beer52 based here, but

many of our favourite small breweries are too. With centuries of experience distilling whisky and shipping it to every corner of the Empire (Scotch whisky compa-nies say they export their products to every country in the world, except the few states in the Middle East that are dry - where, no doubt, middlemen manage to get their precious liquids across the line), Scotland has also emerged as a world-leading nation when it comes to micro-brewing.

Perhaps Some of this emer-gence as a malting superpower has been down to not only its inhabitants world-famous

penchant for alcohol, but the consider-able investment in academic research that has gone into the topic here. Edinburgh’s Heriot-Watt University attracts bright eyed young brewers from all four corners of the world to study the noble craft as part of their

degree and master’s degree courses specifically focused on sending en-thusiastic new talents into the world’s brew houses. Edinburgh has always been the world’s capital of brewing - once home to more than forty breweries, an enormous feat for a city of only a few hundred thousand. Now, Scotland’s microbrewers are carrying on this tradition by pioneering brewing tech-niques, styles and marketing stunts that their forefathers would be proud of.

Today, Scotland is home to more than seventy, from Glasgow’s East End, to Speyside’s rolling hills. This

month, we taste the best ones.

SCOTLAND

ST ANDREWS, A BEAUTIFUL TOWN THAT LACKED A KEY COMPONENT: A BREWERY

AFTER BUYING, SELLING, DRINKING AND WRITING ABOUT CRAFT BEER FOR MOST OF MY LIFE, I FIGURED IT WAS TIME TO PUT MY MONEY AND EFFORT WHERE MY MOUTH WAS AND OPEN THE TOWN’S FIRST BREWERY.

ST ANDREWS14 15

Born out of a desire to bring great beers to a town that has so much, yet lacks one small, but in my opinion mas-sive component, its own brewery.

Once the idea was born the wheels of the brewery began to roll, and after a little rolling around I found a little start-up home in Glenrothes, with a long term plan to move to a larger home closer to St Andrews. The com-pany was set up solely by my (very!) limited savings, its not owned by some big company or set up with sacksful of borrowed cash…. The brewery and now Tap House are built on a passion for great beers, hard work and the de-sire to start small and earn the drink-ers and customers respect and right to grow and develop.

In January 2012 I got the keys and started brewing small 2.5bl batches of beer, producing approximately 750 bottles per brew. Hand brewing, hand bottling and hand labelling every single bottle. All beers are unfiltered to maximise flavour and are bottle-con-ditioned, meaning from a drinker’s point of view more amazing flavours and depth. As the beers are bottle-con-ditioned with no funny business in them all of my bottled beer is Vegan Friendly.

I currently have 7 Regular beers from Gold to Stout and everywhere in between. Every month I produce new and exciting guest ales, in 2014 I have given myself the somewhat daunting

ST ANDREW’S BREWING» The full range of beers available

form Bob’s tiny outfit.

BOB PHAFF.» The man who

brewed the beer in

your box.

task of producing 4 new guest ales every month, which are 4 different series of brews with ever changing Malt, Hop and Yeast structures. Please check out the beers on the “Beers” page

Awards for St Andrew’s:

– Champion Bottle Beer of Scot-land 2014 – India Pale Ale– Champion Beer of Fife 2013 – Crail Ale– Third Place at Champion Beer of Fife 2013 – Rye.P.A– Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt Regional Winner 2013 – Crail Ale– Great Taste Award Gold Star Winner 2013 -Fife Gold– SIBA Silver Award for Bottled Ale -5% – Crail Ale– BBC Good Food Show Bursary Winner

I currently stock over 70 outlets across Scotland, mainly fantastic independent bottle shops, farm shops, restaurants and every weekly Fife Farmers Market

Design has been very impor-tant to me, and from the start we wanted to offer a stand out design, label and artwork concept, which led us to collab-orate with local ceramic artist Susan McGill. Susan’s ideas and

concepts showcase her work and bring a unique image to the beers, combining traditional and modern images and design. We are chuffed to bits with the out-come and hope you like it too.

In November 2013 I joined forces with local businessman, stockist and fan of my brews Tim Butler to open the St An-drews Brewing Company Tap House. A Restaurant and Tap House for my brews as well as the very best and exciting beers from across Scotland, UK and the World.

I’m very excited to say that I have just moved into a new brewery in the centre of St An-drews, creating three new jobs and only 460m from our pub!

I hope that you enjoy my Crail Ale, which I’ve brewed myself for your Beer52 box.

“HAVING SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED OUR BREWERY AT CLOISTERS BAR IN EDINBURGH, WE ARE BUSY BREWING AND BOTTLING AS MUCH BEER AS WE CAN PRODUCE. KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR OUR BOTTLES AS WE SPREAD OUT ACROSS EDINBURGH AND BEYOND.”

REGAININGEDINBURGH’S BREWING STATUS

A city once so famous for its brewing prowess and where its citizens enjoyed having a sweet smell of malt wafting

through its alleyways and side streets on brewing days, Edinburgh’s proud brewing industry suffered a slow and steady decline at the hands of fire, bankruptcy, industry consolidation and inner city redevelopment.

With industrial brewing no longer a mainstay of the city’s economy, a num-ber of ambitious young

brewers have stepped up to the mark with dreams of reclaiming the city’s crown. TOP OUT ARE PART OF A NEW BREED OF EXPERIMENTAL BREWHOUSES, FOCUSSED ON GREAT BEERS IN BEAUTIFUL BOTTLES

By anyone’s standard’s Top Out’s operation is relatively modest; literally two guys in a shed on the outskirts of the city. But the

TOP OUT.» One of the city’s

newest brewers.

TOP OUT

SMOKEY.» Aside from Shman-

kerl, we love their

smoked porter.

beers they produce, taking time to brew and bottle by hand, are anything but mod-est, with strong flavours and high ABVs the name of the game.

Later in the magazine we’ll be reviewing their contribution to this month’s box, their amazing “Schmankerl”, a 4.9% sweet-tasting wheat beer. But, in the meantime we want-ed to tease you with a write up of three of their other great creations.

DARK ABBEY, BELGIAN STRONG ALE, 8.9% When it comes to Belgian style ales, a number of brewers are proving that you don’t have to be a monk to master this flavour profile. Top Out’s Dark Abbey, a triple strength ale, pours very darkly into your glass (preferably a Trappist glass), with a light brown head. The aromas are of roasted malts and dark fruits. The flavour itself is sweet and slightly spicy, with hints of coffee or chocolate.

SMOKED PORTER5.6%For a small brewery to launch itself on the market with a smoked porter at the core of its range says something about the brav-ery and sense of artisanal ambition that these guys have. Dark brown in colour, with a light beige head, the aroma of this beer are of wood smoke. The taste is rich, chocolatey and then increasingly smok-ey, although never dominatingly so. A well-balanced beer.

STAPLE , AMERICAN PALE ALE4%This beer has a clear gold amber colour, a foamy white head and a tropical fruit and citrusy hoppy nose. The taste itself if of malty biscuityness, balanced with a hint of grapefruit style bitterness.

THE CONE IPA6.8%Top Out’s new IPAcarries big aromas of tropical fruit, citrus and pine. With a clear, golden appearance and a slight head, it is on the palate that this beer excels. This IPA has a great balance of flavour and is all round an excellent beer.

CLOISTERS BARResidents of Edinburgh have enjoyed a number of great new craft beer openings in recent years, with Cloisters Bar being one of our favourites.

The bar, with a capacity of just forty, on the city’s Brougham Street, is always packed, with a lively and friendly atmosphere, an epic beer list and great pub food.

It was no wonder than that Top Out chose this Mecca of craft beer to launch their business, supplying the bar with their full range. Since then, their bottles have been spotted in independent off-licenses across the city and we’re delighted they were able to produce just enough beer to be featured in this month’s selection.

TOP OUT, EDINBURGH16 17

Before joining us, Chris ran one of Scotland’s lead-ing craft breweries - what he doesn’t know about beer isn’t worth knowing.

Colour: hazy golden Smell: apricot & lemon

Taste: lightly spiced Finish: full-bodied Drink with: seafood, salad

Colour: Light and golden

Smell: strong citrus and hop

Taste: Citrus and grassy hop

Finish: Light and dry.

“A superbly drinkable beer”

Colour: Golden Smell: Full on citrus punch. Taste: Grapefruit & lime Finish: Smooth and refreshing Drink with: Mexican, Indian, Asian

Colour: Blonde & Golden Smell: Bobek & Cascade Hops

Taste: Lemon & citrus

Finish: Refreshing A perfect session ale!

This month’s box has been a joy to curate. We’ve really pulled in

al the favours we could from our local friends, to make this ‘Scotland’ themed box one that we’re truly proud of.

INNIS & GUNN’S NEW RARE OAK PALE ALE

This refreshing pale ale has been matured over rare Scottish oak, which hasn’t been used in brew-ing since the days of the Anglo-Spanish wars and the Armada, when huge areas of Scottish forest

were felled to build ships. The beer is finished with the addition of sweet gale, which was used tradition-ally as an alternative to imported hops by brewers in Scotland. Crisp, aromatic and light, this beer is one for summer evenings.

SHMANKERL BY TOP OUT BREWERYThis 500ml bottle of Top Out’s sweet wheat beer has a hazy golden body, an apricot and lemon aroma with a full-bodied, smooth, softly carbonated mouth feel. The refreshing nature of this wheat beer makes it perfect for picnics, best

served in a Shaker or Weizen glass.

CRAIL ALE, ST ANDREWS BREW CO.Pale Ale with a full on citrus punch, loads of Grapefruit and lime from the distinctive Columbus hop.

This beer was first brewed for the Crail Food Festival, as a one off beer but is now by popular demand a regular beer.

Crail Ale was named “Champion Beer of Fife”.

WHAT WE’RE DRINKINGTHIS MONTH

THERE IS NOSHORTAGE OF GREATSCOTTISH BEERS TO TASTE. THIS SET IS A GREAT START.CHRIS MILLER

Head Beer Taster

SCHMANKERLTop Out, 4.9%

JARLFyne Ales, 3.8%

CRAIL ALESt Andrew’s Brew Co., 4.5%

DEFINITELY NOT THE OFFICIAL BEER OF...Eden Brewery, 4.7%

www.topoutbrewery.com

www.fyneales.com www.standrewsbrewingcompany.com

edenbrewerystandrews.com

THIS MONTH’S SELECTION18 19

Every beer in our boxes is unique and every selection different. We want to give you a great experience of learning about the beers you’re drinking.

DEFINITELY NOT THE OFFICIAL BEER OF...Our Craft range reflects our passion for making great beer for the local townspeople and sur-rounding area.The hoppy, spiced notes of the clock. The refreshing 19th.

HOLLYROOD, STEWART BREWINGStewart Brewing is Edin-burgh’s local, independent brewery, founded in 2004 by Steve and Jo Stewart. With an emphasis on producing traditional cask ales in a modern and innovative way, Stewart

Brewing soon became rec-ognised for brewing high quality and hand crafted beers whilst upholding the traditional brewing values of Edinburgh.

MORAY IPA, SPEYSIDE BREWERYBrewed using modern craft-brewing techniques and with the same care and passion that produces the many single malt whis-kies the area is famous for.

HOMECOMING BEER, INVERALMOND BREW-ERYCertainly the most patri-otic bottle in this month’s

selection, the Homecoming beer by award-winning Inveralmond Brewery has already won fans, includ-ing the Scottish actor Alan Cumming .“Crafted to encapsulate the energy and presence of our incredible nation in 2014”.

GREAT COSMATI ALECHEMY BREW CO.Showcasing the new Mosa-ic hops, The Great Cosmati is a Golden IPA with a strong resinous bitter flavour and an aroma of stone fruits. A wonderful complex beer, not for a beginner!

SCOTTISH INDEPENDENTS

OUR SELECTIONWhy we pick what we do.

THIS MONTH’S SELECTION20 21

BARRELS OF SCOTTISHFLAVOUR

Colour: Pale Smell: Full, fresh citrus aroma.

Taste: A light body, moderate bitterness. Finish: Tangy grapefruit. Drink with: Tiger prawns, char-grilled chicken, pan fried sea bass.

Colour: Rich, golden. Smell: Distinctive, hoppy aroma.

Taste: Perfectly balanced hoppyness. Finish: A strong, bitter finish. Drink with: spicy food.

Colour: Amber Smell: Aromatic hoppyness

Taste: Refreshing berry sweetness. Finish: Smooth & tempting Drink with: a traditional ale is always great with comfort foods like stews, pies and burgers.

We’re excited to also be featuring two of Scotland’s most iconic brands in our box, Walker’s Shortbread and Nairn’s Oatcakes.

www.stewartbrewing.co.uk

www. alechemybrewing.com

www.speysidecraftbrewery.com www.inveralmond-brewery.co.ukwalkersshortbread.comnairns-oatcakes.com

HOLLYROODStewart Brewing, 5%

GREAT COSMATIAlechemy Brew co., 7.1%

MORAY IPASpeyside, 5.5%

HOMECOMING BEERInveralmond Brewery, 4.2%

A SPECIAL THANKS TO..

BEERS IN YOUR BOX

Many of our members have signed up to re-ceive a monthly bottle of premium craft spirit

along with their delivery of Beer52. For those of you who have, you’re in for a very special treat this month.

Surrounded by rolling fields over-looking the Firth of Forth, is the 16th Century Spencerfield Farm-house. Set up by a former director of Glenmorangie and whisky expert, Alex Nicol, Spencerfield Spirits is a close-knit family business that has been producing such award-winning and irreverent products as ‘Sheep Dip’ and ‘Pig’s Nose’ whiskies since the 1970s. Taking their decades of experience into spirits led to the creation of Edinburgh Gin, a range of super-premium artisanal in-fused Scottish gins, with the aim of offering a quality alternative to the mainstream gin brands.

Dtinctively Scottish, this month’s bottle is, we think, the best in their range. Raspberry Infused Edinburgh Gin is made from a traditional family

recipe using locally sourced raspber-ries, matured with Edinburgh Gin and pure cane sugar. This results in a delicious deep, tart raspberry flavour.

The raspberries used in this reci-pe are from Perthshire, Scotland. The raspberry fruit is picked at its optimum ripeness ensuring the best natural sugar balance is captured.

Produced in small-batch quantities ensuring that only the finest quality ingredients are used to produce a refreshing clean, crisp gin.

This raspberry infused gin is a lim-ited edition variation of the Edin-burgh Gin brand.

We know that you’ll enjoy this one. For those of you who haven’t signed up to our monthly spirit bottle club, you can do by changing your plan in your member dashboard - just select Subscription Info >> Change Plan and follow the easy steps.

We have the pleasure of working with one of Cu-ba’s most highly-regarded cigar manufacturers, H

Upmann. This thin, hand-rolled, ca-dete-style cigar is a really light and easy smoke, with mild flavours that can be drawn out for a good length of time.

Our best advice for any new-comers to the cigar world would be to make sure you sharply cut the butt, avoid

using lighter to ignite your cigar - its best to avoid any pollutants harming your smoking experience. You want to make sure that your cigar is evenly lit, all the way around, so that it burns evenly throughout.

Acigar represents forty-five minutes of quality time with a friend, a client or a chance to enjoy some alone time.

for more about this great gin» www.spencerfieldspirit.com

SPIRIT OF THE MONTH

WHAT’SSMOKINGTHIS MONTH

WE COULDN’T PUT A BOX OF SCOTTISH BEER TOGETHER AND NOT INCLUDE A BOTTLE OF OUR FAVOURITE LOCAL GIN.

FOR MEMBERS OF OUR SMOKES CLUB, FOR JUST £8 A MONTH, WE ADD A MONTHLY FAT ONE TO YOUR CASE OF BEER

CORONAS JUNIOR» 115mm, 5,43g, Handmade, Cuban cadette

cigar.

Colour: copper goldenSmell: sweet pineTaste: sticky toffeeFinish: juicy & bitterDrink with: strong cheese, grilled meats.

The hopped-up intensity of these beers makes for enjoyable drinking. It takes a strong flavoured dish to stand up to the flavours of this extra strong, extra hoppy double IPA.

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WELCOME TOTHE (BEER)GARDEN OF EDEN

IN THE BEGINNING....

It could be said that ‘The Eden Brew-ery at St Andrews’ owes its existence to the owner of the world’s largest brewery. As with many of the best decision in life the idea came about at in a bar chat at 3 o’clock in the morning between brewing giant (literally) Pete Coors and one of his Scottish employees Paul Miller. Instead of playing golf Pete asked Paul to take him to visit the local brewery or distillery and was amazed to find there were none in the vicinity, and so the seed was sown.

It soon became apparent why as it took nearly 2 years to find a site in the area for Paul’s pipedream. However in 2012, together with Brewing School gradu-ate Scott Gowans, ‘Eden’ began their 1st brew in the derelict old Paper Mill owned by the famous St Andrews University. Freakily they discovered later that this site had been both a brewery and a distillery some 125 years previous forced to close as the industry began to ‘consolidate’ in the late 19th century.

After graduating from HW Scott had cut his teeth working in Craft Brewing in breweries large and small around the UK. These ranged from Adnams to Loch Fyne. The Eden ‘project’ fitted the bill for Scott to put his own pent up ‘progressive brewing’ ideals to work.

‘Medals and awards won to date are great but the buzz of converting people to appreciating well crafted authentic beer is something much more tangible, especially if it is ours ’ is what Paul reckons sums up their ethos

SUSTAINABLE AND TRANSPARENT

There is no printed mantra on sus-tainability but Eden is hugely proud of its practise. The barley is all Scottish and 80% comes from within 7 miles of our brewery. It won an award for this

from the ‘Caledonian Seed Fund’ set up to help sustainability by C&C.

The local Seggie Farm tractor did initially come weekly for the spent grain and it is now a daily trip …happy chickens! And the local pig farm enjoys the hops. The wood from the

breweries famous Ardbeg Oak matured whisky beers and Appleton rum and bourbon barrel beers is recycled into beer floats and furniture for brewery

visitor’s comfort when they come to see us. All the beers brewed at Eden are bottled and labelled by hand.

Gowans says ‘We love what we do and we are proud of it and love to share it. So we really encourage visitors. Over 200 people a week come to see us and over 500 attend our sneak previews of new brews every quarter at tasting sessions. Many contribute their ideas to our pot. The brewing team is now 3 strong and we have just created Scot-land’s first ‘brewing apprenticeship’.

AUTHENTIC SMALL BATCH BREWS ARE THE FUTURE..

Although Eden St Andrews is growing at a fair pace it is determined to con-tinue with genuine small batch and limited run brews. Their ‘Oak Wood Series’ are authentic small batch brews of 2000 bottles at a time. The casks vary from Ardbeg to Bruichlad-dich, to Mouton Rothschild to Chateau Y’Quem. They see these as an art as much as a scalable craft and matching the brew to the barrel is part of the fun of it. Customers who visit them love the sensory experience of this. A Chinese company recently tried to order a container of their ‘Islay cask matured whisky beer’ they had to set-tle for 20 cases. That won’t change.

DEFINITELY NOT THE OFFI-CIAL BEER OF....

The idea for the current seasonal beer in the beer 52 box came from some of the brewery visitors. They were disappointed to see Scottish Craft Breweries edged out by the organisers and the sponsors ‘Heineken’ from offering their product to the visitors at Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. They suggested a dark golden refreshing beer with good flavour and drinkability should go down well in the bars and shops around the city as an alternative to the ‘Official’ and corporate fat

DEFINITELY NOT THE OFFICIAL BEER OF....

THE AIMS OF EDEN ARE SIMPLE:

TO MAKE GOOD LOCAL BEER FOR OUR TOWN TO BE PROUD OF AND TO TRY TO HELP MORE FOLK TO DRINK BETTER BEER MORE OFTEN.

EDEN BREWERYST ANDREWS

NEXT MONTH WE’LL BE WORSHIPPING THE SUN, BY DRINKING REFRESH-ING BEERS, VISITING CRAFT BEER FESTIVALS AND FINDING OUT WHERE THE BEST GRUB IS THIS SUMMERTIME

we love TicketyBrew’s packaging and ap-proach. Their Northern unpretentiousness shines through, along with their passion for just making beer that tastes outstand-

ing. Started by husband and wife, Duncan and Keri Bar-ton. With a shared love of bottled beer, they started a brewery together, inspired by their visits to Belgium.

Although their passion has taken them around the world in the search for the best hops to make their brews with, they also believe that flavour doesn’t come from hops alone and they’ve been pioneers of adding other ingredients to the brewing process.

Like all brewers, their website contains helpful tasting notes, but they’re also keen to stress that they don’t believe in telling people what they’re supposed to be tasting - “Whatever you taste in our beer - you’re right!”.

With such a friendly and unpretentious attitude to their craft, it’s no wonder that we get along well. So well in fact that Ticketybrew have agreed to produce a limited release batch of their Rose & Ginger Wheat beer for next month’s box. It’s such a special brew that this isn’t available anywhere. Although we’re sure that once you’ve tasted it you’ll be demanding it from your barkeeper.

COMINGUP NEXT:SUMMER

IN NEXT MONTH’S BOX....

Summer 2014 is set to be a historic season for craft beer. With more breweries than ever and way more

craft beer events happening up and down the country than in any year before, we’ll be helping you navigate this maze of drinking opportunities with our helpful “Guide to Summer Drinking, 2014”, free with next month’s box of Beer52.

As well as introducing you to some never-before-seen and specially commissioned batches of brew, we’ll be giving you a taster of which craft beer festivals are worth visiting. We ‘ll also be writing about our new favourite bars and places to stop for a craft beer while you’re enjoying the Great British Summer.

“SUMMER IS THE ULTIMATE TIME OF YEAR FOR SESSION BLONDES AND BIG HOPPY IPA’S, THERE’S NOTHING BETTER THAN A SCHOONER IN THE SUN.”

DRINKING IN STYLE» Next month’s issue will explore

where to drink and how to do it.

TICKETYFEW» Ticketybrew have kindly

brewed a batch especially for us.

JAMES BROWNFounder

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Our magazine has been lovingly put together by our team of craft beer experts. If you’d like to

contribute to our next issue, please get in touch.

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