The Arran Brewery is to commission its first Sour Beer Brewery at its “Arran View Brewery” site in Dreghorn North Ayrshire.
Sour Beer is all the rage and is the perhaps most dynamic and exciting segment of today’s brewing scene. While the art dates back, in the UK, to the practice of allowing high alcohol beers to “stale” in oak barrels were they developed tartness and unique favours the style is best known in Belgian and other countries Lambic style beers.
In some Belgian breweries wide yeast, in the air, is used to create unique favours in batches of beer which are then aged and blended to produce a sour beer which can have a flavour profile from non-complex and thirst quenching to extremely complex and thought provokingly sour.
Gerald Michaluk the Managing Director of the Arran Brewery said: “Our team at the Arran Brewery spends its time trying NOT to make Sour beer and here we are about to commission a brewery that has its intent to make sour beer. How the brewing world has changed in the last ten years. Novelty beers have become the fad and we are simple trying to keep up with market demand. The new Sour Beer Brewery has to be separate from the brewery on Arran to prevent cross contamination of the Sour and our traditional craft beers, as the techniques in making sour beer are things you try and avoid in a traditional brewery. We anticipate the first batches of sour beer to be available in 2019, as we intend to age the beer for some considerable time in Arran Distillery casks to generate a uniquely Arran style of sour beer.
The Brewery has in its development pipeline the production of both its first Ciders, Sake and Gin this year. These will all be made in small quantities and are for specialist retail market segments as we maintain our forward facing innovate edge in the Craft Beer and associated markets”.
.The Arran Brewery was originally founded in 2000 and has grown to a midsize brewery with distribution into most of the leading Supermarkets and has over the last four years, when property prices were low, purchased several sites with the intention of over the coming years expand its brewing operations onto the mainland and overseas. It has also signalled its intention to set up an affiliated pubco and has acquired several sites which it has, as yet, not developed. Between the Arran Brewery plc and its Parent Company built up a property portfolio valued in their accounts at over £2.4m.
FURTHER INFORMATION FROM:
Gerald Michaluk BSc DipH-WU MSc DipM FCIM MMRS Arran Brew Ltd 100 Wellington St Glasgow, G2 6DH. Tel: 0141 572 1580 DL: 0141 572 5681 Mobile: 07968 157788