Sambrook’s taps into craft beer market

London brewery Sambrook’s has made its first step into the craft keg market with a German/English pale ale hybrid.

Duncan Sambrook

Launched last night (15 November) at Sambrook’s new bar at its Battersea site, owner and founder, Duncan Sambrook, explained: “We’re normally a traditional cask brewer but with all the innovation in the industry, we thought it’d be interesting to take that and combine it with a German lagering technique.”

The mash itself is a traditional English pale ale one, which then undergoes three weeks of “Kräusening” during which a little yeast and sweet wort is added as the beer carbonises.

“It makes the beer drier and cleaner,” said Sambrook. The beer is neither filtered or pasteurised.

“It’s the merging of craft beer,” Sambrook went on to say, “normally it was keg or cask ad never the twain shall meet. But we wanted to show that we can be innovative and appeal to all parts of the market.

“You only have to visit one of the growing number of craft beer bars across the capital to realise how popular craft keg beer is.

“But, with the exception of a handful of notable cases in the UK, this has primarily been the domain of American and European craft brewers. So we thought it would be great to create our own product in keg.”

The new pale ale went on sale at 10 pubs across London this week: Ales and Tails in Twickenham; The Cut Bar in Waterloo; Defectors Weld in Shepherds Bush; The Draft Houses in Northcote Road and Tower Bridge; Manor Arms in Streatham; Sebright Arms in Bethnal Green; The Strongroom in Shoreditch; The White Horse in Parsons Green and Sambrooks own bar The Boadicea.

Sambrook added that the brewery was currently experimenting with getting its porter into keg as well.