Proper Craft Lager, Brewed Properly

Freedom Brewery is the original craft lager brewery – we’ve been doing it since 1995, and have perfected exactly how it should be done. Properly.

There are two main differences between bog standard lager and true craft lager: time and temperature. Ensuring we take our time, no shortcuts, no compromise. Brewing a lager which is bright, crisp and refreshing.

To help you better understand what makes our lager truly craft, here’s a summary of how we brew (and more importantly, why!):

MILLING

First, we mill our British malted barley. Simple.

MASHING

Natural spring water (from our own bore hole) is added to the malt in the conversion vessel, which is heated to make our sweet ‘wort’ (in other words, the sweet liquid containing sugars – yum!)

SEPARATING

The wort is transferred to the lauter tun, where the spent grain is filtered out. Did you know? Our spent grain is sent to local farmers to be used as cattle feed – we hate waste!

ADDING THE HOPS

Time to stick the (wort) kettle on! Bittering hops are added to the wort, which is then boiled to stabilise the liquid. We then add aroma hops (for that distinctive smell), before a whirlpool separates the wort from the remaining solid ingredients (nobody wants a chunky lager!).

COOL DOWN

The wort is cooled via a heat exchanger (basically, cold water heats the hot liquid and in turn heats the cold), ready to go into the mash conversion vessel. Not only the best way to cool the liquid, but also helping the environment by reducing our energy consumption by 30% – win win!

FERMENTATION UNDER PRESSURE

Time to add the yeast! Our little helpers – yeast – convert the sugar from the wort into alcohol (known as fermentation), while naturally occurring CO2 creates natural carbonation, delivering a champagne-like bubble (cheers!).

MATURATION (OR ‘LAGERING’)

The fermented liquid is cooled and left to mature for a MINIMUM of 28 days, delivering layers of soft, rounded flavour. Absolutely no rush, giving our lager the time to develop – if you were to try the lager at the beginning and end of this process, you’d understand why this is so important (but not all breweries do this….hmmmm…).

VEGAN FILTRATION

We use Kieselguhr filtration to deliver a bright beer. With no fish guts in sight (yuck!), this ensures all our beers are vegan (the proof: Vegan Society certification).

STERILE FILTERING

We filter our beers to protect the delicate flavours of our beers, rather than heat pasteurise (which lots of breweries do, not naming any names..). Resulting in a fresh, bright and flavoursome lager!

IT’S READY!

Our beer is transferred into the bright beer tank, then packed into kegs, cans or bottles, depending on where it’s going. Unlike the other stages in our brewing process, we put our foot on the gas here – quickly getting the beer packed, ready to ship out and get to you as fresh as possible.

OVER TO YOU!

Now it’s time to taste – enjoy!