Tempest Brewing Co, brewing beers for bikers
When asked, most mountain bikers would say that a good day would include an epic bike ride followed by a nice cold beer, preferably a craft brew, interesting and refreshing! The lads at Tempest Brewing Co in the Scottish Borders – keen bikers the lot of them – know this all too well and they know exactly what you need in your hand.
When Gav, the founder of Tempest brewery got chatting to Neil Dalgleish, the captain of the ship at the TweedLove Bike Festival, he knew his passion for both beer and cycling could be combined to make the perfect cycling beer. Gav knew exactly what would make the perfect post ride drink, and the ‘Totally Radler’ was born.
The Tempest team decided to make an original Radler brew for the festival and the cycling community as a whole, aiming for something crisp and refreshing and very drinkable. Radler beers were originally created with cyclists in mind, in fact, Radler means cyclist in ye olde German. Back in the day, regular beers were diluted with soda so cyclists continued to ride in a straight line after their lunchtime beer o’clock break. Admittedly they probably didn’t have mud covered full suspension bikes in mind but it’s still equally deserved.
Gav offered to show us around his brewing facility and gave us a bit of an insight into what it takes to make a great beer. After time spent working as a chef around the world, Gav has applied his knowledge of cooking and ingredients to his beer making. “Good quality ingredients and good process, that’s the key”
The good quality ingredients start with the best heritage barley available, grown locally and exported around the world, it’s good stuff! The Malt is milled in-house to expose the natural sugars and starches, then heated with water to create a ‘mash’ at 67℃ to get the naturally occurring enzymes working to perfection.
After the mashing process, the sugary product is removed to another kettle, this is where the magic happens, where the artistic flair get’s fired up. Recently, for a Stout the lads had 200 oysters along with seaweed and brine bubbling away to create something pretty special. For the Radler, this is where the blood orange juice and pink grapefruit gets mixed in, balancing the sugars in the mash with the acidity of the citrus fruit.
With all the flavours packed in, the all-important yeast is added to turn the sugars into alcohol, the beer is then filtered and bottled ready for delivery all around the country.
So, what’s it like this Festival-inspired, German-conceived, Scottish-brewed beer? Well, as Gav says “the proof is in the pudding, I was out riding last night and I came in here to check the tanks and fermentation, I had half a pint straight out of the tanks. That’s what we’re trying to achieve, something refreshing and drinkable. Being a low %age abv. we want to achieve a refreshing drink but not an alcohol-free beer, you just lose something when you remove all the alcohol”
So, if you made it down to the TweedLove bike festival we hope you checked out the Totally Radler, if you not, have a look online at the Tempest Store. And rest assured, as each bottle contains only around 0.66 of a unit of alcohol, you’ll be able to ride home in a straight line.