To celebrate International Women’s Day, we wanted to create a beer that would put women in the spotlight. The aim was to invite women from across our community to get involved with everything from the brew day, to designing the beer’s artwork. Culminating, of course, in a celebration on Wednesday 8th March with the launch of Crystal Clear!

We reached out to Sara Barton, founder and brewer at Brewster’s Brewery, knowing we wanted to work with a female-led brewery to help us craft the recipe and head up the brew day. To our delight, Sara was more than happy to get involved, and together we came up with our IWD beer plans…

After discussing the concept and inspiration behind the beer, we came up with the name ‘Crystal Clear’. Serving as both a nod to the punk band, X-Ray Spex (fronted by legendary female icon, Poly Styrene), and as a reference to the fact the beer is fined, literally removing all haziness and leaving the beer, ahem, crystal clear.

Special Thanks to everyone involved…

A massive thank you to all the women that joined us for the open brew day and helped us to create this beer. Thank you too, to Stephanie Brindley (technical sales at Murphy & Son), for joining us and providing another layer of brewing and beery activities! Massive thankyous to all the women who entered our pump clip design competition for all your amazing artwork. And a resounding congratulations to the winner, Alice Peake. We absolutely love this pump clip.

Lastly, thank you to everyone that joined us at the Old Cold Store for the launch on International Women’s Day, or has bought pint since. If you haven’t yet, join us in raising a glass of Crystal Clear, and celebrate women everywhere!

OVERALL INTENTION: 

To brew a robust but balanced golden ale with full flavoured malt complexity and a subtle but still juicy hop profile. We wanted the beer to be served in cask, present bright and for it to have a strong focus on drinkability.   

MALT: 

The beer uses a blend of Maris Otter and Vienna malt as base. These have been combined with sparing amounts of Naked Oats and Caramalt for body, colour and complexity and also Torrefied Wheat for lacing and head retention.     

HOPS: 

On the hot side, we used cascade leaf in the boil and Citra leaf in the hop back to create a base layer of late hop flavour. Post-fermentation we dry hopped with Waimea and Kohatu hops which bring bright citrus and tropical top notes to the beer’s aroma. 

YEAST: 

We have fermented Crystal Clear with our house yeast culture giving the beer a characteristic clean and crisp finish and helps bringing all the flavours together and into balance.