INGREDIENTS THAT GO IN A CIRCLE
When we first started the brewery, we knew that we wanted to source our ingredients as locally as possible. With the foraged ingredients, this was always a given as we weren't about to travel the country to pick some fruit or leaves after all! Sourcing our other ingredients however was more of a challenge and for one in particular, the hops, we eventually had to go further afield. Having said this, we have plans afoot for growing much of what we need at the brewery, but more about that another time...
The main ingredient we use is Barley and luckily enough, some of the best Barley in the world is grown in Norfolk. It wasn't long before we had a chat with local maltsters, Crisp and Simpsons and started sourcing various grains from both.
At the same time as needing to source grain, we also needed to get rid of our waste.This proved more of a problem than we had thought and after several failed attempts at using them for compost, we finally happened upon Bruce at Worstead Farms who was starting Nofolk's first herd of pedigree Wagyu beef cattle. The grains are rich in nutrients which supplement the cows other feeds, so Bruce was keen to start using all the spent grains we had.
After discussions, we discovered that with Worstead Farms taking the spent grains for feed, we were actually forming a perfect cyclical chain in terms of our ingredients. The grains were being eaten by the cattle, who then digested it and defecated. The manure was then taken away and used as feed on the fields where the farm would grow barley. The barley would then be harvested and sent to Crisp Maltings for malting and then we would buy the grains from Crisp! You don't get much more locally sourced or circular than that!
HAZY BEERS... TO FINE OR NOT TO FINE
Since our conception in 2016, we have always produced unfined beers. In a market that has not always been open to haze some thought this was madness but we persevered. We had made a promise to some vegan friends, back when we first started producing, that would make beers that they could drink. Our mission since then, has been to improve the clarity of the vegan beers we are producing.
The concept of fining a beer is a simple one. An additive, most often Isinglass, is added to the beer. This clumps together the haze forming protein particles and makes them heavy so they sink to the bottom of the cask and stay there when the beer is dispensed. The slightly weirder thing is that isinglass is made from a fish swim bladder, who discovered that a fish bladder would clear beer and how is a question I constantly have in my mind.
Thankfully, through new investment in systems within the brewery, experimentation with a vegan fining called Brausol and a lot of hard work, we have recently been able to produce far clearer beers that are still vegan. Many of our beers are now also Gluten Free, but more on that in the future.