Utopian Brewing releases 2023 Festbier

Utopian Brewing has released its 2023 Festbier, a limited-edition beer featuring UK-grown Hersbrucker whole cone Noble hops in its recipe.

The 2023 Festbier is a 5.5% ABV brew that pays homage to classic styles but has been created using only 100% British-grown ingredients.

Each year, Utopian Brewing, based in Devonshire, chooses to add a distinctive feature to the classic Festbier style. Previous years which have involved complex Augsberg mash regimes and heritage Hana malt, However, this year’s beer uses a traditional double decoction mash with Utopian’s house lager malt to build a strong bready base with EKG and First Gold hops followed by the late addition of the Hersbrucker leaf.

Speaking about the 2023 Festbier, Utopian Brewing’s head brewer Jeremy Swainson said: “Hersbrucker is a fantastically versatile hop with amazing flavour and aroma profiles so it was great to be able to obtain some UK grown cones. The hops were fantastic to brew with and I am delighted with how the beer has turned out, with heaps of fruity, spicy aromas and flavour on top of that rich bready base. I think it’s our best Festbier to date”

Utopian Brewing managing director Richard Archer explained: “Using home-grown ingredients was a first step for us to reduce food miles and our carbon footprint and it is great to see more and more brewers increasingly following that path. The range of styles and quality of UK hops continues to delight us but the future of UK hops is in our hands as we need more brewers to be brewing with them and not just the UK traditional varieties.”

Archer added: “We need more people to be brewing with the new young alternative varieties that we believe are pushing back barriers and creating genuine alternatives to the United States and New Zealand varieties as well as the European ones. There’s a window to try to redress the reduction in UK hop acreage and we will continue to bang the drum to try to reverse that trend.”