Glen Spean Brewing Co is based in an historic steading in the village of Spean Bridge at the heart of the West Highlands, where neighbours Ian Peter, James and Lucy have faithfully converted a mid-19th century steading from where we make our beautifully crafted beers. The soft, Lochaber waters brings a distinct character and together with our carefully crafted recipes led us to win the ‘Best Beer’ at the Highlands and Islands Food & Drink awards in 2019.
James and Ian Peter are also passionate about wine. They have hand selected a list of fantastic wines from smaller producers all over the world to suit all tastes and price-points available to buy from the shop or for local delivery.
With views over the Grey Corries, Aonoch Mor and Ben Nevis, this lovely old building has allowed us to create a beautiful space from which to sell our beer, local whiskies and gins and a selection of exclusive and interesting wines.
Everything starts with the water… and we are lucky in Lochaber, we have lots and lots of beautiful fresh highland water which runs straight off the hills above us. Our local water is unlike most; it has its own distinct flavour, its incredibly fresh and yet has an almost peaty quality.
We blend our beautiful Lochaber water with a mixture of single origin malted Scottish grain and quality malted English grain to create the perfect recipes for our beers. We mash the malt in by hand, mixing and stirring until the we have the perfect consistency, almost like porridge and then it stands for one hour. Once the hour is up we start to sparge or rinse the grain to extract the sticky, sugar rich liquid whilst simultaneously draining the contents into our kettle.
Once the transfer from mash tun to kettle is complete we then bring the liquid to the boil and once its boiling, we allow to boil for one hour. During this time different fresh leaf hops are added at different times to give a blend of bitterness, balance, flavour and aroma. When the boil has finished, the wort is cooled and transferred into one of our eight fermentation vessels.
The cool wort goes into a fermentation tank and when the collection is finished we add around half a kilo of the chosen yeast. Then the magic happens, the yeast starts to use the sugars as fuel and turns the sugars into alcohol…..turning the wort into beer! Once we hit our desired ABV we crash chill the contents until cold and leave for a few days to chill & clear. The beer is then ready for packaging and later distribution to our great craft beer-loving stockists across Scotland.
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