The Story
My husband and I moved to the little island of Bornholm with a vision of making beer using some of the glorious local ingredients. Bornholm is located in the middle of the Baltic sea, and has a unique climate, making it home to a wide range of grains, herbs and fruits that can be used in brewing. We wanted to use these inhgredients in barrel aged beers fermented with a wild culture.
Our House Culture
All our beers contain our house culture, that we created simply by placing a bucket filled with sugary beer wort underneath the apple tree in our garden and wait for the magic to happen. And it did! After a few days the wort was turned into a natural, wild beer utilising the yeast and bacteria in the air. Over the course of many months we inoculated dozens of different worts at different temperatures and ended up with a culture that provided the unique fermentation character we wanted. The resulting culture we dubbed “The Garden Party”.
The Beers
We had the goal of creating balanced beers where the acidic component serves as a balancing character without taking the stage from the malt, hops and yeast flavours. We already knew that our Garden Party culture could produce the result we wanted if it was kept cool, so all our wild barrels ended up in a huge cool room, where it would sit until ready.
It took us almost three years before we had the perfect beers we were looking for. We did believe that it is worth the waiting time, to get the unique balance and depth of flavour from a long slow fermentation.
In the autumn of 2018 the first four beers became available and in 2019 we released another 9. Being only two people in the brewery, production is limited. It has been a long, tough and challenging journey. I hope you agree with us, that it was worth all the work and the long waiting time.
You can learn moe about what goes on in our daily life at the brewery on my blog or at our Facebook page.
Awards
Eventhough its has now been only a little more than a year since I released the first beers we have received some really good feed back. In April we received an honorary diploma from the Danish Gastronomic institute. And in the end of 2019 we were the most awarded brewery when the Danish beer bloggers handed out awards for the beer of the year and brewery of the year. Penyllan is currently number two in denmark on Untappd.com.
The Brewery
The brewery is located in the small fishing village of Tejn on the east coast of the island. Inside the brewery is our tap room and shop.
We have around 1000 sqm where we brew on a very primitive and old 1600 liter system. In our barrel cellars more than 50.000 liters of beer is maturing in barrels.
… Why “Penyllan”?
My family were some of the first settlers in Western Australia and before that they came from Wales. Generations before that Penyllan was the name of the family homestead on top of a hill in Wales. The name has been passed down and used for many things over the years, recently being a yacht and my uncles house (on top of a hill) in Western Australia. So I trekked back there and asked permission to use the name. And he said yes.
Jessica Andersen, Penyllan brewer & blender
craftmanship
Doing things the hard way does not necessarily lead to a better end result. But being involved on in every step of the process is what allows us to create beers with a personal expression. Every beer starts by being mashed in by hand in small batches and hand bottled after fermentation and maturation. Our labels are hand drawn and the labels are manually signed and applied manually to the bottles.
Wood
Wood has been the traditional fermentation and maturation vessel for beer for centuries. We use wood for several reasons. For some beers we use fresh wood where the tannins and wood sugars provide structure and mouth feel to the beer. For other beers we use freshly emptied wine- and spirit barrels where the product previously hosted in the barrel lends its character to the beer. Finally, wood is a living and porous material that allows the microorganisms in our yeast and bacteria culture to thrive and keep producing aromas and flavours for years.
Time
Time may be our most expensive ingredient. We put our barrels in our insulated warehouse, where the beer ripen slowly and cool for years. The culture we inoculate our beers with is a mix of wild yeast, bacteria and fungus, that unlike regular beer yeast, is not optimised to live in the harsh environment a beer is. However, given enough time the micro organisms will slowly and steadily develop rich, complex and smooth flavors, while the extended contact with wood provides the luscious mouthfeel we seek in our beers.
Care
Every beer is carefully monitored during maturation. We regularly sample our barrels to taste the progress and make trial blends. Working with wild yeasts and bacteria means extra effort has to be taken to obtain a stable and consistently good end result. Some barrels loose beer over time – the so called “angels share” – and needs to be topped up to compensate. Others do not go in the direction we look for and will need to be inoculated with a fresh culture of micro organisms. Some may even need to be dumped so the barrel can be put to better use.
Penyllan
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Photography by our friends Thomas Knudsen, Kasper Buchart Thye, Semko Balcerski og Mikael Sejer.
© 2018-2019 Penyllan
ADDRESS
Havnevej 8D (entrance from Vestkajen 1).
3770 Allinge
Denmark
CVR No:
31303990
Tax Warehouse ID: DK31303990301
CONTACT
Jessica@penyllan.com or send us a Facebook message.
Bank Details
Nordea
Store Torv 16-18, 3700 Rønne, Denmark
Account # 1436 743698371
IBAN: DK8920000743698371
Swift: NDEADKKK
BAR & SHOP
The Bar & Shop is open any time we are there (the flag will be out). For other opening hours check our Facebook Page. Tours by appointment 250 kr p.p.