At Yonder HQ, the factory of flavour, our passionate team of tastemakers produce vibrant pastry sours and decadently sweet stouts in abundance, bringing colourful cans of joy to the craft beer masses, worldwide. But take a moment to focus beyond the shine of the stainless-steel tanks, bubbling with colourful, fruit-filled ferments. Follow a thin and frayed thread of history, through the noise and movement, to a dusty corner, where an inconspicuous stack of oak barrels contains something just as vibrant, yet wilder. Not forgotten, but trusted to observe, as the world changes around them. These barrels and their contents have seen a lot. They have stories to tell. Let’s start at the beginning…
"... take a moment to focus beyond the shine of the stainless-steel tanks, bubbling with colourful, fruit-filled ferments. Follow a thin and frayed thread of history, through the noise and movement, to a dusty corner, where an inconspicuous stack of oak barrels contains something just as vibrant (as the fruit filled pastry sours)."
Wind the clock back five years to August 2018. Yonder Brewing’s humble beginnings. A small unit in the Mendip Hills of Somerset is repurposed to a brewery, and two brewers, with a background in mixed fermentation start their own journey, with a focus on flavour, fermentation, and… foraging? There’s a third entity in tow, one that they rely on wholeheartedly; their cultures of yeast and bacteria. Unnamed and untamed.
It felt natural. Marrying wild fermentation with foraged ingredients was a no-brainer, and that dream was made a reality with a series of beers that launched Yonder into the stratosphere of craft beer in 2018, straight out of the gate. That series was Loop. The concept tied our cyclic cultures to the seasons, a continual journey. Circular, yet ever evolving. We would brew into oak, let it ferment and condition for up to 6 months, blend on to a combination of wild ingredients (often a fruit and herb or spice), then re-brew back on to those cultures to start the journey again. Each time those wild elements add their own stamp to the mix. A beer Solera if you will.
But then the world changed...
During the summer of 2020, the demand for sweeter, fruited sour beers in can grew like crazy, and our efforts swiftly turned to meet that demand, leaving longer-aged, wild ales behind. But we reserved a special space in our hearts (and our brewery) for barrel-aged, mixed fermentation projects. A little longer in barrel won't hurt. On the contrary! We now have barrels of wild ale that have been conditioning for up to five years, and they are tasting fantastic! Which brings us perfectly on to the point of this blog post...
A New Loop Blend Has Entered The Building
After a long winter comes spring. Our Loop cultures have been hibernating in oak since the last blend in 2020. In 2023 we tasted them, chose our favourites and made a delicious four-barrel blend; much more than the sum of its parts. We then racked our brains to decide the best flavours to throw at this delicate, yet complex blend of fresh acidity and rounded tannins from the oak-ageing process. The timing was perfect for a combination of spring/early summer flavours, which held a a huge significance to us when starting this cycle again. Luckily, we had plenty to choose from on our doorstep; the hedgerows in the field behind the brewery burst with elderflower annually, and we have capitalised on this many times over the last five years. And what pairs perfectly with the quintessential flavour of elderflower? Another early summer favourite; green gooseberries, with their full flavour and tart acidity.
"...if you're open to trying new things, and value top quality ingredients, carefully prepared and combined with painstaking attention to detail, creating something very special, then Loop is definitely for you."
If you're relatively new to what we do at Yonder, and mostly know us for our pastry sours and pastry stouts, then Loop (and wild ales in general) are in a different category to those beers; There's no sweet finish, or glass-coating thickness. But if you're open to trying new things, and value top quality ingredients, carefully prepared and combined with painstaking attention to detail, creating something very special, then Loop is definitely for you.
