New brewery to launch in Guernsey

Wednesday 14 October 2020

New local beers will be hitting the shelves in Guernsey ahead of Christmas, following the launch of the Little Big Brewing Co, which plans to fully open its doors next month.

The company has taken over premises from the White Rock Brewery, which went into liquidation in August.

The new brewery, which was set up in partnership with the Little Big Hotel Group, has already started work on its beers and hopes to launch them mid-November.

"It was 13 August that we all got together and since then it's been a whistle stop tour," explained Head Brewer and Director of the company, Gareth Chandler.

"It's just the right time to be doing something like this. There is one other brewery on the island, there is a lot of beer that comes over from the mainland and I think, especially during lockdown, a lot of people wanted local beer."

Pictured: Lager is already fermenting at the Little Big Brewery.

To begin with, the beers will be launched across the Little Big Hotel Group's establishments, before branching out to other Guernsey businesses.

"We've had a lot of interest from all over the island," said Business Development Manager, Simon de la Rue. "People are chomping at the bit to get into a new local beer. We've had some interest from other local breweries and landlords, so it's been really well received.

"The UK is locking down and their breweries are slowing down and we could see a bit of a beer shortage in Guernsey, so we are doing our bit for the island. We need to keep the beer flowing over Christmas otherwise morale may drop!"

The brewery is hoping to open up to the public for tours ahead of Christmas, so beer enthusiasts can visit the site and see how the beers are made.

"We take four raw ingredients," explained Mr Chandler, who spent the last four years running a brewery in Switzerland. "The first stage is we add malted barley and hot water, and mix it around for an hour or so. Then we transfer everything to separate the grain from the liquid - the liquid is really sweet because we've extracted all the sugar from the barley.

Pictured: The Little Big Brewery's bottling machine can process around 700 bottles an hour.

"We heat it up to 98 degrees and at that point we add the third element; the hops, which give it the bitterness and the aroma as well. That takes about 90 minutes or so.

"Then we cool it down to about 20 degrees and transfer it into one of the fermenters, where we add the magic ingredient which is yeast. The yeast is the key element because it eats the sugars and a by-product of that is alcohol and carbon dioxide - that's why beer is fizzy."

The beer then ferments for a while and sits in the tank for a number of weeks, before it's ready to be bottled and distributed.

The Little Big Brewery Co will launch with three beers; a lager, an amber ale and a pale ale.

"We've picked the three beers so there's something for everyone, whether you're a standard demographic real ale drinker or you're a modern age drinker, there's something for you in the mix," added Director of Operations for the hotel group and Director of the brewery, Charlotte Walker. "I just hope people do embrace it.

"We'll go through a bit of a development stage, so you might see with the first beer that we launch, we might launch it as a 01. version if we adapt the recipe slightly.

"We're definitely here to embrace the locals as well, if they've got ideas that they want to see on the shelves then come to us and share the ideas. We're a local brewery, we're all local people and we definitely want to embrace that feeling."

Pictured top: Gareth Chandler, Charlotte Walker and Simon de la Rue.