Bringing two cities together with beer – Strangers Red 5.3% abv a malt forward red mild, malty, biscuit and lightly hopped red ale
Our latest brew is a rather special one as it continues the journey of twining the two beer regions of Norfolk and Flanders and the two great beer cities of Norwich and Leuven.
As you may recall Visit Flanders and Norwich City of Ale back in 2022 twinned the two cities in beer and 4 Norfolk brewers including ourselves visited 4 Belgian brewers to create 4 new brews and join the two beer regions together.
We are delighted that this journey is continuing, and this latest brew sees the band of brewers creating a new beer which is brewed in both countries and will be launched simultaneously on 25 October.
The concept of the beer was to brew a red ale. Why red? Well, it’s all down to flags.
You see the Norfolk flag is black and yellow while the Belgian flag is red, yellow and black – so we thought we would bring the red to Norfolk. We also want to continue the theme of the Strangers tie up between the two regions and it was the migrant Flemish Strangers who are said to have brought the art of red dye ( known as Madder) to Norwich.
All that aside we wanted to create a great beer and a style not often seen – and also one which uses European and British malts – so it is kind of a Belgian red ale meets a British best bitter which turns out to be a red mild.
Its red because we use a German malt designed to create a red hue in the beer and its mild because we use a sift traditional malt – Goldings – in small quantities and mainly at the end of the boil to give very low bitterness and allow the malt flavours to dominate the hops.
It’s released as a limited edition but we hope to brew it again and we hope that other brewers on both sides of the channel will brew the beer and the style can become established.
Creating friendships through beer.
A big thanks also to Visit Flanders for helping support this project.