Borough Wines launches the Brewery Below

Borough Wines is taking its commitment to craft beer to the next level with the launch of its very own nanobrewery at its Islington premises.

Brewery Below brewer Daniel Price

Called the Brewery Below, the nanobrewery will be housed within the basement of Borough Wines’ Essex Road site and will be run by brewer Daniel Price.

Price has previously made beer for the London Brewing Company, now based in North Finchley, the Weird Beer Brew Company in Hanwell and Brodies Beers in Leytonstone.

Mitchel Adams, Borough Wines’ retail operations manager and beer buyer, confirmed that the first brews from the Brewery Below will be made before Christmas 2016.

The idea, he said, is to produce a core range of beers to be sold in Borough Wines shops and to launch collaborative brewing projects with guest brewers, as well as hosting bespoke corporate brewing days, and beer and food pairing events making use of the adjoining ‘Vault’ space.

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The Brewery Below houses two fermenters which will have a capacity to produce around 130 litres of beer per batch, according to Price.

The brewer intends to produce a regular ‘core range’ of four Brewery Below beers – a ‘house’ Pilsner-style lager, a pale ale with a rotating hop profile, an American IPA and a stout or porter.

The core range of beers will be sold in growlers in all Borough Wines shops, while a small, “Heath Robinsonesque” canning machine will also allow the nanobrewery to produce small canning runs.

“The idea is to make a house lager, because we sell so much of it upstairs and in the shops, and then we will create a small core range of beers that are always appearing, so people get very used to those beers,” Price said.

Price has also developed a homebrew kit which will be available in Borough Wines eight shops and will give beer enthusiasts the chance to make their favourite Brewery Below beers for themselves.

The first two of these five-litre kits will be a Citra pale at 4.2% ABV and a ‘steam beer’.

Beyond the core range, the nanobrewery set-up will allow the Brewery Below to produce more experimental, special edition beers – a particular enthusiasm of Price.

“The idea is to brew what we like when we like,” Price said.

“The key aspects will be that, fundamentally, the beer has to be a good beer. They’ll all be based around classical styles and classical brewing techniques, but because of my history of working for breweries where I’ve been in charge of the more out there beers, there will be seasonal beers and saisons and things like that.”

In addition to producing a core range for sale in Borough Wines shops, the Brewery Below will be used for collaborative brewing projects with guest breweries, as well as bespoke consumer and corporate brewing days.

Price and Adams will also look to create beer-focused gastronomic events when, for example, a brewer would be invited along with a range of his or her beers, and a chef would cook a pairing meal, while Price would also brew a beer on the day for diners to take away.

The launch of the Brewery Below comes seven months after Borough Wines announced that it was to launch its own on-site nanodistillery at its site on Essex Road, Islington.

The nanodistillery, which will be run in conjunction with Butler’s Gin, a small-batch gin producer run by Ross Butler which has supplied Borough Wines for a number of years, will continue to operate within the Brewery Below.