COME IN SAY HELLO
THE BREWERY
The brewery is located just on the outskirts of the main town in the Trostre Industrial Estate.
The brewery is pretty big and houses our brewing kit, our bottle shop, our tap room, storage for all the beers and we even have a little office there. If you’re curious as to how we brew our beers pop down and we’ll show you the process and you may even catch us on a bottling day when it’s all hands to the pump.
Below we have a little more information on our bottle shop and our bespoke brewing kit.
THE BOTTLE SHOP
We get loads of messages from our customers about where you can buy our beers. Of course, there are lots of outlets that sell our beers and they can be found here. But, if you didn't know, you can also pop into the brewery itself to buy our beers and merch. It’s a great opportunity to come in and actually see the brewery in action. We love chatting to our customers about how we actually create the beers. We also have a small bar with our beers on tap, so if you have some time to kill, why not pop in and take a pew and enjoy our beers in the place where they were created.
THE KIT
We very lucky to have a bespoke 1650 litre brewing kit. This amazing bit of kit allows us to tweak our beers meaning that we get the most out of the amazing ingredients that we use. Every brew that we do gets us around 5,000 bottles. Cool ey! And rest assured that nothing leaves the brewery until it gets the thumbs up from us and our quality control team! When we say quality control team, we actually mean Steve and John!
THE BREWING PROCESS
STEP 1: HOT LIQUER TANK
This is where it all begins. We heat up the water in readiness to mix with the grains. It needs to be at a specific temperature, one degree off and there is a noticeable difference in the final product.
STEP 2: THE MASH TUN
As soon as the water is up to temperature we add the grains. The hot liqueur (water) and grains sit in the mash tun for an hour. We do this to get the suguras out of the grains. The sugars are converted to alcohol by the yeast later on in the brewing process. The liquid that comes out of the mash tun is called wort.
STEP 3: THE BOIL KETTLE
After an hour in the mash tun, we transfer the wort (sugary water) into the boil kettle. The wort is brought up to the boil and we add the hops. The taste all depends on when we add the hops. If we add a lot at the start of the boil we get a very bitter beer. Adding more at the end results in a more fragrant beer. The wort is typically boiled for around an hour.
STEP 4: THE FERMENTER
After we boil the wort we cool it to 20°C. We then transfer the wort into the fermenter, this takes a bit of time as we have to do it a bit at a time. We then add the yeast. The yeast basically eats the sugars from the grains and converts them to alcohol. The stage can take between 5-7 days.
STEP 5: CONDITIONING
After the beer has finished fermenting it is now time to let it mature. It’s just like leaving a good steak to rest. We leave the beer condition for a couple of weeks, sometimes more. It helps bring all the flavours together for an all round better tasting beer. Most of the big breweries skip this step. It takes a lot of patience.
FINAL STEP: BOTTLING
We keep a keen eye on the beer whilst it is conditioning and as soon as we think it's ready, we bottle and keg it. From when we start the brewing process to when we finish bottling it takes around 3-5 weeks, less with some beers and more with others. We hope you can taste the amazing ingredients that go into our beers and we hope that it tastes a little bit nicer knowing that we put so much time, care and passion into it too.
Iechyd Da!
WHAT GOES INTO OUR BEERS?
WATER
Water is the most important ingredient as it makes up 90% of the beer. We use a lot of water. Luckily there isn’t a shortage here in Wales.
MALT
Malt is to beer, what grapes are to wine. It gives us the sugars we need to convert to alcohol.
HOPS
Hops are the climbing flowers that we add to the beer. They contain oils that add bitterness and aromas to the finished beer.
YEAST
One of the 4 ingredients that is often overlooked. Yeast is the single cell organism that eats the sugars and burps out alcohol. Without yeast we wouldn’t have our lovely beers.