CHEERS TO cooking with beer Our beers use flavours that have rarely been seen since pre-industrial times

Winner of BBC Food and Farming’s Best Drinks Producer 2017, The Wild Beer Company uses wild yeasts to develop complex beers that add gallons of flavour to cooking

When it comes to brewing great beer, the guys running The Wild Beer Company believe the best way is to go wild – literally. Unlike many breweries, the Somerset-based company uses wild yeasts, including those growing on apples harvested from a neighbouring cider orchard, to ferment its beers. Most beers are then fermented in oak barrels to develop complex flavours. Wild Beer was established by Andrew Cooper (left, above) and Brett Ellis in 2012. Andrew’s interest in craft beers began while running a pub in Herefordshire. He met Brett, a Californian chef, in 2010 when both were working at another brewery.

‘Wild yeast is a magic ingredient,’ says Andrew. ‘When combined with bacteria it creates acidity and really funky tastes. Our beers use flavours that have rarely been seen since pre-industrial times when all beer was aged in wooden barrels.’ These flavours are what won the pair Best Drinks Producer at last year’s BBC Food and Farming Awards. As well as using fruit yeasts, Wild Beer harvests airborne cultures in the same way as traditional Belgian breweries. It also uses a 60-year-old sourdough bread culture from Hobbs Bakery in the Cotswolds for its sourdough beer.

Most of its beers, including its flagship 7% Modus Operandi, are aged in oak wine or bourbon barrels for six months to three years, then blended with other beers. Wild Beer now makes about 60 different beers, plus two gins and a distilled beer, and it runs bars in Bristol and Cheltenham. Of their BBC Food and Farming Awards win, Andrew says ‘It’s been a really big deal for all of our team. Exports, especially, have rocketed.’