ferment // issue 14

E X P E R I M E N T S I N T H E G L O B A L C R A F T A L C O H O L M O V E M E N TI S S U E # 1 4

2 FERMENT Discover craft beer at Beer52.com

Discover craft beer at Beer52.com FERMENT 3

WELCOME

Collaboration, collectives and camaraderie in craft beer by Erin Bottomley.

Lagers that don’t pale in comparison by Mark Dredge.

Why Britain’s newest Craft Beer collective might be exactly the one the industry needs by Matthew Curtis.

And other Adventures in Beer by Melissa Cole.

Our top beer picks this month.

Finding Fine Booze in Iceland By Craig Ballinger.

We caught up with Chris Russell from Oskar Blues to talk UK distribution, canning and charity by Erin Bottomley.

Five of the best collaboration beers by Neil Walker.

Aiming for the peak: Drygate’s first year in business by Erin Bottomley.

An easy summer meal by Rich & Sal at the Hungry Bears’ Blog.

For al l advertising and contribution enquiries, please contact Erin Bottomley [email protected] or cal l us on 0131 554 5527.Get in touch on Twitter @Beer52HQYou can write to us here at Ferment, 16/4 Timber Bush, Edinburgh, EH6 6QH, UK.

Together We Can Brew it

EDITOR’S NOTE

CONTRIBUTORS CONTENTS

A Guide to Pale Lagers

Mark Dredge is the award-winning writer of the books Craft Beer World and Beer & Food, with his third book, The Best Beer in the World, published in October 2015. This month he begins a regular column in Ferment looking at a different beer style each month. You can follow his boozing on Twitter and Instagram: @markdredge.

Melissa Cole Certified Cicerone® and beer & food writer Melissa Cole is one of the UK’s leading beer experts. Author of Let Me Tell You About Beer, international beer judge, collaboration brewer, sommALEier and regular festival presenter, she can be found propping up bars all over the world but she sometimes manages to be home in London.

Matthew Curtis is a London-based freelance beer writer and speaker. In 2014 he co-authored Craft Beer: The 100 Best Breweries in the World for Future Publishing and is currently working on the follow up, Beer & Craft: Britain’s Best Bars and Breweries , which will be self-published later this year. He is the author of beer blog Total Ales and can be found getting enthusiastic about beer on Twitter @totalcurtis.

Sam Dunn is an illustrator based in East London. She grew up in Hartlepool, a fading seaside town in the North East of England. Her work is delicately crafted by hand with pen and ink then coloured digitally with many layers of found and forged textures: www.sam-dunn.com.

Craig Ballinger is a writer, caterer and drinker living and working in London. The giant chip on his shoulder is testament to his Mancunian heritage. Writing about beer evolved from a habit of writ-ing on beer: “to some writers, drink is not only a means to an end but often an end to his means.” @ByCBallinger

Richard Manders. Invented concrete. Illustrator currently studying for his masters at Camberwell UAL. Interested in all projects in need of illustration. www.themantrout.tumblr.com

Neil Walker is a beer expert and self-confessed foodie. Alongside freelance beer writing, he authors the popular Eating isn’t Cheating website which focuses on recipes, beer matching and (when he can manage it) beer tourism. So if you want to know how to make the perfect BBQ brisket and which beer to serve with it, Neil’s the man for you: www.eatinginstcheating.co.uk.

Lynn Bremner studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, starting with visual communication and continuing in photographic and electronic media. Her work extends across a number of mediums, mainly photography and illustration. She now works as the operations manager and resident photographer here at Beer52. Get in touch: [email protected] and @Lynn_Bremner.

Hungry Bears’ Blog is run by Rich and Sal from their little flat in Welwyn. It’s a collection of reci-pes brought together to inspire other people with little kitchens (and little time!) to tuck into good, homemade food. Check them out: www.thehungrybearsblog.com.

Collaboration is the name of the game this month. When you delve a little deeper into the craft beer world, you will find that there are so many brewers and breweries working together to get more amazing beers into bars and bottle shops. So we pay homage to this camaraderie and salute those bringing us the best beer out there. Sam Dunn’s cover illustrations focuses on how when working together we can ‘brew it’.

We are also delighted to have Melissa Cole contributing her monthly musings dedicated to what’s happening in the industry and would love to hear from you on all current issues so get tweeting @melissacole or @beer52hq to tell us what you think.

Its competition time! To see how you can win six bottles of Drygate’s Peak: Apex 01 with exclusive artwork turn to page 20.

Cheers,

Erin Bottomley

United Craft Brewers

Going Orbital

What we’re drinking

Canning beer since 2002

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Drinking Lava

When Worlds Collide

Aiming for the peak

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T oday in the craft beer industry, it is a constant battle for breweries to get their beer on to the draught

boards and into the shop fridges. Many have found new ways to combat this issue to increase the overall share that craft beer has of world beer market.

Combining to create something new.

Mikkeller and To-Øl are renowned for their experimental contribution to craft beer but they felt that there was something they could be doing better. They want to be able to introduce more people to the world’s best beverage so they went about setting up a new brewery that would do just that. In 2014, Gypsy Inc was born. Gypsy Inc produces great sessionable beers that are tasty, easy to drink and leave you wanting more. Making great sessionable beer is no mean feat. Session beers are like the perfect drinking buddy; they are friendly to everyone, enjoyable to be around, don’t dominate or scream for attention, and it’s always a good time when you get together. Whilst the barrel aged imperial stouts of the world are a thing of beauty, sometimes all you want is a low ABV, refreshing

tasty brew, and that’s where Gypsy Inc come in. To-Øl and Mikkeller have come together and used their combined knowledge to brew beers for everyone. Soft Focus featured in this month’s Beer52 box.

Collaboration and Teaching.

The passing on of knowledge is an extremely important part for any industry to succeed and to sustain. The evolution of the industry relies on those in the know to educate those with a thirst for knowledge. Stewart Brewing every year team up with The International Centre for Brewing and Distilling at Heriot-Watt University to collaborate on Natural Selection Brewing. It allows for four students to brew, design, market and sell their beer each year. Stewart Brewing allow the students to brew on their kits and help the process along in the run up to the launch every summer. Bitter Descent featured in this month’s Beer52 box.

“If you look at it in terms of brewing, it’s been a long slow fermentation.


TOGETHER WE CAN BREW IT!

Collaboration, collectives and camaraderie in craft beer.By Erin Bottomley

Together we can brew it!

One of the greatest collective movements to have emerged from the craft beer industry in the UK recently is the New Zealand Craft Beer Collective. Stu McKinley, founder of Yeastie Boys, explains how Yeastie Boys, Tuatara, 8 Wired Brewing Co, Three Boys and Renaissance are hell bent on working together to get more Kiwi beers into the UK market.

“If you look at it in terms of brewing, it’s been a long slow fermentation. We touched on it last year when I first met with the new CEO of Tuatara brewing, Richard Shirtcliffe. We knew

straight away that we wanted to collaborate and we started to chat about the potential of doing something specifically export focussed. More and more people were brought into the fold with the aim of building a category

specifically for New Zealand beers, similar to how wineries have done so in New Zealand such as Family of 12. We modelled our whole idea on their structure. The founding principles

were based on how well we all work together and get along. It really is like one big brewing family.

What we have done is set up a memorandum of understanding that says that we are going to promote New Zealand beer in the UK. By working together as five breweries, we have a really strong portfolio with an interesting range of beers and represent all regions of New Zealand. I really love the UK beer scene, it’s at a really exciting stage. There’s a lot of really good opportunity here. The infrastructure is great and with Europe on the doorstep as well... What I see here is how the New Zealand scene was probably about five years ago.

What makes New Zealand exciting and different is our unique hop characteristics. Take for example Nelson Sauvin. It was named in honour of Sauvignon Blanc as the characteristics of the are so similar to the tropical fruit, mango and gooseberry which are all associated with New Zealand white wine. We, as brewers, are certainly well aware that to be sustainable long term then we have to be much better than just the New

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Zealand hops in our beers. We have to make really world class beer.

The greatest thing of all in the collective is that as 5 breweries we are able to pay someone to be on the ground here to be our business developer which none of us could have ever afforded ourselves. It is really important to have that face to face contact with the people you plan to work with and it helps to emphasise the commitment we have to the collective.

The one difference with Yeastie Boys is that we will be contract brewing at BrewDog as well as continuing to export whilst the other four will stick to exporting. I’m a proud contract brewer, I don’t try to make out that we are gypsy brewers or any kind of romantic term like that. I took it to BrewDog because they are getting better and better and better at making great beer. They also have the ability to grow. I am happy to let them do what they do best and make sure that the beer coming out the other end is exactly what I want it to be. The others at this stage don’t have plans to brew their beer over here. I guess we will be the ones testing the water.

Yeastie Boys have done a lot of exporting in our time. One of the beauties of having five breweries is that we can fill a container quite easily between us. The price point is always an issue when bringing beer from New Zealand, it is considerably higher price than locally produced beer. We only ever sent over a whole container once because there is only so much beer

that we can sell from one brewery. But with five breweries we can send smaller amounts each more regularly and we are filling the supply each time. There’s always a little bit more demand than what we are sending so our beers sell out before they arrive. We only choose beers specifically that travel well. We do a couple of beers that are under 5% for the local market but we don’t really send these overseas.

The collective highlights how collaboration is such a big part of the brewing world rather than all being about fierce competition. People really do work together for mutual

gain which is unique. It’s a really good example of what actually happens in the brewing world all the time. There is so much collaboration, and collective work that goes on that people probably don’t see. Having spent some time over here and meeting a lot of the brewers and hearing the stories

such as how Kernel literally gave their brewery to Partizan down the road when they started up, you can see the sense of community. We have such a long way to go before we are even making the smallest dent in the overall beer market. There is the ability for us to be a lot more collaborative. We are all in it together trying to create a bigger section of the pie, or growing the pie completely rather than fighting each other for our own individual piece of it.”

“There is so much collaboration, and collective work that goes on that people just don’t see.

P ale lager accounts for over 90% of beers drunk around the world and no-thanks to this they’ve

become maligned and misunderstood, often overlooked as inferior to ale. Yet pale lager is capable of being brilliant, complex, varied and unbeatably refreshing, plus they’re inspiring modern brewers to take on the styles in new ways.

Czech Pale Lagers

The world’s greatest-volume drinkers are Czech and undoubtedly that’s because their pale lagers are just so damn delicious. The classic Světly Ležáks have a medium body that’s smooth with some residual malt sweetness, perhaps giving honey or caramel, and balanced by a fragrant hop aroma and deep bitterness. It’s the beautiful bitter-sweetness which makes Czech beers stand alone from other pale lagers.

Must Try: Pilsner Urquell is the origin of the world Pilsner and the beer has a soft caramel-like sweetness plus fragrant Czech Saaz hops and a long bitterness. Kout na Šumavě’s pale lagers are layered with malt complexity, smooth and easy drinking, all with a lemony, peppery and floral hop aroma.

modern way. Harviestoun’s herbal, hoppy Schiehallion shows off a citrusy depth.

Helles

These are Bavaria’s stein swinging golden lagers. Compared to the firm dryness of a Pils, Helles is soft and smooth, gently

carbonated, toasty or bready from pale malt, they have medium bodies and a light touch of bitterness makes them quenching, unchallenging and effortlessly drinkable.

Must Try: Augustiner Helles is a textbook example with a smooth depth of toasty malt and a gentle pithy bitterness. Meantime’s London Lager uses East Anglian barley and Kent hops to anglicise the Bavarian brew with bready malt and earthy hops. St Austell’s Korev has a great fragrant hop flavour around the malt body.

‘Hoppy Lagers’

The new-skool of bottom-fermented beers take everything great about classic lagers and combines them with

contemporary tastes for lots of hops, where they could be bigger and bolder versions of traditional styles, classic lagers dry-hopped to give citrusy aromas, or the explosive combo of lager and IPA.

Must Try: Lagunitas Pils is to Czech Lager what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to Austrian senior citizens: muscular, badass and Americanised, yet still with their original accent intact. Adnams Dry Hopped lager is lush with subtle tropical fruit. Camden Town Brewery’s IHL combines IPA and lager to be outrageously aromatic with American hops while somehow keeping a clean bittersweet balance.

Mainstream Lagers

They may not have the flavour profile or storied romance of a fresh micro-brewed beer, and they might have such massive marketing ubiquity that we’re desensitised to them, but don’t dismiss the mainstream beer because like trashy TV and guilty pleasure foods, we all surely have our own favourite (I’ll take a Budweiser) and there’s always a time and a place for them, often on a hot day with a bottle straight from the fridge. We can’t always be beer geeks.

Windsor & Eton’s Republika is the best British example, celebrating the superb aromas of Saaz hops.

German Pilsener

The bittersweet flavour profile in Světly Ležáks have become know as ‘Czech-style Pilsners,’ yet Pilsner isn’t a word you’ll find Czech drinkers saying because there’s really only one: Pilsner Urquell. In Germany you’ll find their Pilseners or Pils have very dry, clean bodies of malt, enhancing the high bitterness and hop flavour from the herbal, peppery and floral German hops.

Must Try: Jever is powerfully hopped, rasping with herbal qualities and a super-dry finish, making it a more extreme example of the style. Four Pure Pils is big on German hop bitterness and flavour, light on toasty malt and nails the style in a

“Lagunitas Pils is to Czech Lager what Arnold Schwarzenegger is to Austrian senior citizens: muscular, badass and Americanised, yet still with their original accent intact.


MARK DREDGE’S GUIDE TO PALE LAGER

Lagers that don’t pale in comparison.By Mark Dredge


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Translating Czech Beer

Here’s what you need to know when ordering beer in the Czech Republic: For colour, Světly is pale, Polotmavy is amber, Tmavé is dark and Černé is black. These colours combine with the strength, measured in degrees Plato: 10° will be around 4% ABV, also known as Výčepní pivo; Ležák is 11°-12° or 4.5%-5% ABV (so a Světly Lezak will be a pale lager around 5% ABV); 13° and above are known as Speciál. Tankovná means the beer is unpasteurised and poured from serving tanks; Nefiltrované means it’s unfiltered (and what you ideally want to find); slightly different is Kvasnicové, or ‘yeast beer’, which is lager with some fermenting wort or yeast added into it before packaging.

B ritain’s thriving young craft beer industry is suffering from an identity crisis. Brewers

are drawing their inspiration largely from the United States, which arguably produces the best and most exciting beers in the world. They are also heavily influenced by the wonderful beers of Belgium, Germany and Czech. Although this new wave of brewers respects the heritage and history of traditional British Brewing, at times it feels like their industries are separate, supporting their own interests and not part of a complete whole.

Groups such as CAMRA and SIBA exist to support the traditional side of the industry and rightly so, it makes up a much larger proportion and it needs these organisations to sustain itself as much as these organisations need the traditional breweries to do the same for them. Although several of the new generation of breweries have also found support in these groups, many have found them frustrating to deal with, as they are unable to keep up with the rapid pace at which their industry is evolving. They’ve also failed to help the traditional breweries they support to modernise, with many awkwardly done ‘craft’ rebrands looking like your Dad attempting to drunkenly dance to Taylor Swift at a family wedding.

Quite simply, there isn’t an organisation that exists to specifically

look after the needs of Britain’s new wave of craft brewers, but as this sector rapidly increases in size it’s

going to need one. Some British Brewers have turned to the Brewers Association in America, who do some wonderful work for their members but their interests lie mainly within their home nation. For craft beer in the UK to remain viable and to continue to grow it needs an organisation that both defines and supports it, lest it become the fad that some consider it to be.

The United Craft Brewers, unveiled recently at an

event hosted by Brooklyn Brewery at North London’s Beavertown Brewery could well be the organisation this new, young industry needs. For starters its founding members run some of the most forward thinking and successful young breweries in the country. These founders are Logan Plant of Beavertown, James Watt of BrewDog, Jasper Cuppaidge of Camden Town Brewery and Magic Rock’s Richard Burhouse. The lineup is completed by distributor James Clay, with Steve Hindy of Brooklyn Brewery acting as a mentor.

A short while after the announcement each brewery simultaneously released a statement on their websites stating why they feel the formation of The United Craft Brewers is necessary. The most significant measure the group proposes to take is to create a definition for what constitutes a ‘craft brewery’ in the UK and submit it to be accepted by the wider industry. Magic Rock’s statement made for


“Now that ‘Craft’ has become the go to buzzword for beer branding that the term is being misused and could be misleading to customers.

Why Britain’s newest craft beer collective might be exactly the

one the industry needs.By Matthew Curtis

interesting reading as they’ve never previously felt the need for craft beer to be defined in the UK. It suggested that now ‘craft’ has become the go to buzzword for beer branding that the term is being misused and could be misleading to customers. In order for these breweries to protect both their customers and the reputations they have worked hard to build themselves, they must define themselves as craft breweries.

Speaking to BrewDog’s James Watt I learned that a meeting has been scheduled for September and breweries that are interested in joining can register their interest by visiting www.unitedcraftbrewers.com. He spoke with the belief that he was doing the right thing to help this young sector of the brewing industry, that he has been so influential in developing, to grow and mature.

“You’ve got CAMRA who do their own thing and SIBA who frustrated me massively in my dealings with them. We want to create something that will be akin to the Brewers Association of America, something that can protect, promote and enhance the interests of UK Craft Brewers both at home and overseas.”

In a similar, more informal chat with Camden Town’s Jasper Cuppaidge I learned that the United Craft Brewers had already been in the planning stages since late 2014. He told me that there had been intense debate about how they would define a craft brewery in

the UK but that the overwhelming feeling was they were taking the action necessary to support their industry. There was excitement and perhaps a hint of trepidation in his voice but he undoubtedly felt that he was helping to build something that his industry sorely needs.

It’s not just about defining craft breweries though, despite this being the largest and most pressing hurdle. The United Craft Brewers is about helping breweries help themselves. This could mean aid in secure distribution agreements, better contracts with hop and malt suppliers, improved deals on brewing

equipment, staff training, improved communication and the sounds of what could be one of the best beer festivals that the UK’s beer lovers have ever seen.

The timing is perfect for the United Craft Brewers to emerge onto the scene. If this exciting, developing sector of the industry isn’t

protected then the bubble could burst and it will become the fad that some commentators see it as. The fact is that beer in the UK beer scene is now as vibrant and exciting as it has ever been and The United Craft Brewers could be the element that ensures it not only stays this way, but that more people continue to discover and enjoy the world’s best drink.

“The United Craft Brewers is about helping breweries help themselves.


GOING ORBITAL & OTHER ADVENTURES IN BEER

that you should be on the lookout for Hillside Brewery, lovely balanced beers, some exciting experimental hop brews that you won’t find anywhere else and a very, very tasty stab at cider – talented and under the radar, for now.And, finally, all of you who got to go to the opening of the Magic Rock Taproom… I hate you – I got to see it being built but I’m sure it’s going to be an absolute cracker of a place to be and I wish the guys all the very best of luck with their venture.

Whilst I’m on the subject of Magic Rock, I’ve been musing over the tie up between Camden Town, Beavertown, BrewDog & beer distributor James Clay to create United Craft Brewers and I’m still a bit torn.

There’s been a lot of griping about this being ‘the cool kids’ getting together to form their own gang and that it feels elitist.

Personally, I can’t (and won’t) blame any of the breweries involved for their success – I’ll leave that to the haters – and I’m genuinely interested to see where this is going to go as I do believe the parties involved have mainly good intentions.

I have long said there are simply too many voices and too many self-interested parties all talking at the

Going Orbital & Other

Adventures in Beer

Government but not saying the same thing and it’s high time there was a single voice speaking for the evolved face of the UK brewing industry.However, I have little truck with beers being defined as ‘craft’ or not based on the model from the US because it simply can’t just be translated to over here in the same way, so I sincerely hope they really think this through before plopping a blanket edict that could prove damaging to traditional businesses that have kept beer flowing on our shores in the face of much adversity.

My main concern however, is that I am always faintly suspicious when a commercial entity gets involved in

things like this. That is not an attack on James Clay, either the company or the person, as I happen to like and respect them a lot – but I can’t help but wonder what the angle is. If I’m being really honest, I think having a non-brewing entity involved from the off undermines the purity of the initiative and gives it an air of self-interest that I’m struggling to get past – but I’m honestly going to try and can’t wait until September to see what the shape of this initiative is.

What do you think should happen? Tweet me @melissacole with your feelings on the matter.

I feel I should start my new column with something positive but there’s been something that’s been really

bugging me for a while and, I’m sorry, but I’m going to share this thorn in my virtual side…

Why don’t businesses put their address on their Twitter profile?

I completely appreciate that I seriously need to get a life that doesn’t revolve around the goings on of a little blue bird but it really bothers me that as a brewery you would put: “Open Wednesday to Friday from 5pm, Saturday & Sunday from 12pm” and then not put the actual address of where you are, how do you expect people to visit? Guess? Roam the land using their sixth sense and chanting I see dead kegs?

I’d suggest that this isn’t the way forward because, trust me, if beer made you psychic I’d have won the lottery 500 times over and appointed myself Grand High Poobah of the Entire Known World.

Just before I finish this little rant, I’d like to just make a public safety announcement: don’t do this with any personal accounts or you may become unwelcomely, and perhaps intimately, acquainted with the more

‘specialised’ corners of the internet in real life – besides, there’s Tinder for that.

Moving swiftly on, I’ll now leap to the good stuff – first off we’ll start with the breweries that have been most impressing me recently.

London first, because that’s my manor, and Orbit beers – they are a class act from what I’ve tasted.

Balanced, clean, lovely branding, simply delicious and seem to have got the Nico right in a can from the off - which I will have to caveat with it’s not a Kolsch any German drinker would recognise but a lovely beer all the same (and before anyone writes in and says that it can’t be Kolsch as it’s not brewed in Cologne, I know, but Kolsch-style would have been really clunky in that sentence!).

I’m also incredibly excited to see what the lovely and talented Derek Prentice is brewing up at Wimbledon brewery, they managed to sneak the first beer out in time for the tennis championships and I’m sure it’ll be fantastic from the first serve (sorry, couldn’t help myself).

Next up is a brewery I have written about a few times, but I can’t say enough

“I think having a non-brewing entity involved from the off undermines the purity of the initiative and gives it an air of self-interest

“There’s been a lot of griping about this being ‘the cool kids’ getting together to form their own gang and that it feels elitist.


MELISSA COLE

In her first, exclusive column for Ferment, Melissa Cole ponders the need and reasons behind the creation of the United Craft Brewers.


Wiper and TrueQuintet

Natural Selection BrewingBitter Descent

Gypsy IncSoft Focus

De MolenHamer & Sikkel

Firebrand Brewing CoBlack Saison

Brewed exclusively for Beer52.This is an all out India Pale Ale blending five princely hops (Citra, Ella, Galaxy, Mosaic and Simcoe). Bright tropical and citrus fruit flavours combine with floral notes and a satisfying pine bitterness to create a harmony of bold flavours. Bottle conditioned.

Brand new beer from Natural Selection Brewing.The culmination of over six months of development for the Natural Selection Brewing team, Bitter Descent is a classic American Extra Special Bitter. Bitter Descent pours golden amber, at 5.1%, with an aroma of citrus and undercurrent of fresh blueberry. Malty sweetness leads on the tongue, closely followed by a strong but not overpowering bitterness.

Soft Focus is a Wheat Ale crazed up with Amarillo and Tettnanger hops. Flowerful notes from the wheat create a harmonious blend with the hops and add aromas of freshly pressed citrus fruits and elderflowers. It is bright, beautiful and the perfect choice for a day at the beach. Light hazy, golden with a frothy white head and good lacings. Floral aromas like wet grass, elderflower are noticeable but also lemon/orange peel. Light effervescent, soft texture and light bodied. Some wheat-flowery sweetness with a well balanced hop-spice lemon-peel bitterness, lightly dry. With a lingering finish this is a nice thirst quencher!

Hamer & Sikkel is a robust porter with a roasted malty character from the Munich, Choco, Brown and Oatmeal malts. This gives it strong chocolate, coffee and wood flavours with a hint of blackberries all finished off with a soft but intense bitterness. Bottle conditioned.

This beer combines great British and Belgian beer heritages to make a beer that takes elements from British stouts and Belgian farmhouse saisons. Dark and full of roasted malt flavours, with a smoothness from the high wheat content, delicately hopped with European hops adding a hint of floral hop, and then fermented with a saison yeast filling the beer with complex funky fruity flavour that complement the rich malt notes. Bottle conditioned.

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WHAT WE’RE DRINKING...


Panda Frog ProjectPandamonium

Celt ExperienceLe Tene

North UnionPale Ale

Chorlton Brewing CoWoodruff Berliner

BrewfistTerminal Pale Ale

This quirky number from Mordue’s anarchist spin off Panda Frog Project really is a full on IPA. It is a hop driven Californian style IPA with aromas of toffee and orange zest. The orange lingers in the taste with hints of marmalade and dominant pine and citrus flavours. This is a bright and vibrant beer packed full of the finest hops America has to offer.

So much flavour for such a low ABV beer! La Tene is one of the most complex beers in Celt Experience core range. It has been hopped with a range of different hops throughout the brew process and is dry-hopped to the extreme with Galaxy and Citra hops to make it stand out. A dry-hopped pale ale, full of tropical and pineapple flavour with notes of herb and spice and a zesty bitter finish. If you’re a ‘Big’ beer fan, and generally go for the higher ABVs – don’t be put off by the 3.5% – Give La Tene a go! It won’t let you down! Bottle conditioned. Also drinking Native Storm.

A fresh, soulful pale ale thrice hopped with a unique blend of hops from around the globe for an exuberant tropical fruit and citrus aroma. A heavy post fermentation dry hop helps intensify the resinous, fruit hop aromas. A perfect accompaniment for spicy foods and curries. Featured in this month’s 10 pack.

Perfect for aging.The regional beer of Brandenburg is Berlinerweisse, a low gravity sour wheat ale. It’s traditionally served “mit schuss”, or “with a shot”, often of bright green woodruff flavour syrup. Our interpretation is brewed with foraged woodruff and organic Pilsner malt. The natural sourness of the beer is balanced by creamy malt and grassy, pipe-tobacco flavours from the woodruff. Wild yeast taken from a 1970s bottle of Willner Berlinerweisse has been added at bottling. The beer will taste clean when consumed fresh but will get progressively funky as it ages. Expect barnyard and stone-fruit flavours to develop over a period of 4-10 months. Intentionally under carbonated to allow for carbonation during the aging period. Bottle conditioned. Featured in this month’s 10 pack.

With the name in keeping with Brewfist’s airport themed bar, a proper session strength beer backed up by a significant punch of flavour. It uses pilsner malts and 80% Citra hops which give it a extremely citrusy flavour with strong grapefruit notes. Some pine and grassy flavour aromas with a tart and sharp finish. With a low ABV of 3.7%, this is the perfect summer evening session beer, designed to be drank by the litre.

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WHAT WE’RE DRINKING...

You are over here to establish better trade and distribution links in the UK which is great news for us as it means more of your amazing beers on offer. So how have you found the market here in comparison to the US?

It’s interesting. In a lot of ways craft beer is craft beer, it’s about getting somebody to try your beer and sample it and hope they like it and keep repeating it. It’s all about building relationships to try to get a regular mainstay beer into a bar but in terms of the way distribution works here it’s very different. We have a three tier system in the States so as a supplier or a brewery we have to sell to a distributor and once you assign your brand rights to a distributor for a certain area that’s sort of you locked in forever, unless you were to pay to have it released or they would be willing to release the brand. The distributors then have to sell it to a bar or a grocery store. Whereas here you can just sell anywhere really, like how you guys at Beer52 buy direct from the brewery. That’s really the eye opening part for us.

The states seems to have such so many hoops to jump through before you can even get into the market.

It all came pretty much out of prohibition in the 1930s and the

brewed with them there and so we’re now going to do it on the other side of the Pond. Beavertown are one that have struck me as doing really well.

Speaking of Beavertown and their canned beer, Oskar Blues has trail blazed the way for cans in the industry. There is still some stigma attached to using cans though, how have you combatted this?

It’s been a big part of our mission since our owner Dale started putting beer in cans back in 2002. I think it’s mostly about educating people on why the can is a better vessel. No light gets into a can. Less oxygen gets into the packaging; Two of the main elements that break down beer over time. It doesn’t cost as much to ship cans as you can get more on a truck or a container and they are better for the environment as they are easier to recycle than glass.

And they look so good! The attitude in the UK still has a long way to go before cans are seen as as good or superior to bottles. We are definitely all for cans at Beer52. But did you guys struggle initially to sell the idea to people?

For sure! Early on it was a case of convincing a distributor to pick up our beer. Generally though once they understood the benefits of cans and

sampled the beer we were then pretty much in from there on. The quality of the beer has to be there and that really started getting everything rolling. Its interesting because five years ago there wouldn’t have been a white table cloth high-end restaurant that wanted to carry canned beer and now we have so many. A lot of those challenges have now been removed and honestly the more breweries involved the more validity there is to it. You look at Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada who said that they would never put beer in cans are now doing it.

There has definitely been a move towards cans in the UK too and hopefully it will keep evolving.

I think it will. I mean there are even businesses within the US for mobile canning which has become a big thing. It’s a truck with a big canning machine on it and so if you are a smaller brewery who can’t afford your own canning line, they show up at your brewery and you run a bunch of cans and then you can go and sell’em.

We need that here! There has been a lot of focus on aging beers recently. Do they age differently in cans?

They age really well. I think the less oxygen in cans is the biggest part of it but over time the beer oxidises a little


franchise laws that were developed afterwards but it’s very much, in my biased view as a brewery person, stacked in favour of the distributors.

Distributors really seem to hold the balance of power.

They do and if you assign your brands to somebody who is not necessarily focused on selling your beer and it’s very easy to get lost in the mix. A distributor could represent up to 50 or more breweries so if you aren’t at the top of that pecking order it can be really difficult. Even when you have a brand that’s growing and you have strong marketing, it’s still not a given that they are going to focus on your brand.

What’s the European market like for Oskar Blues?

We really are only exporting to Canada, Sweden and the UK at the moment so pretty limited. Oskar Blues’ long term goal would be to put a brewery somewhere over here if we are serious about making this a market that we can grow in. It could be a pretty cool way to get beer to market here. One of the head brewers is coming over in August and is going to be brewing a collaboration with Beavertown. They came out to Colorado a little while ago and we

We caught up with Chris Russell from Oskar Blues to talk UK distribution, canning and charity. By Erin Bottomley

CANNING BEER SINCE 2002


bit and that changes the flavour. The big beers like the Ten Fidy age really well. In my refrigerator at home I have four different years of it. In fact, there is a great beer bar called Brick Store in Atlanta, Georgia. Their cellar is in an old bank vault down. I was there with Dale a couple of years ago. They brought out a can of Ten Fidy from 2007 which I think might have been the first or second year that we canned it. It was delicious and 6 years old at that time.

So how are you guys expanding at the moment?

We are opening in new States all the time and hope to be in all fifty by the beginning of next year. So then the next phase is looking at international stuff. Our plan is to build more breweries like we have in North Carolina because of the great impact it has had on our business. We immediately came in and benefitted by being right down the road from the consumers as they see us now as a local brewery.

And you have recently acquired Perrin Brewery in Michigan.

It was one of those things that just sort of happened. We were up in Michigan for a meeting with our distributor who also represent Perrin. Afterwards, we wound up at their taproom and got introduced to the owners. Dale, hit it off with them. One of their owners was looking to get out so it was a great opportunity for us. The plans are to leave it as Perrin operating as a separate entity. They have been around for about 3 years and they are only draught beer at this point but we are going to be putting a can line in very shortly. In a short space of time they have managed to sell quite a bit of beer; 15 thousand barrels a year. Consumers are becoming more and more locally driven when it comes to beer. There are certain states where you have a lot of really great breweries and consumers in those states really buy locally like Washington State, Seattle, Washington, Portland Oregon, San Diego, California and Michigan is one of them. We launched Oskar Blues in Michigan about 3 years ago and it’s been a tough market for us to break. People recognise us as a quality national brand but once they have picked it up a couple of times they then go back to their local beers. So this was a way of taking collaboration brewing to the next level.

Its a really interesting idea, I guess acquisition isn’t really the right word for it.

We don’t look at it that way at all. It’s a partnership. Larger breweries in the US have been buying up lots of smaller ones recently such as Anheuser-Busch and I think eventually the consumers start to notice. They start to think that it’s not necessarily the same as smaller operations. I guess in some sense we are doing something similar but we are still planning to maintain everything Ph

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that is pure about those types of breweries and so there may be some other breweries that we can bring into the fold.

As an idea, it challenges the norm. It’s great that craft breweries are able to do that now.

Well once we were a new brewery with lots of growing pains and now we are on pace to do about 200 thousand barrels this year. 5 years ago we weren’t anywhere close to that and there are a lot of hurdles you have to overcome from the standpoint of infrastructure whether it’s a sales team, or equipment or increasing capacity etc. We look at this as an opportunity to help young breweries get through some of that and to benefit from what we have learned over the years.

There is a lot of camaraderie in beer especially on the brewing side, it always gets a little bit more competitive with sales people because it’s what they do. I think in craft beer it’s always been that way. I mean it has changed a little bit in the States especially as things have grown and we are all fighting for the same space but in the end when 85% of the beer market is large premium domestic breweries we are trying to take space from them not from each other. And the consumer is making that decision in a lot of cases.


“A black and white label stood out – cartoon poison only missing a skull and crossbones.

Drinking Lava: Finding Fine Booze in IcelandBy Craig Ballinger

Words: Craig BallingerIllustration: Richard Manders

T he cabin shook gently as we breached the grey blanket of cloud cover. My wife’s fingers

dug into my hand and together our palms sweated. Pel hates to fly and concern is catching. We arrived thirsty and hit the Duty Free immediately. A black and white label stood out – cartoon poison only missing a skull and crossbones. We got half a litre of Brennivín and stuck with cheap shit by grabbing a six-pack of Arctic Berry Einstök in fashionable 330ml white man cans.

It was the end of summer and the days were bright and fresh, the snow still confined to mountain-tops. Iceland was already sagging with visitors. The island of just 325 000 people had almost one million visitors last

year and its fortuitous geothermal energy is being exploited by US industrial colonialists Alcoa. As we neither intended to point a camera at volcanoes nor smelt any aluminium, we felt sure we could be the kind of tourist the country wanted. On a coach into Reykjavik only we laughed when a pre-recorded announcement about day-trips seemed to be offering a number of ‘date-rapes’ around the city.

We got some classic tourism out of the way with a quick walk around the city’s huge concrete

sci-fi church. It left us cold so we sat down for coffee in the trendy Reykjavik Roasters. Over perfect wanky coffee, we both admired the fact that parents have to leave buggies outside in Reykjavik. We settled that this was a place we could call home. Our temporary residence was a fine

hotel room – a sixties lounge with weird artwork of varying quality clustered on one wall. The patchy wi-fi eventually helped us find the best spot to drink.

Microbar has the sterile character of the hotel it’s housed in but the bar is stocked with exceptional beer. Here we got a taste for Ölvisholt Brugghús. I

due to the prohibition that lasted from 1922 to 1989. Elvar explained the bizarre prohibition simply.

‘They thought if we were drinking socially all the time we’d become alcoholics, rather than just drinking strong drink at the weekend.’

People had been getting weird on legal beer (below 2.25%) for years by mixing it with stronger drink whilst home brewing must’ve been common. The market though is generally dominated by things like Viking Classic, a ubiquitous fizzy amber beer, and the style-over-substance Einstök.

‘…if you count them as a brewery.’ Elvar was my kind of guy, pouring us a glass of Skjalfti, a super-fresh lager ‘straight from the cow’ and explaining that even a place like Iceland still had big brewery issues, with each pub that sells Viking tied in with Einstök too, so not giving the independents a look-in.

I leave with an open beer that I only decide to finish on the very last

stretch of the drive to our next hotel, a faux log cabin next to a glacier. We ask

our weird host Dominic if the hot tub will be on in

the evening and whether it’s

cool to drink in there. ‘I see no

babies.’ A ‘yes’ would’ve done. As daylight faded we stepped out of our room and into the bubbling tank to drink. We’d picked up a few beers and had to be careful to work our way up in quality. It’s here that appearances are deceptive, as Einstök have slick modern

design on their side whilst Ölvisholt are fussy and traditional.

First up was the Einstök berry affair, a too-sweet luxury soft drink that was at least more interesting than their hopless pale and metallic porter. We drank it, of course, before moving onto an IPA by Borg, the microbrewing arm of Egill Skallagrímsson, one of Iceland’s biggest breweries that also produce a much duller line of drinkables. Borg make an array of beer of varying quality, but nothing is quite good enough yet. Ölvisholt’s Lava was the beer we were looking for, a perfect smoked imperial stout. We got delicately melted under the moonlight and rest well ahead of our drive out to the East Fjords.

•••

The long drive was punctuated by surprise mountains, glaciers, waterfalls and pauses at roadside benches to eat pauper’s picnics. We arrived at the Skálanes farmhouse late and without beer. Outside of the big cities getting a beer is tough in Iceland. Other than at bars, booze is only sold at 49 state-run stores called Vínbúðin. The selection at the stores is generally good but their operating hours don’t quite fit with

our tastes. As the Yaris

bravely scrambled up

the final labourious road, we were overwhelmed by a smell of red wine that told us a spillage had

ruled out our second drinking option.

After a wonderful

dinner from

our host we broke out the Brennivín. At the table we had a German couple, a pair of British backpackers and a lone Dutchman. We introduced them all to the spirit that saw the country through all those years without beer, the caraway-infused spirit known as Black Death. Despite being the worst quality, the drink was more than welcome. It’d been a long day driving and I’d been thirsty throughout. The reward was in the days to follow, where nothing more strenuous than reading, walking and picking wild blueberries occurred.

Back in Reykjavik, we finally met up with Snorri, the owner and distiller at 64°. He picked us up from our hotel and drove us out to an industrial estate on the outskirts of the city. There we found a beautiful copper still and the most perfect array of strong drink I’ve ever encountered – from a classy Brennivín via ‘candy department’ liquers all the way to a red wine barrel-aged 60% vodka. This was Icelandic drinking, beer was just toying with us.

Pel finished all of her tasters before Snorri gave us his notes, everything was delicious and abundant. Hours passed and we covered all topics of conversation with our gentleman host. His company and booze was such that by the time I realised I’d missed a meeting with the editor of The Reykjavik Grapevine, an outspoken well-informed print magazine, I barely cared at all. With a warm belly I felt I had the story of Icelandic booze – that the history and soul of the island is in the spirits but beer is on the rise.

drank Hrekkjalómur, a 6% pumpkin porter whilst Pel took on Skadi, a 7% farmhouse saison. We shared the empty bar with a couple in outdoors clothes who were out ticking boxes. With a tasting flight of 5 beers before them they sipped and shook heads – neither liked beer. They drank less than one glass and resumed their culture trail. They didn’t seem thirsty at all.

•••

The barman at Microbar had advised me to meet with a distiller called Snorri at 64° Reykjavik Distillery. Snorri would be our man to answer Brennivín questions and is apparently one of the good guys. Our meeting would have to wait as we were headed out of the city, to the East Fjords on the other side of the island. To add texture to the trip I arranged a visit to Ölvisholt brewery, which would only require a small detour in our rented car. We packed our duty free into a well worn Toyota Yaris and hit the ‘highway’.

Sometimes it’s a two-lane road, sometimes it’s a wide gravel path; sometimes it bridges rivers, sometimes it just toes a path along the south coast. On the One, Iceland passed black and green – through lava fields and beside every kind of mountain. Ever-evolving weather proved only a small distraction, as the big hazard was the dicks that stop unexpectedly to take photos of various parts of the severe and beautiful surrounds. To fit in the beer stop I had to push the Yaris hard, holding the wheel tight against a driving side wind – its tiny frame held the road well as we cut through several styles of rain.

We picked Ölvisholt brewery out from the other unmarked buildings by its old fermenter lying prone in the grass next to the whitewashed buildings. We poked our heads around an open door and into a deserted office, confirming the address with the sighting of a few branded bottles. I found the brewers with their netted heads in their bottling machine. They were having trouble but Elvar Þrastarson, a former home brewer only 3 months in the job, was happy to talk.

Elvar knew the brewery well. It’d been around for 7 years and was now producing up to 140 000 litres a year. Icelandic beer culture is fairly young


“Elvar was my kind of guy, pouring us a glass of Skjalfti, a super-fresh lager

‘straight from the cow’


When worlds collide: Five of the best collaboration beers.By Neil Walker

Buxton have been really smashing it lately, particularly with their hoppy and sour beers. But I chose Come Again as it manages to do both seamlessly and as such has a supremely refreshing quality, making it a real fridge favourite of mine.

It’s a perfect first beer, tart, pithy, refreshing yet not overly sour or hoppily dry. The combination of lactic/lemon sourness dovetails perfectly with the citrus pith character of the hops, which when combined with the relatively modest ABV and light body make this beer superbly drinkable.

L ots of breweries have a house style, something which you can recognise about their beers or a

certain way in which they do things. In the same way that yeast, malt, hops and water contribute to the flavour of a beer, so does the brewery itself, and of course the brewer.

From a preference of when to add late hops, to exactly how long you should leave a beer to mature before bottling, every craft brewer is unique and will have little idiosyncrasies that make their beer unique to them.

01. Buxton/Evil Twin – Come Again Sour Pale Ale (4.7%)

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

Surprisingly though, when two totally different breweries are thrust together the results are often astonishingly harmonious, and in some instances truly special. Like a really good duet, a collaboration can show off both breweries and contrast their strengths, rather than simply clash their styles together.


In a slight departure from the usual ‘you come over to my place and let’s brew something’ format, this beer is a blend of BrewDog – Hardcore IPA and Mikkeller – I Beat You that is then further dry-hopped after blending.

While recent batches don’t seem to hit the heady heights of the original, it is still a superb triple IPA and a beer which anybody interested in the effects of mixing such give a try. It is has a real depth of flavour, with certain elements such as mango and pine jumping out and then being bowled over by a luscious hardcandy sweetness, before a long bitter finish.

What’s interesting about this collaboration is that both breweries still brew the beer at their respective locations in Italy and America, despite the fact they first brewed it together all the way back in 2008, which might as well be 1860 in craft beer years.

An Imperial Pilsner, My Antonia was showing how good a really hoppy strong lager could be way before the likes of Camden gave it an (admittedly excellent) crack with their India Hells Lager.

What hits you about this beer is the generosity of flavour. It is endlessly juicy and complex with waves of lemon pith, grapefruit flesh and even a little mint, all atop an amazingly smooth and dangerously drinkable body.

This is a really special beer. Using Belgian yeast, powerful hopping and even brettanomyces, it could so easily have been overblown and unsubtle, or at worst, a mess. What emerges is a beer greater than the sum of its parts, with zesty orange hops merging seamlessly with prickly, peppery Belgian yeast character and the earthy funk of brett.

It’s an audaciously flavoursome yet amazingly effortless beer which falls somewhere between a saison, white IPA or even a hopfenweisse.

10 Finger Discount is just an absolute belter of an IPA, with juicy mango, grapefruit and guava all showing their heads right upfront before a pronounced bitterness sweeps in to totally wipe all that tropical fruit juice from round your chops.

Siren and To-Øl have both been producing some world class beers over the last couple of years and this beer shows what can happen when two brewing brains as large as these put their heads together.

02. Dogfish Head/Birra Del Borgo – My Antonia (7.5%)

04. BrewDog/Mikkeller – I Hardcore You (9.5%)

05. Magic Rock Brewing Co/Lervig – Farmhouse IPA (6.0%)

03. Siren/To-Øl – 10 Finger Discount (7.2%)

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

T his is no normal brewery. Nestled below the looming tanks of Tennents lager you will find

Drygate; a brewery, a bar, a restaurant, a bottle shop all rolled into one to give its customers a fully immersive experience of brewing. As you walk through the door you are greeted with the familiar sweet smells of a classic brewery. What you don’t expect is the full visual you have of the brewery from the bar; that’s what really welcomes you to Drygate. It allows you to see, hear, touch, taste and smell the whole brewing process, an experience not to be missed.

Their first year in business has been a whirlwind to say the least. It’s been a combination of some serious hard work and dedication to get them to where they are today. One of their biggest trials so far was that in the beginning the company they used for their principal equipment went into administration so they were left with bits of kit with no instruction manuals and a lot of figuring out to do.

It was a pretty testing time for everyone, or as Colin Johnston, operations director, says, ‘its been emotional but overall the positive feedback we have had over the last year has been so overwhelming that it makes it all worth it’.

Drygate has always been about collaboration and fostering new talent whether in the form of brewers, chefs, and surprisingly upcoming artists. From the beginning they have worked closely with the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) to come up with their beer labels. Their beers have been very much influenced by the artists work. The beers have been brewed and then the designers have come up with the artwork which has informed the names. It has been a very much involved collaborative process. ‘Once we saw the design with


the bear coming out of the man’s beard we really couldn’t call the beer anything but Bearfaced Lager’.

And this relationship looks like it will continue, with graduates from GSA working closely with the brewery to come up with a unique and special way to celebrate their first year in business. Their birthday beer APEX: Peak 01 has had some very special treatment indeed. A hybrid-saison that was created by the

whole committee with all of the brewers having an input into the final style so it is a great representation of all of the people involved. With a limited brew of just 2,800 bottles, this beer is bound to be a special one.

To cement their relationship further with GSA, six

graduate designers worked on six unique paper wraps for the birthday beer bottles. All of those that were

“Drygate has always been about collaboration and fostering new talent.

AIMING FOR THE PEAK

Aiming for the peak: Drygate’s first year in business.By Erin Bottomley

asked to submit an image for the panel’s consideration were invited to visit the brewery and see the beer being made. It was up to the individual if they made work in direct response to this or if they submitted something completely separate that was more in line with the work they normally make.

Brewing can be seen as an art form. Sam de Santis, artist and coordinator of the project, say ‘the experimental and playful approach that many have to craft brewing is very similar to the way designers and artists work. With the ethos of experimentation, play and an element of risk is at the heart of what they do so it makes sense that they collaborate like this and long may it continue.’ All pieces are hand signed and numbered making them a work worth holding onto. We were lucky enough to get our hands on each of the six bottles with their accompanying labels and we will be giving them all away to one lucky reader. Please see across for details.

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DRYGATE’S FIRST YEAR IN BUSINESS

We are giving one of our lucky readers the chance to win all six of Drygate’s APEX: Peak 01.

All you need to do to enter is tweet us your caption for the picture. Send us your caption to @beer52hq.

Competition will close on the Friday 14th of August. Winner announced Monday 17th.

The Designers:Rae-Yen Song – ‘Paper Towel Holder’Fran Caballero – ‘Gogoplata’ Paul Flynn Brady – ‘POW’ Alice Hoskins – ‘Hops’ Isabella Widger – ‘Artisan Communication’ Matthew Bainbridge – ‘2 Cool 4 U’

The Beer:Pours burnt orange with an aroma of summer fruits,

strawberries & cream, and a slight hint of peppery spice. An explosion of fruity flavours including mango,

apricot and berries with bitterness coming from the powerful hops with a bold pepper/spice backbone.

Crisp, balanced mouthfeel with a dry, lasting finish.

Tweet us your caption @beer52hq

Caption Competition


I s it starting to look like summer is here? We certainly hope so but we are also well aware that as soon

as anyone whispers ‘summer’ in this country it’s gone! Well we’re not going to let that dampen our spirits, so roll on the summery dishes and beers in the sunshine.

This fish bake is really simple and quick to put together – no faff just flavour, including some of our favourite summer time tastes. We’ve paired it up with the Gyspy Inc Soft Focus as it’s delicate with floral and citrus notes that complement but don’t overpower the fish. It’s also a good comfort dish, as the hearty mix of beans and chorizo give it some body, We’ve used a bit of saffron in this dish as well, as it gives it a lovely smokey

flavour and a wonderful sunshine colour to the fish.

So whether it’s beautiful weather outside or the heavens have just opened, don’t worry about what to have for dinner. Pop this dish on, put your feet up and enjoy the bright and light flavours.

If you try this recipe make sure you send us a snap, we would love to see your culinary creations! Tag us on instagram @thehungrybearsblog and @beer52HQ, or a tweet @hungrybearsblog and @beer52HQ.

SPANISH BAKED FISH BY THE HUNGRY BEARS’ BLOG

Recipe:

Prep time: 5 minsCook time: 30 minsTotal time: 35 mins

Makes: 4 portions

Ingredients:

4 white fish fillets (we’ve used cod)250ml Soft Focus wheat ale330g cannellini beans300g haricot beans1 large onion diced150g chorizo diced250g cherry tomatoes halved2 cloves of garlic slicedBunch of fresh thyme choppedPinch of saffron400g broccoliGrated rind of lemon1/2 tsp chilli flakes1 tbsp olive oilSalt and pepper

1. Set your oven to 200°C. In a small pan add the chorizo and fry gently for a couple of minutes to allow the oils to come out. Add the chopped onion and garlic to the pan and cook for a further couple of minutes to soften slightly and soak up the oil from the chorizo.

2. Drain the beans and mix together in a large baking dish along with the chorizo, onion, garlic, tomatoes, saffron (leaving a few strands to put on the fish later) and chopped thyme. Season generously with salt and pepper.

3. Place the fish fillets on top of the mixture then pour the beer over the fish fillets and beans mixture. Season the fillets and place the remaining strands of saffron on top of the fish.

4. Cover the dish with a lid or foil and place in the preheated oven. Cook for 25-30 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fish, checking that the largest piece is cooked through before you serve.

5. Steam the broccoli florets in a pan for 4 minutes until almost tender, then drain and add the lemon rind, chilli flakes, olive oil, and salt and pepper to the pan. Over a very low heat warm though and mix together gently to coat and infuse the broccoli and serve.

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ferment // issue 14

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