Latest / The Discussion Podcast / Inside Weetwood Ales: Cheshire’s Brewery & Distillery
Transcript
- 0:00This is the Late Late Lunch Show with Rod Maxwell. Supported by Matthew Dyer.
- 0:07Childbed learning in nature's playground. So it's Rod Maxwell on the Late Late
- 0:11Lunch Show and I am in Cheshire today.
- 0:15And I'm at a place called Weedwood Eels which is in the middle of the countryside.
- 0:20And it's a place that brews beer and distills whiskey.
- 0:25And I'm here with one of the brewers, Matthew Knopp. Matthew, lovely to be here.
- 0:30It's an unbelievable place, both because of what it produces and the size of
- 0:34that, and also we're sitting here in this beautiful bar-restaurant type area.
- 0:39Tell us the background. When did it all start?
- 0:42Okay. So, 1992, Adrian, who was a brewer at Greenall's Brewery in Warrington.
- 0:49When it closed down, he decided he'd like to continue brewing.
- 0:52He had a friend, Roger Langford, who was a pig farmer. So, them two got their heads together.
- 0:58Roger had the space, so he owned a barn, and Adrian had all the brewing knowledge and experience.
- 1:05So together, they started Wheatwood.
- 1:08Now, the name Wheatwood comes from the tiny hamlet, which is probably half a
- 1:14mile from where we are now, with about three houses and, like I say,
- 1:18a barn. That's where the brewery began.
- 1:20That's where the name comes from. And when the brewery needed to increase in
- 1:24size, it moved to this current site in, I think, around 2011.
- 1:30I think so. And so on this site, you are brewing several different beers.
- 1:36We'll get on to them in a minute.
- 1:37Plus, you're distilling whiskeys as well. And it's a big process.
- 1:42And we just actually spent about an hour walking through it.
- 1:45And I have to tell you guys, the smells are unbelievable.
- 1:49And now we're in, well, I mean, this is like a bar, restaurant type area.
- 1:53Yeah. We, we refer to it as the tap room.
- 1:55The tap. So we can, we can showcase all our beers directly from the brewery.
- 1:59You know, it's a, it's a 200 yard trip to the, to the cellar.
- 2:04We have Kat who's the taproom manager. She can liaise with us what beer she
- 2:07wants, what beer she wants to sell and showcase that week.
- 2:11And it just gets absolutely rammed. It's brilliant.
- 2:14Well, I have to say it's an absolutely wonderful looking bar.
- 2:18And I'm drinking the non-alcoholic lager, which is very good as well.
- 2:22And we'll talk a little bit more about the whole process of brewing beer.
- 2:27And I wish I had smelly vision because the smells have been brilliant.
- 2:31But we'll be back with Matthew here at Wheatwood Ales in a couple of minutes' time.
- 2:36You're listening to the Late Late Lunch Show. Back to the Garden Childcare,
- 2:40where little explorers grow naturally.
- 2:43So, Matthew, what you're brewing here are a range of different beers,
- 2:49ales, lagers, and I guess it all starts with core British ingredients,
- 2:56which is malt barley and malt wheat.
- 3:00Yeah, majority. malted barley, some malted wheat and a few specialist sort of moutes as well.
- 3:06And it requires a lot of energy because you're putting very hot liquid in...
- 3:12Different mixtures of the wheat and the barley, which ultimately is giving it
- 3:18very distinctive flavors of whatever you want.
- 3:21Exactly that, yeah. We've created recipes over the years, different amounts
- 3:25of different barleys, different colors, different aromas, and we just have to
- 3:30make sure we're consistent every time with every recipe.
- 3:34And so you guys are doing a bit of research here. You create different flavors
- 3:38and then you replicate that in a scale that means that You can produce it for
- 3:43bars and whatever across the country.
- 3:44Yeah, exactly that. We have a small sort of pilot kit. It's more like a home brewer's kit, really.
- 3:50But it works perfectly for us to sort of let our minds run a bit wild.
- 3:56If we have a beer style that we don't brew, that one of us would like to brew,
- 4:00we give it a try on the test kit. If it doesn't work, we go back to the drawing board, we try it again.
- 4:05We're not wasting huge amounts of ingredients. We're not wasting huge amounts of time.
- 4:09So it's really good fun. and then every now and then one
- 4:12of them recipes will stick we can then scale it
- 4:15up to the big kit so there's a there's a
- 4:18a limit to the smallest batch we can brew on the big kit so we have to scale
- 4:24it up to that we scale it up the the malt the hops we brew it and then hopefully
- 4:29fingers crossed it comes out and it's very very nice so the room we've been
- 4:34in which starts with the tank where you,
- 4:36I'll call it the mulch, but the mix of the malted grain and barley goes into
- 4:42a tank and there's very hot liquid put onto that. Yes.
- 4:46And then that is transferred to other tanks.
- 4:50I mean, it seems to go through about three, four, five different stages before
- 4:54you get to what would be the alcoholic beer.
- 4:58Yeah. So you have, you mentioned the mulch, the mash is what we call it.
- 5:03So that's the malted barley that the recipe is mixed with hot water in the mash tun.
- 5:08So in the mash tun, the conversion of the starch inside the grain happens and that converts.
- 5:16Starch into simple sugars. Like you say, that liquid is then transferred into,
- 5:22we have an underbuck, we have a kettle where it's boiled.
- 5:25We then pump that into a fermenting vessel.
- 5:29So it goes through three or four different vessels before we then are adding
- 5:33yeast and fermenting it.
- 5:35It then, once it's fermented, will go into yet another vessel for conditioning.
- 5:41And and then from there it's then put
- 5:43into the different kegs so that end-to-end process
- 5:47how long does it take for you to take the
- 5:50raw ingredient and then to be able to put that into a barrel that go to a pub
- 5:54quite simply a week so for let's say we brew cheshire cat on a monday wednesday
- 6:01fermentation will be complete friday that cheshire cat brew would be moved into a conditioning tank.
- 6:07It's conditioned all weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
- 6:11Monday morning, that beer is ready to put into cask and go to customers.
- 6:16And one thing that strikes me is there's a lot of heat. There's a lot of energy
- 6:20that the process goes through.
- 6:25Those big steel vats, I mean, they have to put up a lot of pressure that builds
- 6:30with the beer being, well, what would you call it?
- 6:34It's not distilled, is it? of beer being brewed. Brewed, yeah, absolutely.
- 6:38Yeah, so the process of fermentation will create new yeast.
- 6:43Now that will itself expand inside the tank.
- 6:46So when you're talking about pressure, we have to have breather caps on the
- 6:50top of the tank. So a lot of CO2 is produced during fermentation.
- 6:53So the breather caps work so that the CO2 and the yeast can escape out the top,
- 6:59but nothing could come in and cause any infection.
- 7:02That's how we control the pressure during fermentation. We also try to keep
- 7:06enough headspace in the tank so that it has space to do that without causing unnecessary stress.
- 7:12It's an incredibly complicated process. Your background actually was in chemistry, was it?
- 7:18For a chemical works.
- 7:21So many of you might have heard of ICI, the giant chemical works.
- 7:25So it was Brunner Mond who took over from ICI.
- 7:29That was where I used to work as a process operator.
- 7:32Which for me lends itself perfectly to brewing because brewing is just a process.
- 7:38It's this, at this time, this, at this time, consistently every day.
- 7:43So my background lends itself perfectly to that.
- 7:47And since I've been here for 10 years now, I've now added the theoretical understanding
- 7:52to my... I have to say it's one of the things I'm not very good at is consistency.
- 7:56And I would make a terrible brewer because I couldn't resist the urge to tinker
- 8:02And that's one thing you can't do, can you really?
- 8:04No, not with the core range of beers that we brew, which the customers come
- 8:09to expect to be the same every time.
- 8:11Like I mentioned, the pilot kit is where we can tinker.
- 8:15The main catalogue of beers, they have to be the same every time,
- 8:19so we need to make sure we're on it consistency-wise.
- 8:23This is The Late Late Lunch Show with Rod Maxwell on Radio Alty.
- 8:29So it's Rod Maxwell, and I'm out in Cheshire. I needed the sat-nav,
- 8:34actually. I don't know Cheshire very well, Matthew.
- 8:38It's gorgeous out here. It's absolutely gorgeous. Just to come back a little
- 8:42bit, you have people who come here the sample of the beers, it's a restaurant,
- 8:46it's a bar, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely.
- 8:48So when we decided to create the tap brew, we wanted to just make somewhere
- 8:53that everyone can just come for a friendly drink.
- 8:55But we do find there's a lot of people come from quite far away to come here,
- 8:59which is a testament to the atmosphere that we've created, to the beers that we brew.
- 9:04A few years ago, we started to do brewery tours with the idea of letting more
- 9:09people know where we're situated. because like you just said,
- 9:13we're not really situated.
- 9:15We're in the middle of nowhere. So the idea behind the brewery tours was to
- 9:18let more people know where we are.
- 9:20And now we've added the tap room, of course, word of mouth spreads where you
- 9:24can come and you can sit, you can have a pork pie, you can have some crisps,
- 9:27you can have a gin, a whiskey, a beer.
- 9:30It's just gone from stress to strength. Now, in the last, I guess it might be
- 9:3410 years or a little bit more, People have become more curious and desiring
- 9:39more artisan foods, drinks.
- 9:43I mean, have you guys got any theories as to why that is?
- 9:47I mean, it fits your marketplace perfectly because big brands are not as trendy anymore.
- 9:54No. People are looking for something that's a bit more local, if you like.
- 9:58I think they're not as desirable anymore, the big brands.
- 10:01I think people kind of look at them and think, you're not putting any effort in.
- 10:07You can create a product en masse that hasn't really had any thought put into
- 10:12it, Whereas you come to a local brewer like us, everything we do has thought
- 10:17gone into it. We think about every stage of the process.
- 10:20None of it's easy. The job's very physical.
- 10:23So I think people just want value for the money, if I'm being honest.
- 10:27That's the way I see things nowadays anyway.
- 10:31Yeah, and there's a uniqueness about what you're getting.
- 10:35Although part of your job as one of the brewers is to get the consistency every
- 10:40time with everyone. Oh, 100%. When you spoke about uniqueness.
- 10:45It's us producing Cheshire's first single malt, that's unique.
- 10:50And that alone, that takes so much work for us to do.
- 10:54Whiskey needs to have aged for three years before we can even call it whiskey.
- 10:58And it might not be ready at three years. We have to then test it, taste it.
- 11:02And then maybe it needs to have a couple of years. So you're talking years of
- 11:05investment to create a very unique product, which now we do.
- 11:09And now people know about, everybody seems to love.
- 11:12Yeah. And I mean, you put a lot of effort into discover and create.
- 11:18Then it's about replication, isn't it? Absolutely.
- 11:20Well, then we'll be back speaking with Matthew and we're going to be talking
- 11:24a little bit more about the whiskey.
- 11:25But I want to come back and talk about the beers and just what you are actually
- 11:29brewing here and what's on offer.
- 11:32You're listening to the Late Late Lunch Show. Back to the Garden Childcare,
- 11:36where little explorers grow naturally.
- 11:39So we're currently, we've trial brewed another sort of pale ale.
- 11:47I won't give too much away, but we've trial brewed that currently.
- 11:50We just need to taste that and see whether we're happy for that to go to,
- 11:53you know, bigger production.
- 11:56Now, you spoke to Phil earlier who said to you, our core question when we're
- 12:01brewing something new is, would you have another pint of it? Yeah.
- 12:04So you can have one. And if you go, no, I don't think I would. That's not what we want.
- 12:08We want our customers to be returning customers to have three or four pints.
- 12:12So that'll determine whether we continue with that beer or we change it.
- 12:17So I see by the end of this week, we will know the answer to that.
- 12:21And then we may be brewing it in the next few weeks.
- 12:24And what is the modern beer drinker looking for these days?
- 12:28Is it no longer just a very strong beer to get bladdered, is it?
- 12:33They're looking for taste and they're looking for something that complements other things like food.
- 12:38Absolutely. So there's very few people, there are still some that come in and
- 12:42want the strongest beer possible because they're going to have two pints and then they're done.
- 12:45But 95% of, especially our customer base, they want something between three
- 12:52and 4% that they can come in. They can have four or five pints of it.
- 12:56They're not legless and they know consistently that it's going to be top-notch.
- 13:02And that's where our core customer range is. So that's where we focus most of our time.
- 13:07And traditionally, British eels have been a little bit flattered.
- 13:13You don't always get the head that you would associate with a lager or you associate
- 13:17with a Guinness. Is that typical of wheatwood eels?
- 13:21No, no, not at all. No, we put a lot of effort into recipe development and choosing
- 13:28the right ingredients to make sure that you're going to get that creamy head
- 13:32and it's going to stay at the top of that pint, the whole pint.
- 13:36Now, we brew a beer called Harlequin, which is an English pale ale.
- 13:39All English malt, all English hops.
- 13:42Now, traditionally, the American, New Zealand, Australian hops have the punchy
- 13:46flavors, but UK is catching up slowly.
- 13:50But we believe Harlequin, if you get a chance to try that, is a very good representation
- 13:55of what the UK can produce and what we would can produce.
- 13:59And that head does make a big difference, doesn't it?
- 14:02I mean, it changes the taste or the feeling of tasting the beer.
- 14:08100%, yeah, because a lot of your taste is through your smell and a lot of the
- 14:12smell of your hops and ingredients are in the head.
- 14:16So for you to produce a good head when pouring the pint but be able to keep
- 14:20that head on the pint while you're drinking it is so important.
- 14:23If that dies, you'll find that the flavor and aroma of your beer will not die
- 14:30with it, but it will not be as enjoyable.
- 14:32So are you guys constantly thinking about what people are looking for,
- 14:38what their marketplace is looking for, and responding to that because tastes change at times.
- 14:45Definitely, yeah. We'll have sort of, not weekly meetings, but maybe monthly
- 14:49meetings, the brewers group with Phil.
- 14:52And we just look at, he does all the research on beer trends.
- 14:56So he'll come to us with a printout. This is what seems to be popular.
- 15:00This is what we might do for Christmas. We might do a Christmas ale.
- 15:03Then we can go away. We could do some recipe development, use the pilot kit again.
- 15:09See where we get to with that and basically like
- 15:13i say he will do the work on the trends and we will just sort
- 15:16of make products to suit the trends and again come back to the whole culinary
- 15:21the whole british scene people are pairing beers as they used to pair um food
- 15:27with wine absolutely yeah there's that many styles of beer now that it lends
- 15:32itself perfectly you have your punchy american on IPAs,
- 15:36which you can pair with certain foods.
- 15:38You also have your stouts, which pair perfectly with other foods.
- 15:41So I think the increase in beer styles, like I say, lends itself perfectly to pairing with food,
- 15:48We'll be back and talking to Matthew in a couple of minutes time.
- 15:53This is the Late Late Lunch Show with Rod Maxwell. Supported by Matthew Dyer.
- 16:00Towerbird Learning and Nature's Playground.
- 16:05It's Rod Maxwell and I'm down in deepest, most beautiful Cheshire at Wheatwood Eels.
- 16:11It's called Cheshire's Brewery and Distillery. And let's talk about the distillery
- 16:16for a minute, because you shall be part of that process.
- 16:20The smell, I mean, the smell across the whole place is gorgeous.
- 16:22But going into all those rooms with the casks, the smell was like you just wanted
- 16:28to have some ice cream and pour that over the top of it. It just was gorgeous.
- 16:32What would you say is the key difference between a brewer and a distiller and that process, Matthew?
- 16:39So in terms of creating
- 16:42the liquid that you are going
- 16:45to distill and creating a beer to that
- 16:48point they're very similar now the
- 16:51only discernible difference from that point is you're
- 16:54not boiling that liquid with hops as you would do with a beer it's at that point
- 17:01when that liquid makes its way into the still that everything's completely different
- 17:05so you're then boiling that liquid so that the alcoholic vapour will rise off.
- 17:12You're then condensing that alcoholic vapour back into a liquid.
- 17:16You're storing that. If you're making whisky, you're storing that in wood.
- 17:20If you're making gin, you've flavoured it already.
- 17:23So it's at that point that we enter the distillery that brewing and distilling
- 17:28are completely different.
- 17:29And you showed me the, it is distilled, isn't it?
- 17:32And it's a beautiful piece of, it's almost like something you would expect in
- 17:37an old Doctor Who movie that he was using to power his movement into space. But it's...
- 17:47It's got different levels where the whiskey is rising and that you get different
- 17:52levels of concentration of alcohol is that right exactly right yeah so the whiskey
- 17:57wash will come up to a boiling point the alcoholic vapor will come off it then
- 18:02passes through the column so it's like a
- 18:04plate column so each one of them plates we have
- 18:07three is a separate distillation so the idea is
- 18:10that the the vapor works its way up and it recondenses it
- 18:13comes back down and it works its way up again and it recondenses and it goes
- 18:16through all three plates the abv will rise as it goes through the plate it then
- 18:21recondenses in the condenser and we have a strong whiskey spirit for us to cut
- 18:26to a certain abv to then age in the cask and i guess in some ways once you've done that.
- 18:33That's where the difference between distilling and brewing changes because your
- 18:38your beers can almost go out the door immediately.
- 18:41You're keeping your whiskey for, is it three years, minimum?
- 18:45Minimum. Yeah. So to legally be called and sold as whiskey, it must spend three years minimum in cask.
- 18:54So that's our bare minimum amount of time that we keep spirit in the cask before
- 19:00we can sell it. We then decide, do we want to keep it longer?
- 19:03Is it good enough to sell it three years sometimes we think
- 19:06no it needs a bit more aging so we can take a lot longer to be able to produce
- 19:10a spirit that we think is good enough to sell whereas like you just mentioned
- 19:15a week from brew to in the cask the beer's ready to go out it's straight out
- 19:20of the door it has an eight week shelf life from the moment it's put into cask.
- 19:25Straight out the door and people can drink it. Whereas it's a lot more investment
- 19:29in whiskey and spirit production.
- 19:31Whereas with the beer, almost the process ends from the moment it goes into its keg.
- 19:37Actually with whiskey, it's another stage of the process because it's fermenting or distilling.
- 19:43It's picking up the flavors of the, is it cherry wood, oak wood or whatever in the barrel?
- 19:49So for most of its life, it will be in oak barrels.
- 19:52And then depending on the finish we want
- 19:55for the product we put them in different finishing barrels so as
- 19:58you saw in the in the whiskey store we have red wine
- 20:01we have port barrels we have sherry barrels we
- 20:05have a whole host of finishing casks which it can then spend
- 20:08sort of six months 12 months longer in the
- 20:11finishing cask it then picks up the nuanced flavors
- 20:15from each of them casks we can decide
- 20:18to do a sherry cask release or we can
- 20:21sort of blend them all together back into another cask
- 20:24and finish it in a different cask so it all depends
- 20:27on what we're looking to release as a final product and whether we're happy
- 20:30with what comes out of that cask and and so just to pick up on that if if you
- 20:37if you're doing a taste test of of a whiskey you might decide actually to get where you want it to be,
- 20:45it needs to spend a bit longer, or you change the nature of the cask.
- 20:49And that's where the real, I guess,
- 20:52the art of it and the knowledge of the distiller really comes through.
- 20:58Yeah. So our spirit that we create from our barley, our whiskey spirit, is very distinctive.
- 21:06It's got a wheatwood flavor that's the best way for
- 21:09me to explain it so if we taste a cask
- 21:12after three years we will instantly know that's
- 21:15it tastes too much like the base spirit still so that
- 21:18needs longer we try after we go oh no that's had
- 21:21enough time but that distinctive wheatwood
- 21:24spirit flavor is very noticeable certainly for
- 21:27us because we've tried it quite a lot so that sort of is where we draw the line
- 21:32think no it needs to have slightly less of the wheatwood spirit flavor and more
- 21:37of the wood flavor that's kind of where we draw the line i'd say yeah this is
- 21:43the late late lunch show with rod maxwell on radio all team.
- 21:49So it's Rod Maxwell on the Late Late Lunch Show, supported by our friends from
- 21:52Back to the Garden Childcare.
- 21:54And I'm down in Wheatwood, Cheshire's Brewery and Distillery.
- 21:58And I have to say, if you're looking for a day out, come down here.
- 22:02You can come into their tap room. You can buy some of the product.
- 22:05You can drink some of the products here. And there's a very nice non-alcoholic
- 22:09lager, probably one of the best I've ever had, which means you can have a beer
- 22:13and also drink. I drive at the same time.
- 22:15I'm speaking with Matthew, one of the brewers here. Matthew,
- 22:20how far do your beers travel?
- 22:23I mean, is it across the UK? Is it across England?
- 22:27So if they are sold to a wholesaler, they can go anywhere in the country.
- 22:33We do supply Cheshire Cat to a famous pub in Soho, London, the Devonshire.
- 22:39Some of you may be aware of that. So they serve Cheshire Cat regularly.
- 22:42Now, our team of three drivers can only go so far in a day.
- 22:47You know they can only carry so many barrels they
- 22:50can only go so far so we go west as
- 22:54far as anglesey and then all over greater
- 22:57manchester merseyside preston lancashire
- 23:01not sure there's anywhere else i've missed but quite a decent radius for such
- 23:07a small team i'd say with only three vans you're bottling as well as casking
- 23:12is that right so we don't bottle on site unfortunately Because of space,
- 23:16we don't have space for a bottling machine.
- 23:18So we do send our beers in 1,000 litre IBCs to a place in Cumbria.
- 23:24They will do kegging and bottling and canning for us.
- 23:28And will it do in the bottle just as well as it would do in a cask?
- 23:33It gets more shelf life because it's filtered.
- 23:38They get 12 months of shelf life in a bottle. Cans are slightly different,
- 23:42I know in the beer style as well.
- 23:44So for a beer like Turncoat, which is naturally hazy, it gets very finely filtered.
- 23:49Therefore, there's more natural material in that can, so it gets less of a shelf
- 23:54life. It's about six months.
- 23:56So coming back to the whole process and the whole industry of brewing,
- 24:02it's something that Britain was very famous for, Burton was very famous for,
- 24:07and that was partly because of the water, wasn't it, I think?
- 24:10And then it seemed like we lost our way a little bit and some other nations,
- 24:14America, are very keen on different and have a lot of microbreweries actually
- 24:18are very keen on their beers.
- 24:19Do you think that the industry and the craft in this country has returned and
- 24:26that British English beers are up there with the best?
- 24:31Yes, in a word, yeah. I think it's definitely had a resurgence.
- 24:35I know of several local breweries just in this area because this is the only
- 24:41area that I'm really familiar with but I think,
- 24:44The British beer, the British industry is definitely on the rise,
- 24:50even despite the news articles that you read that, you know,
- 24:54the big boys are monopolizing and they're taking over everything.
- 24:57From what I see here day-to-day at Wheatwood, we're getting busier and busier week by week.
- 25:03So I can only say, yeah, British beer, our beer is making a right comeback.
- 25:08As one of the brewers here, it must almost feel like there's always something
- 25:14else that you want to be able to create. Yes.
- 25:18But part of what you have to be great at is consistency.
- 25:22But do you have an idea of a beer that you would like to actually make?
- 25:28Or is there a type that feels out of touch because it's quite technically challenging?
- 25:34Or is there one that you would really like to try to create?
- 25:38Well, there's one that's, there's a style that's quite controversial and quite
- 25:42challenging to make, which is a sour beer.
- 25:45So I've had many sort of raspberry berry sours,
- 25:49but you're purposely infecting the yeast so that it will give you the sourness
- 25:57in the final product, which seems completely backwards for what we're trying to do.
- 26:02We don't want infection in there at all. So to brew one of them beers,
- 26:06it's very technically difficult and you could risk further infection into the
- 26:11beers that we already brew.
- 26:13So as much as I'd like to brew one, I don't think I'll ever get the permission
- 26:17to try, unfortunately, but they are very tasty.
- 26:20Ah, so it's got a berry and fruity style?
- 26:24You can brew a berry sort of raspberry sour or you could brew a regular sort of pale ale sour.
- 26:30You can do whatever you like. It's the sourness that does the singing,
- 26:34which for me, I really like. But they're very controversial.
- 26:37I'd say I'm probably in a minority there. And of your range of beers here,
- 26:42because you go from the Largos, the non-alcoholic Largos, into the Eels and,
- 26:46of course, the Cheshire. It's the Cheshire Cat, isn't it?
- 26:48Yeah, Cheshire Cat. Yeah, it's Blonde. We brew everything through to Silverback
- 26:52Stout, everything in between.
- 26:54So we have Ambers, we have English Pale Ales, New England Pale Ales,
- 26:59you know, IPAs, Jester, we have Two Bitters.
- 27:04Every beer style, apart from Sours, that you can think of, we make a pretty good one.
- 27:10So of all those, if you could only ever drink one, we would ale our beer again,
- 27:16what would it be? Harlequin.
- 27:18And what is that? So that is an English pale ale.
- 27:21So that's full English malt recipe and 100% English hops.
- 27:28It's superb really easy drinking not too
- 27:31strong sort of mid four abv just the fact that it's english everything's english
- 27:38and it just tastes super that would be yeah that would be the one and what would
- 27:44you pair that with in food wise some kind of white meat i think maybe chicken,
- 27:51yeah i'd say some some chicken or some something something along them lines
- 27:56yeah Well, it's been a pleasure to spend a bit of the time here and I've enjoyed
- 28:02the non-alcoholic, which is...
- 28:04What is that branded as? So it's called Pussycat.
- 28:08Pussycat, well, I'll tell you what, it's very nice, actually.
- 28:11It's one of the best non-alcoholic lagers I've ever tasted.
- 28:15Yeah, we think so, yeah. We did our research and we researched that,
- 28:18you know, even the people who are known for making non-alcoholic beers and we
- 28:22weren't that impressed, but we are impressed with our own. It's still got the
- 28:26lingering aftertaste of a lager. Good.
- 28:29And we're a bit less stuffy about lagers these days, aren't we? Yeah.
- 28:34Yeah, so not to downtread lagers, but it's difficult to get a lot of flavor into a lager.
- 28:42Whereas if you think of an IPA, it's all about flavor.
- 28:45So, yeah, I mean, for a non-alcoholic, it's pretty good.
- 28:50It's very good indeed. Well, look, if you're ever in the area,
- 28:54I think you could definitely take a trip to Wheatwood Ales, come down.
- 28:59You can buy from the shop, you can sample down here, you can do some food pairings.
- 29:03And if you're thinking of doing something a bit different, maybe with a company,
- 29:06you can come down here and hold an event.
- 29:09Matthew, it's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your time.
- 29:11Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thanks very much.