Breaking common ground

He will, however, admit that ideas which emerged from the US craft beer revolution in the ‘90s and 2000s have trickled into the DNA of Dois Corvos. “People, for me, were very welcoming when we opened the brewery. You know, we've never gotten the hint of ‘I’m not going to drink their beer because he’s an outsider, or an immigrant’,” says Scott. “So, yeah, the identity of our brewery treads a fine line. We definitely have influences from the American side, but we absolutely position ourselves as a local brewery. I'm not going anywhere. I'm Portuguese now!”

Dois Corvos set out to serve the tastes of its local community, an ambition which may have everything or nothing to do with the fact that it was so warmly received by that community. The brewery started out brewing high quality, artisanal styles that were already popular among locals, and had no formative agenda to evangelise for the IPA, or create an appetite for American beer. What Scott found, however, was that Portugal isn’t the nation of conservative drinkers you might expect, given neighbouring countries' love of macro lager, amber, and dark ales. 

“There were no breweries in Lisbon, the country’s European capital, when we started Dois Corvos,” says Scott. “And similarly to the US before craft beer kicked off, you had a lot of light beer, red beer, and dark beer. But what I found very early on is that people were drawn to more extreme things than I was expecting. So we got into IPAs, imperial stouts and all the barrel aged stuff pretty early on, but today we do a bit of everything, and brew a lot of sessionable beers as well.” A diverse range definitely tallies with the guy who brings a selection of beers to the dinner party. 

The US influence can be found in Dois Corvos’ ambition to bring local flavour into international styles. “Portugal doesn't really have many malts that are suitable for brewing, and doesn’t grow much hops, so what we can bring to the beer, to give it a local stamp, is a lot of barrels,” says Scott. “There's a lot of fortified wine here. You know, port obviously, Moscatel, Carcavelos, some other fortified wines that aren’t as common but have really beautiful barrels that we can put Imperial stouts and other big beers into, to give it a touch of Portugal. We have around 350 oak barrels, so cultivating and maintaining that has been a passion project of mine, and as a brewery we release a lot of barrel aged stuff.” 

It’s also important to know that Dois Corvos is a seasonally-driven brewery, and uses a lot of local fruit in its beer, depending on what’s available at various times of the year. This seasonality is something that Bristol’s own Wiper and True recognised itself as having in common with Dois Corvos, when a mutual friend put them in touch. “It was a happy accident that we connected with Dois Corvos, really,” says Tim Jeffree, Wiper and True’s Head of Sales. 

“It all started with an introduction from a mutual contact in the export market, who believed we’d get on. It was only when we started getting to know each other that we realised that our head brewer, Marvin, had already crossed paths with the Dois Corvos team during a visit to Lisbon. Marvin had taken a tour of their brewery and instantly hit it off with their crew. The two brands coming together felt like the stars aligned in a way.”

“There were several things that drew us to collaborate with Dois Corvos,” she continues. “Both breweries share a deep passion for crafting a diverse range of seasonal beers, offering our customers something that’s new and exciting, but still really well thought out. We also share a love of experimentation, testing and learning from processes to uncover something new and improved. The ways in which our styles contrast presented a brilliant opportunity to blend our strengths and create something special together.”

After chatting for a few weeks, and getting to know each other, the breweries decided to collaborate, and got the ball rolling by sharing their past portfolios. From there, they identified a mutual love of lager. “We've made a lot of rice lagers and a lot of corn lagers. That's something we do a couple times a year, probably more with rice than with corn, but we have a Mexican brewer who’s a real champion of corn,” says Scott. I can see how Marvin, a lager fanatic from Germany, might have gotten excited by this collaboration.

“It’s funny, big breweries tend to use corn and rice in lagers to make a cheap, light, watery beer, but the rice we buy actually costs more than barley sometimes, and on occasion, we use a Portuguese variety of rice that’s used for cooking,” says Scott. “So we're definitely not brewing these styles to cut costs, but using these ingredients to add flavour. When we decided to collaborate on one of these styles with Wiper and True, something we worked on together was how to get the body right. We’ve had some trouble with these beers when it comes to getting them to the final gravity we wanted, so we talked a bit about that, and exchanged some notes on what enzymes we’ve used to help that process along.”

Tim further testifies to this, saying that “one of the standout lessons involved the use of enzymes to break down maize. We discovered the nuances of how these enzymes can vary in their effectiveness, which was both fascinating and challenging. This insight really expanded our technical knowledge but also inspired us to further experiment with ingredient processing in our future brews. Working with Dois Corvos was a great example of how collaborations can push boundaries and foster innovation in brewing. This was such a positive experience for us and we believe this shines through in the final product.” 

With the connection made between Dois Corvos and Wiper and True, who knows what the future holds for their partnership going forward. With any luck, it’ll result in us seeing a few more Dois Corvos beers on UK soil and new fans of the brewery finding exciting and unfamiliar flavours in this little taste of Portugal.