The Story of Hogstar
Our MD and Head Brewer both worked for major brewers before joining us and saw an opportunity for a new, 'English style' lager that was different from the almost universal Pilsner style and its variants. We started developing Hogstar in 2012 as a new style of lager with a distinctive character and real depth of flavour. After developing recipes, we did six trial brews at Wadworth of Devizes 2 barrel trial brewery. We settled on a malt grist and the 5 hops to be added at different stages in the boil, but varied the yeasts and the botanicals. Each brew was loaded into a maturation vessel and stored in a special cellar we had built at Tongham. We tested each batch every week for almost 4 months to see how they matured. After a fortnight the yeast in Hogstar become distressed and developed a sulphery nose but after a month we were delighted! We did a full scale 40 barrel brew and kegged and bottled the beer.
