Theakston and Tiny Rebel reimagine each other’s flagship beers

T & R Theakston and Tiny Rebel Brewing have created two new beers that are reinterpretations of each other’s flagship brews.

The collaboration, which involved a brewery-swap to invent each beer, saw Tiny Rebel brew a new take of Theakston’s Old Peculier to create Chocolate Old Peculier and Theakson’s brewing a Yorkshire expression of Cwtch to create Cwtch Gold.

Chocolate Old Peculier was brewed in Theakston’s historic Victorian tower brewery in Masham but led by Tiny Rebel’s head brewer Mark Gammons. The team, under Gammons’ direction, used Chocolate malts, 100% pure cocoa as well as Fuggle and Progress hops in the brew.

During the same week, Theakston’s head brewer, Mark Slater and his team took a trip to Newport, South Wales to Tiny Rebel’s brewery to recreate their Yorkshire version of Cwtch, which instead of using rye, saw Slater and the Theakston team turn it into a blonde, hop forward beer by using Munich and other specialist pale malts to impart a different colour and add subtle more malty flavours.

Speaking about the collaboration, Simon Theakston, joint managing director of T & R Theakston said: “Brewing beer is in our blood and so when given the chance to develop a beer in collaboration with the highly creative and innovative brewing team at Tiny Rebel, one of the most successful brewers of the modern era, it was too good an opportunity for us to miss. We are incredibly excited at the prospect of tasting the two new beers.”

Mo Syed, chief demand officer of Tiny Rebel added: ”In the world of cask beer brewing they don’t come much bigger than Theakston’s of Masham, so to be associated with them in a collaboration is a matter of enormous pride to us. We look forward to the outcome of our brewers’ skills and hopefully further brewing collaborations between us in future.”

The two new beers, Chocolate Old Peculier and Golden Cwtch, will be featured in a number of special seasonal ale programmes during the months of July and August and will also be available in Tiny Rebel’s Brewery Bars in Newport and Cardiff, and Theakston’s Black Bull in Paradise in Masham.