What do beer, bees and honey have in common?
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Our new beer Shore Leave is an absolute treat for the summer months. Combining the tartness of fresh rhubarb with hints of ginger, this is just what you need to cool down during this heatwave.
Shore Leave is one of the most eco-friendly beers we have made to date – the rhubarb we use is from a local beekeeping farm in the rural hills of Perthshire! Scarletts have been producing heather honey and blossom honey for over twenty years, and they started growing rhubarb as part of this honey-making business. Firstly to use in their honey-based products, but also as a deterrent for the parasitic varroa mite, which feeds on honey bees. Rhubarb leaves are poisonous – both to us and to these mites – so they’re an effective way to get rid of them. Scarletts sell the leftover rhubarb from this wee venture to local businesses, so we were quick to nab 40kg to use in our extra-special, seasonal beer.
The ginger we used is fresh from a local grocery shop, and was painstakingly peeled by hand by our brewer Pete, before being added to a giant muslin bag alongside the rhubarb to steep in the brew.
Enjoy your Shore Leave while you can – it’s a very limited edition beer, and summer only lasts about 48 hours in Scotland! We took a sneak preview keg to the Glasgow Craft Beer Festival earlier this month, and it went down a storm, selling out midway through, so we’re really excited to get it into your hands.