The Union Brewery

The Perfect Union

We aim to brew top quality beers with a distinctive style which are full of flavour and character. There are 4 essential ingredients required to make beer which are malt (mainly barley but sometimes other grains are used), hops, yeast and water (referred to by brewers as liquour).

We use locally sourced ingredients and suppliers wherever possible. We use only the finest English malted barley, the best hops we can find and combine them with pure Devon water and our yeast with skill and patience to produce the perfect union of malt, hops, yeast and water.
Malt

Malted grains provide colour, flavour and aroma to beer as well as the sugar for the yeast to turn into alcohol. The maltings who supply our malt allow grains such as barley and wheat to germinate in carefully controlled conditions creating starch. Once in the brewery we mix these malted grains with hot water (called liquour) in the mash tun which turns the starch into sugar which the yeast can turn into alcohol.
Part of the malting process is drying the grains in a kiln. By varying the time and temperature of this kilning process the maltster can produce different malts with various flavours and colours.
Before the malt can be used it is crushed in a malt mill to break open the grain kernels and increase their surface area while leaving the husk intact. This is important as the husk acts as a filter later in the beer making process.
Hops

Hops are now one of the major components of beer they add bitterness, flavour and aroma to beer.
Hops also provide a balance to beer, unlike other alcoholic drinks like wine not all the sugar gets fermented into alcohol in beer so adding hops allows the brewer to balance out the sweetness from the malts.
Hops can be added at various stages of the brewing process, hops for bitterness are added at the beginning of the boil while hops for aroma and flavour are added at the end. Hops may also be added during the fermentation and conditioning stages and even directly to the final cask depending on the what the brewer is trying to achieve.

At the Union Brewery we only use whole dried natural hop flowers, we do not use cheaper hop pellets or hop oils.
Yeast

Yeast is the wonderful micro-organism behind beer. It takes the sugar we extract from the malted grains and converts it into alcohol. Different strains of yeast and different fermentation conditions can produce a range of unique flavour profiles. Before it was understood how yeast worked it was called Godisgood because of the magical transformation of the sugary solution (we call wort) into alcohol.
At the Union Brewery we use a traditional top-fermenting strain of Saccharomyces Cerevisiae in most of our beers.
Water

Water is one of the four basic parts of beer and is more important than most people realise. Our water comes from Dartmoor and is ideal for brewing most styles of beer. However we regularly check our water and we can alter the composition of our water to suit different beer styles therefore ensuring we have the best water available for our brewing processes.

Hand-crafted beers from devon

The Union Brewery is a small craft brewery based on the edge of Dartmoor in Devon and we are dedicated to producing high quality cask and bottled beers. We use traditional British brewing techniques, using only the best ingredients we can source, combining the best English and new world hops to produce beers with a distinctive full flavour and complexity.

The Union Brewery was originally founded in 2005 out the back of the Dartmoor Union Inn in Hobleton Devon. When the Inn fell on hard times the brewery fell into disuse and at the beginning of 2012 a new company was formed and purchased the redundant brewery equipment and transported it to it's new home on the edge of Dartmoor just off the A38 in South Brent. The 4 (brewers) barrel plant can produce around 1152 pints per brew or 16 firkins (a firkin is the most common size of barrel supplied to pubs for cask conditioned beer containing around 72 pints).

Cask Beer

All our cask beers are unfiltered and unpasteurised, made with care and attention using traditional methods, our cask beer is a natural and refreshing product made from the finest quality ingredients, brewed with passion to be drunk with pleasure.

Jubilee Ale

Jubilee Ale Pump Clip Keep a eye out for our special limited edition golden coloured Jubilee Cask Ale, available soon it is being specially brewed to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

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Union Brewery

The Perfect Union

Malt

Hops

Yeast

Water