Welcome to our blog series, Behind The Barrel. We're putting together some great interviews with breweries that produce alcohol free beer and non alcoholic beer.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Lowtide Brewing for our first Behind The Barrel blog.
How did Lowtide Brewing come about?
We ran an online alcohol free beer website for a year or so and we felt that the AF world was being short changed in comparison to the full ABV craft beer world.
There wasn't, at that time, a true craft beer brewery that happened to be brewing alcohol free beer; what we mean by that is beers being released in exclusively 440ml cans, with unique and interesting beer styles alongside beautiful impactful artwork.
It was this realisation alongside a passion for home brewing that Lowtide was born.
Describe Lowtide Brewing in three words
Crafty, Innovative & Bold
What made you start brewing alcohol free beer?
We wanted to provide the AF world with truly craft alcohol free beer, brewing exciting beer styles that might not have been tried in the UK alongside pushing the boundaries of what you can expect from the usual beer styles.
What was the first beer you brewed?
We wanted to enter the market with a bang and we released our own take on a DIPA.
Strange we know given it's alcohol free but, we wanted to create a conversation starting beer that pushed through the perceptions of how an AF beer tastes and smells.
Your all-time favourite beer?
In the AF world, you really can't look past Lervig's Original No Worries, it's a beautiful beer.
In the full ABV world, we are big fans of Electric Bears Spellcheck, a phenomenal example of what can be done with Kveik yeast in an IPA.
And, your favourite Lowtide beer?
Our Brune-DMC is a big favourite with us. Its has such bold, strong flavours and can be enjoyed chilled or at room temp. It's such a versatile beer that packs a punch.
Would you consider doing a collaboration with another brewery? If so, who and why?
Absolutely, we've already released three collaborations with other breweries this year. A Pale Of Two Cities with Electric Bear and Who Let The Bees Stout & Gose On A Forage with C84.
We've even got a few others in the early stages of development with some other breweries. We'd love to do some collabs with the craft beer scene heavy hitters like Verdant, Black Iris, Queer Brewing, Pressure Drop...we could go on and on with this!
It would be great to see what we could come up with together given how incredible their beers are.
What’s the future look like for Lowtide?
We started how we mean to continue, we want to be seen as a craft brewery that incidentally is alcohol free.
By that we mean continuously releasing new and exciting beers throughout the year whilst not being beholden to a core range.
If we release a new beer that we think deserves to be in the core range we will gladly swop out with one of our other beers.
We want to have a continuously flowing line-up to keep things interesting.