Tryanuary is a nationwide campaign, founded in 2015, to encourage support for the beer industry throughout January.
Last year, we attended a Tryanuary event at The Malting’s Taphouse, one of our favourite watering holes. We attended the event as punters, not as brewers, as at the time we were yet to kick things into gear with Whyte Bär Brewing.
The last couple months have brought some incredible moments for us, we had our Nothing’s Easy Pale debut at Malting’s Taphouse in November, and also our Yellow Sub DDH IPA beer launch at The Pursuit of Hoppiness at the start of January. Having only been going for a handful of months, being invited back to Malting’s Taphouse for this year’s Devon Beers Tryanuary event means so much to us.
Given all of the setbacks early last year, attending an event like this makes it all worthwhile. It is now the day after the Tryanuary event, and as a result, I am filled with appreciation, admiration, and gratitude. I am also hungover.
See, these events not only encourage support from consumers, but it also allows likeminded brewers to rally together, share ideas and support one-another. The craft beer community in Devon is so damn vibrant and brilliant, it is such an honour to be involved, the Devon beer scene is flourishing and it’s only going to continue to develop and thrive, so watch this space!
Last night we were pouring alongside; Stannary Brewing, New Lion Brewery, and Topsham Brewery. It was truly a fantastic line-up, and I am excited to see these talented bunch of brewers grow. We spent a quality evening with some great groups of people, Vessel Bottleshop (Plymouth), Tap Tinn (Tavistock), Wild Weather Ales and Riviera Brewing all made an appearance to support the evening.
Now January is almost over, we’ve got our eyes set on February. We’ve got a big brew day lined up, doubling our output and for the first time we will be putting our beer into cans. I don’t want to give too much away, we have some exciting times ahead and we’re only just getting started.
Cheers,
Joel, The Bear of Whyte Bär
Our second beer as a professional brewery was packaged this week, so I figured this would be a perfect time to add our second blog post, and tell the tale behind our second release ‘Yellow Sub IPA’.
Firstly, a bit about the beer itself. Our debut beer Nothing’s Easy (in case you hadn’t tried it), was a straight up hop forward hazy pale ale. At 5% ABV it was an approachable easy drinking tipple that we believed would be a thirst quenching crowd pleaser, and judging by the feedback we’ve received we’re glad to have been proven right. Yellow Sub continues the theme of murky hop forward libations, however it stands at a hearty 7% ABV. We wanted to take the opportunity to brew commercially with Yellow Sub hop pellets, which were one of our favourites from our home brewing days. Yellow Sub is a variation of one our IPA’s we used to brew at home, so we’re incredibly excited to share it with you.
Truth be told, Yellow Sub was actually due to be our debut beer, and we did brew it back in May 2018, when we were working with a brewery in the South West (who shall remain nameless). The brew day didn’t exactly go smoothly, we planned meticulously for our first commercial length brew, however a combination of a faulty boiler and being sent the wrong ingredients by our supplier made for a rocky day to say the least. However despite the delays, we hit our target OG, pitched our yeast, and a little over a week later we were raiding the conical and tasting our beer for the first time, and to say we had a restless night’s sleep the night before wouldn’t even be close to the reality. However when we tasted Yellow Sub for the first time, all anxious thoughts instantly subsided. We were incredibly happy, and somewhat surprised, that our first beer had turned out so well, despite the nightmare brew day. I will throw my hands up and confess that I am my own worst critic, and I would be straight up lying if I said that there weren’t a few issues that I had with our first brew, nevertheless I was thrilled with how our beer had turned out.