UnBarred x Elusive Brewing: Ginger Beer
We caught up with the fantastic Andy and Ruth of Elusive Brewing ahead of our collab release to deep dive behind their story.
Elusive Brewing is a 5BBL brewery based in Finchampstead, Berkshire. Made up of a small team of 3, Andy founded the company in 2016 and is Head Brewer and Managing Director. Ricky, who joined Elusive in 2020 as a Brewer and Ruth joined in 2021 as Head of Sales, Marketing & Events.
Like UnBarred, Elusive Brewing started as a home brewing hobby that got way out of control! Andy won the Craft Beer Co's National Home Brewing Awards in 2014 and drunkenly decided that the prize money was going to go towards opening a brewery. Two years and several failed lease negotiations later, Andy started brewing commercially with help from Weird Beard and Siren along the way through collaborations to get the name out there.
Andy and the team focus mostly on clean, easy drinking Pales for cask and keg but their ethos is about brewing consistently whilst have a bit of fun along the way. Andy was inspired by the flavours and aromas of the American and Belgian beers on which he cut his teeth. Since day one, it has been Elusive Brewing’s aim to be good rather than big. They have no desire to take over the world, just to brew consistently good beer that people come back to time and again.
Andy said of the upcoming collab;
“In terms of the beer, it's an unusual set of flavours to combine and that's always a challenge. Ginger and lemon can both be intense so there's a bit of skill required to balance those flavours against the hops and yeast esters. We've always enjoyed these kind of challenges. As I speak, we have an Earl Grey Black IPA in tank which we're still tinkering with using various tricks we've learned along the way. It was also exciting to work with Jordan - someone I've known since our home brewing days. We used to interact a lot on twitter and met a few times along the way. It's been fantastic watching his hard work pay off as UnBarred continues to grow!”
Looking forward, Elusive Brewing are continuing to explore their love of West Coast IPAs at the moment and having lots of fun with that. They’re also looking to expand production in the coming months and options for taking on more space into which they can grow.
“The incredible support we received during the pandemic has given us the confidence to push on and see what we can achieve. We're known for being very collaborative so expect a few more collaboration brews too!”
You can find out more about the UnBarred collaboration with Elusive Brewing on our socials and on our Ginger Beer Launch event page here: https://www.facebook.com/events/495178705042912?ref=newsfeed
Our Ginger Beer Collaboration along with some special mixed packs will be available from Friday 2nd July