Q&A with award-winning Wolf Brewery, Norfolk

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Wolf Brewery East Anglian has been a producer of the finest beers and ales since 1995. Using local hops and ingredients, they strive to continue to push the boundary with new recipes, creating truly unique beverages for customers to savour. Wolf have cask ales and bottle beers available for sale inside the brewery and online at their website, with shipping available nationally.

You began brewing beers & ales in Norfolk back in 1995, what was the incentive / catalyst for this and how did it begin? 

At the time there were not many local breweries in Norfolk, the founder Wolfe Whitham set up the hugely popular Reindeer brewpub in Norwich during its heyday in the 1980s. After leaving the pub he setup Wolf Brewery in 1995 with the aim to deliver top quality ales to pubs across East Anglia.

You specialise in using local malt and ingredients; can you tell us more about this and any particular favourites you use and why East Anglia is so good at producing good beer? 

We try to use local where we can. Norfolk is home to some of the finest malt in the world due to its light and sandy soil along with the temperate weather conditions. We use an array of malts from Crisp Malt based in Great Ryburgh near Fakenham. Our hops are sourced from all over the world, including a selection of the best hops the UK had to offer.

You mention working with farmers to gain ‘full traceability’ showing the journey from grain to glass. How is the development of this going and demonstrating it to the consumer?

We are SALSA accredited which means we can trace every pint of beer back to the field in which its malt was grown. We keep traceable records of all our ingredients to ensure consistent, top quality beer.

For the layperson among us… What’s the difference between an ale, beer, and lager?

Beer is just a general name; there are many different beer styles which include ale and lager. Ale is served straight from the cask and is made from ale malt and ale yeast when Lager is served from a keg using CO2 when is made from Lager malt and lager yeast. Lagers are fermented using a bottom fermenting yeast at cool temperatures over a relatively long period of time, while ales are fermented with a top fermenting yeast at much warmer temperatures and can be ready to drink in as little as three weeks.

What meal at The Saracen’s would you suggest goes with your beers best?

For starters our Coyote 4.3% amber ale with its subtle hop character would compliment the game terrine beautifully.

For main why not wash down the Blickling steak and ale pie with the dark ale Sirius Dog Star. The roasted malts in this 4.4% ale are the perfect match for dark meats.

And finally round off a meal with a Wolterton blackberry and apple crumble and a pint of our best bitter Wolf Ale.  

Wolf Brewery | Attleborough, Norfolk

Book a table for lunch or dinner here.