This collaboration beer with the wonderful Woodshedding Brewery is the result of much planning and back and forth with Adrian Peskin, Woodshedding owner and Brewmaster, and an attempt at blending the philosophies and brewing styles of our respective breweries.
Woodshedding are based on Westcombe Farm in Somerset. They pay particular attention to the grain they use and source it directly from farmers whose practices, whether regenerative or organic, help restore soil health and rebuild ecological systems. Their beers are simple and reflect these values. Having a limited palette to work from allows their creativity to shine in a more subtle and nuanced way. Their beers are inspired by British and German traditions that are informed by Adrian’s own heritage.
We landed on a Modern Pub Ale which focusses on locally sourced heritage grains (a large focus for Woodshedding) and hand selected punchy UK hops, something that we have always taken great care with.
Woodshedding have direct relationships with the farmers who grow their grains so they know that the grains they grow do good things for the soil, livestock, other wildlife and our own health. Luke Wilson grows Plumage Archer, a heritage barley whose seed has been home saved ever since Luke’s father, David reintroduced it to brewers over twenty years ago. Over the last few years he has turned Lower Dean Farm in the Cotswolds from a conventional farm into a flourishing organic ecosystem whereby he rotates Plumage Archer with winter heritage population wheats, herbal leys and livestock. After harvest the barley is then dried before being traditionally floor malted 16 miles up the road at Warminster Maltings.
Woodshedding also use raw YQ wheat in their beers which they source directly from Fred Price at Gothelney Farm. Fred has been championing agro-ecological systems for some time now. Fred has turned what was a conventional farm into a flourishing landscape dotted with pigs by slowly reducing chemical inputs to zero whilst simultaneously leveraging greater sovereignty by positioning their produce outside the commodities market. He has been instrumental in the growing and sharing seeds of heritage and modern composite cross population grains such as YQ wheat and is a key figure within the South West Grain Network. This wheat can’t be malted at the scale required by Malsters.
In order to incorporate raw wheat into the grist we had to adopt a new mashing technique, gelatinising the raw wheat in our Mash Conversion Vessel with some base malt before mashing in the rest of the grist on top of that and doing a single decoction mash.
We feel this step has brought a real depth to the malt character and structure that has imparted a nuanced character to this ale which we are super happy with. On top of this, we utilised some pokey US hops in the hot side and hand selected whole cone Harlequin hops from Charles Faram and fermented with our estery English ale strain.
The body is full and fluffy, while the hops bring layers of pineapple and zingy orange sherbet. A harmoniously balanced beer with malt depth, surprisingly tropical fruit forward hop presence and beautiful drinkability. This beer, which we are calling a modern pub ale, is a departure from our usual “DEYA Juice” pale ale style and it has been a pleasure to incorporate Woodshedding's approach to brewing in this collaboration. As always, collaborations are about learning and pushing boundaries and this delicious beer is testament to that.
