Are your beers vegan?
Yes. Everything we do is vegan, we are owned and run by vegans who ensure that no animal products are used in our beers, merchandise or anything that we sell or use at the brewery or our pop-up taproom.
Are your beers gluten free?
We are afraid not. All our beers contain allergens, please check the labels on our cans or ask the bar staff where it is being served for details on these.
What does fresh, unfiltered & naturally hazy actually mean?
Fresh: Our beers are brewed in small batches and leave the brewery straight after packaging. They are not treated with additives or pasteurised to prolong shelf-life.
Unfiltered: Filtration can strip flavour profile from beer, so we don’t do it. Simple.
Naturally hazy: We do not add finings to our beers to clear it, this is one way in which our beers are vegan. Finings such as isinglass are derived from the swim bladders of fish, so we will never use such products in our beers. We drop sediment out of suspension in our tanks by “cold-crashing”, which means we rapidly chill the beer in tank so that sediment sinks to the bottom. This means our beers are hazy, but that haze is natural and full of flavour and texture. Some of our beers are chilled for longer so they clear more, other beers optimise the use of oats, wheat and certain yeasts to make them deliberately more hazy.
Can I arrange a brewery tour?
We do not arrange formal tours, as the brewery is so small (we like it that way) it doesn’t take long to show people round. If you would like to come and see how we brew and package our beers drop us an email to info@bestensbrwery.co.uk and we will do our best to arrange.
Do you sell bottles, mini-kegs or cask beer?
We only package our beers into can & keg. We do this as it is the best thing for our beers and those particular beer styles. We love cask beer, but we don’t have any plans to put any of our beers into cask at present.
We are often asked why we use cans and not bottles, there are a number of reasons for this;
Zero UV light penetration of the cans keeps our beer fresher for longer than it would in bottles.
The seams on cans allow for minimal oxygenation of the beer, unlike bottles.
Cans are lighter, take up less space and are easier to handle in the brewery.