Woodstock South Africa brews with Fuller’s
South African brewery Woodstock recently travelled from Cape Town to The Griffin Brewery in London to begin brewing their collaboration beer for the Fuller’s & Friends project – where it will feature as one of the brews for the highly anticipated Fuller’s & Friends mixed pack.
Returning for its second instalment, Fuller’s & Friends is a collaboration project between Fuller’s and six breweries – this time from all around the world. Each partner brewery is hand-picked by Fuller’s and paired with a Fuller’s brewer and they are given full creative freedom – including the style of beer, flavour, name and design. The beers are packaged together for launch as a mixed pack in Waitrose.
Woodstock Head Brewer Dylan Franz [left] travelled from Cape Town in South Africa to kick-off the brewing process on 6 February. While he was busy brewing with Fuller’s Brewer Anthony Smith [right] we asked him a few questions about the beer they’re creating together for the Fuller’s & Friends project.
Q&A with Dylan Franz from Woodstock Brewery, South Africa
Why did you say yes to taking part in the Fuller’s & Friends project?
“We were pretty amped at the thought of doing a collaboration with such a big brewery, so when we got the call up to come out and do a beer together we were stoked – of course we said yes!”
Tell us a bit about your brewery and your brewing story. How did Woodstock begin?
“Woodstock started out when our founder, Andre Viljoen, was working in Korea. He wanted to get back home to South Africa and start doing something on his own, and he saw the craft beer industry was picking up and booming around the world and he wanted to do something like that in South Africa.
“He found a derelict building in Cape Town on Google Street View and basically looked at it and thought, I can make this work. So, he spent a few years getting the building up to scratch, and now we've been brewing there for five years.”
What was the first Fuller’s beer you tried?
“Fuller's is quite big in South Africa. We get a lot of London Pride and ESB popping up, but the first Fuller's beer I had was the English IPA. I enjoyed it, but then I tried Black Cab Stout and that’s probably my favourite.”
What type of beer did you choose to make for the Fuller’s and Friends project and why?
Fuller's Brewer Antony Smith said: “We found ourselves talking about beers that we liked and styles that we weren't too keen on, and that led us to choose to do a session IPA style.”
Dylan added: “On the plane over Mark and I were wondering what we could bring that's truly South African into the beer itself, and in South Africa we have Umqombothi which is traditional South African beer. They use mainly African cereal Sorgham to make that beer, so then we thought we could add that in for something truly South African. We also chose African Queen Hops.”
Anthony continued: “We’re also using British Olicana and Bramling Cross hops for bitterness and aroma, and English malt, so it's truly an English and South African collaboration. It's not a Sorgham beer, but it has a portion of Sorgham in there which should give it a unique flavour.”
What was has been the best part of the project so far?
“This is the biggest brew I've ever done, so I was really amped on watching it happen. With the number of floors that are in the brewery I can see why everyone's so fit and healthy around here – after brewing today I'm knackered!”
Fuller’s & Friends is brewing…
Fuller’s and Woodstock's collaboration beer Love on the Run will be available as part of the Fuller’s & Friend’s mixed pack launching in Waitrose later in 2019.
Read more about the Fuller’s & Friends project: Fuller's & Friends Round Two.
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