One of the greatest privileges and pleasures we have as brewers is tasting beer straight from tank, at its very freshest and in its most raw and pure form. These attributes come together to form more than just a sum of their parts, elevating particular beers in a subtle but certain way. As the brewing community is such a welcoming industry, our affection for tank beer has been shaped as much by visiting other brewers and tasting their beer fresh and unadulterated as our own in-house experiences. I tasted The Cotswold Brewery’s 3.8% lager from their conditioning tank on packaging day and can remember every last detail about it - it was the best lager I had ever tasted - pure joy. Anyone who has tasted a freshly dry-hopped Pale Ale from fermentation vessel at the Kernel brewery, or a lambic straight out of barrel at Cantillion will have a similar story to tell. When we discussed opening up our brewery to visitors our excitement focused on the opportunity to be able to offer this experience and share what we are lucky enough to have access to every day.
As the conversation evolved we began to think about playing on the aspects of tank beer that we have come to love, and rather than simply offer up whatever we had brewing, we decided to design a specific beer with these features in mind. Freshness; brightness; young-ness; and ephemeral hop character bringing fruit notes, zest, florality and herbal qualities so fragile they deteriorate in the distribution chain.
We chose to focus on a hazy, juicy India Pale Ale dry-hopped towards the end of fermentation to pronounce hop character. We are one of the first breweries in the UK to use a newly developed yeast strain from White Labs, London Fog. This yeast has been developed specifically for use in this style of beer, to accentuate fruitiness and lend a full-bodied and smooth mouthfeel. The beer has been dry-hopped at very high rate for this style of beer, with 12g per litre of bright, bold New World hops renowned for their tropical fruit flavours and fresh floral notes. We’re proud of the resulting beer and can’t wait to welcome you into our brewery to try it from tank.
Although we like to experiment with other tap room exclusives, we always return to Phantasmagoria. It’s one of our favourites, and yours too. Our brewery-exclusive India Pale Ale tank beer is periodically available to drink in our tap room – catch it when you can and let us know what you think.
