OVERWORKS UPDATE

It’s been a while since we detailed our plans to embrace the majesty of sour beers as part of the BrewDog Overworks, so as construction is well underway and on schedule we figured it was time for an update. Our new sour facility will major in everything that makes wild yeast and bacteria incredible – so we sat down with our new guru of sour Richard Kilcullen to get the latest!

And as he puts it, we’ll be “fillin’ oak from the get-go.”

As things stand our incredible team of engineers are on site and working wonders; the shell of the building is almost done and the mezzanine level and lab area are starting to take shape too. The next stage is to lay in a whole lot of concrete flooring before we dial in the utilities. Progress is awesome so we’re set to be in the building by the end of July – at the peak of the Aberdeenshire summer!

With that in mind one of the most important, but oft-overlooked, parts of the new build is temperature control. The Overworks will be fitted out with state of the art monitors – not for Richard’s benefit but for the wild flora that will share the building. Wild yeasts and bacteria do their best work across a narrow range of temperatures so ensuring the Overworks doesn’t fluctuate is imperative (we’re thinking cold winters if not warm summers)

Although the Overworks is still to be completed, Richard’s work has already begun. On most days he can be found working away at a secret warehouse location in Ellon, fine-tuning four different Brettanomyces cultures inoculated into 40HL pilot batches. The reason for this is simple – once the Overworks is ready to go, we intend to hit the ground running with a pre-developed, perfectly judged Brett inoculate. We want the bacteria to be ready as soon as we are!

The Overworks will be a temple to the arts of fermentation, with 100HL Italian oak foudres and an assembled army of French wine barrels all ready to be filled. Designs have now been finalised for our stainless steel tanks – some of which will be for primary fermentation and others to max out further in the presence of different fruit. And the coolest part? The wort for all these adventures will arrive through a pipe under the road from our Ellon brewhouse!

We’ll check back in with Richard as the Overworks building comes to life (literally) and will follow-up on his plans for the incredible sour beers that are set to emerge from this brand new bespoke facility. So many of you have been clamouring from BrewDog sours so we are psyched that the Overworks is on track and getting nearer to unleashing some truly special beers. If you have a special sour request, leave it in the comments below and you never know what might happen!