The award winning, family run Otley Brewing Company, has joined a growing “guest beer” trend by launching a series of collaborative beers with some of the World’s most well-respected beer writers as well as with Roger Protz.
The brewery has joined forces with Adrian Tierney Jones, Pete Brown, Melissa Cole and Roger Protz to jointly brew creative and unique style beers which are then sold as a limited edition special to Otley’s on-trade customers.
Otley have welcomed influential beer-writer Pete Brown to the brewery this week to try his hand at creating an Imperial Russian stout with ginger. Nick Otley and Pete will spend the day brewing before holding a beer and book matching event for the brewery’s Beer Academy members in the evening.
The brewery kicked off its collaborations with Adrian Tierney Jones in January, who opted for a dark saison, continental-style beer which Adrian and Nick Otley jointly named Saison Obscura. The beer was officially launched in March with a live and online pub crawl around top London pubs including The Rake, The White Horse, Cask Ale Pub and Kitchen and the Southampton Arms.
Otley has also joined forces with world-renowned beer writer, Roger Protz. Roger is well known for writing the World Guide to Beer, The Ale Trail and best-seller 300 Beers To Try Before You Die. Roger brewed a Burton Ale at the brewery in March and later in the evening gave a talk for the Beer Academy where he discussed the history of Burton Ales and how the ale has evolved since it was first brewed.
Melissa Cole will also be attending the Otley Brewery in May to create an elderflower IPA beer.
Nick Otley, Managing Director of Otley Brewing Company, said, “Joining this growing trend of collaborative beers has given us the opportunity to really experiment with different flavours and styles of beers in partnership with some of the best beer experts in the world. We originally brewed with Melissa Cole last year to create Thai-Bo, an oriental inspired beer with galangal, lemongrass and lime leaf and it was such a success, we decided to expand on this and contact other beer writers who we thought would be interested in doing the same. Partnering up with industry experts gives us the platform to market a range of limited edition beers to our customers, something they will not have seen before. Not only do we get the opportunity to try something different but it also means those beers have a stamp of approval from industry experts who are as equally passionate about beer as we are”.
Nick continued, “The evening tutored tasting sessions we run after brewing with each beer writer also allows us to give our customers the opportunity to meet them and to join in discussions about various ales. We want to position the Bunch of Grapes as a centre of excellence for real ale and the co-brewing and tasting sessions have definitely helped with this and have boosted our membership.”
