Renegade

It may be the new kid on the block – having launched a shade over a year ago – but Renegade Brewery has pedigree. As the craft arm of the 21 year-old West Berkshire Brewery, Renegade has both a track record and a customer base with certain expectations.

West Berkshire is a CAMRA favourite, best known for its core range of real ales, which includes the likes of award-winning Good Old Boy. But when Simon Lewis joined the business as CEO – bringing 25 years’ experience in the drinks industry – in mid-2015, he saw an opportunity to set up a complementary craft ‘skunkworks’ brewery as part of a wider expansion plan.

“When I joined, I sat down with our brewers Will, Griff and Steve,” he recalls. “They’re all in their early 30s and had really cut their teeth on the cask ales we’ve brewed over that time. I asked them, if they had complete freedom, what would they want to brew, so we talked about using different hop varieties, brewing different kinds of beer, different keg formats… everything was on the table.”

The result was Renegade, a brewery within a brewery, in which the brewers could “stretch their legs” while also giving West Berkshire a foot in the increasingly important craft beer market. 

“We’re probably coming to it a little bit later than other people,” admits Simon. “But we’ve got such solid skills, history and capability. That’s our difference and also probably the reason we’ve focused so much on drinkability. I think we’d all recognise there are some beers that are amazing, but you’d probably only want one; we set out to ensure that, whatever style we were brewing, it would be the most drinkable, accessible version of that style we could make.”

Renegade started off devising three styles which became their core range: a west clast pale ale, 5.1% ABV with a blast of Californian hops, a craft lager, fermented over six weeks with light, crisp English hops and – just recently entering full commercial production – an India session ale at 4.2% ABV.

None of these styles, of course, are particularly off-piste for a craft brewery, so I ask Simon whether he felt any pressure to live up to that ‘Renegade’ moniker. He explains the name was intended to reflect the fact that the beers would be outside the norm for the real ale heritage of West Berkshire Brewery, but also agrees that it reflects a broader aim to carry on innovating.

“Nobody should ever stand still, and certainly in this beer culture that we’re part of… It’s moving with the times, bringing people what they want, while also bringing them new experiences. So yes, we feel like we need to be constantly moving forward. But we want people to also recognise the quality and consistency that we have in that core stable of products,” says Simon.

It’s natural that Renegade should already have one eye on its next steps. Its very creation was part of a major expansion of West Berkshire Brewery into new facilities, with new and more flexible brew equipment. The new £4.8million facility is scheduled to come online by late spring 2017, and will be a game-changer for the brewers.

“We’re currently pretty limited; most of the styles that came up on the guys’ initial wish list simply aren’t possible on our current kit,” says Simon. “The new kit is a state-of-the-art, 60 hectolitre, three vessel setup. As well as drastically increasing our capacity, it will also allow us to try all these other styles. It’s really a really huge investment in capacity felxibility and quality, so we’re hugely excited about it.”

For experimentation, Renegade has also purchased a 100-litre nano-kit to play with more ‘out-there’ flavours and styles. 

“For example we brewed a saison with ginger, lemon and honey. We’ve done a pineapple pale ale, a DIPA – all on this 100-litre kit – and released them through our shop under the renegade pilot range. They’ve been very popular, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them make it into our core range.”

With so much on the horizon – including collaborations with like-minded breweries – Renegade seems to be having no difficulty living up to its name.