The team from Simon Rogan’s Our Farm has teamed up with the Cumbrian-based Fell Brewery to create the third beer in a series of four artisan craft beers, made with produce grown on the farm and ingredients foraged from the surrounding area close to the Lake District village of Cartmel.
The third beer in the series of four is Meadowsweet Farmhouse Pale, which has an alcohol content of 4.2%. This refreshing farmhouse pale ale is designed to highlight the delicate, earthy sweetness of meadowsweet flowers, complemented by subtle vanilla notes. The farmhouse yeast selected by the Fell Brewery team enhances these flavours while providing a clean, crisp finish. With a light body, bright carbonation, and a refreshing character, it’s an ideal beer for the spring and early summer months.
Fell is a brewery based in South Cumbria that produces craft beer deeply rooted in its surroundings. Its founder, Fell Brewery’s founder Tim Bloomer, grew up locally in South Cumbria, and as a result, the beers he and his team produce are deeply rooted in and inspired by these surroundings. The Fell team take huge pride in the fact that every beer they craft will always be produced by a small, passionate team who are committed to what they do and genuinely have fun doing it. They make beers that they want to drink and pour their heart, soul and creative energies into their craft.
Liam Fitzpatrick, Head Chef of Our Farm, is responsible for making the most of ingredients grown by Our Farm, including developing ways of using surplus produce to avoid waste by creating food products, whether that be condiments, jams, honey, oil and vinaigrette infusions and a range of innovative uses.
This shared approach and ethos for provenance, quality and sustainability, as well as the proximity of the two businesses, inevitably led to Fell Brewery and Simon Rogan’s Our Farm teaming up to work together. This collaboration reflects their mutual appreciation for the local area, exploring its seasonal quirks and celebrating the people who work its land.
The chance to collaborate has been a truly beneficial experience for both teams, encouraging them to learn new skills, share ideas and examine new approaches to working together sustainably, whilst also producing great beers made using locally grown and sourced ingredients.
Kayleigh Thorogood, Assistant Operations Manager with the Umbel restaurant group, said: ‘’Meadowsweet Farmhouse Pale is an exceptional beer using locally sourced ingredients in every sense of the word, and we can’t wait for our guests to try our latest creation with Fell. Working with like-minded suppliers is at the heart of everything that Simon does, and Fell Brewery are an exceptional example of that. It’s always a pleasure to work with Tim and his team, especially as we’ve now crafted our third beer together in the initial series of four.’’
Tim Bloomer, founder and owner of Fell Brewery, said: ‘’Knowing little about the application of meadowsweet in a culinary sense, Liam and the team were here to guide us through the nuances in flavour derived from different temperatures and applications. We fermented the beer with a saison-type yeast strain, and because we wanted the champagne-like esters to help blend the meadowsweet flavour into the simple malt base. We gave the beer a couple of weeks to sit in the tank at a cold temperature and mature, to further develop complexity. The result is effectively a subtle, balanced beer with a distinctive meadowsweet flavour, perhaps redolent of Northern French or Belgian land beers, yet certainly of and from the Cartmel valley.’’
Meadowsweet Farmhouse Pale will be available through Home by Simon Rogan and Simon Rogan’s Lake District restaurants, as well as for purchase through Fell Brewery bars in Cumbria and their e-retail site.
Retail Prices: £6.50 – 1 x440ml, £23 – 4 x 440ml, £62 – 12 x 440ml.
