#002 The Birth, Explosive Death and Eventual Rebirth of 'Yellow Sub'

Andrew Whyte • 18 December 2018

The woeful tale of our first IPA!

Our second beer as a professional brewery was packaged this week, so I figured this would be a perfect time to add our second blog post, and tell the tale behind our second release ‘Yellow Sub IPA’.

Firstly, a bit about the beer itself. Our debut beer Nothing’s Easy (in case you hadn’t tried it), was a straight up hop forward hazy pale ale. At 5% ABV it was an approachable easy drinking tipple that we believed would be a thirst quenching crowd pleaser, and judging by the feedback we’ve received we’re glad to have been proven right. Yellow Sub continues the theme of murky hop forward libations, however it stands at a hearty 7% ABV. We wanted to take the opportunity to brew commercially with Yellow Sub hop pellets, which were one of our favourites from our home brewing days. Yellow Sub is a variation of one our IPA’s we used to brew at home, so we’re incredibly excited to share it with you.

Truth be told, Yellow Sub was actually due to be our debut beer, and we did brew it back in May 2018, when we were working with a brewery in the South West (who shall remain nameless). The brew day didn’t exactly go smoothly, we planned meticulously for our first commercial length brew, however a combination of a faulty boiler and being sent the wrong ingredients by our supplier made for a rocky day to say the least. However despite the delays, we hit our target OG, pitched our yeast, and a little over a week later we were raiding the conical and tasting our beer for the first time, and to say we had a restless night’s sleep the night before wouldn’t even be close to the reality. However when we tasted Yellow Sub for the first time, all anxious thoughts instantly subsided. We were incredibly happy, and somewhat surprised, that our first beer had turned out so well, despite the nightmare brew day. I will throw my hands up and confess that I am my own worst critic, and I would be straight up lying if I said that there weren’t a few issues that I had with our first brew, nevertheless I was thrilled with how our beer had turned out.


We transferred our beer to a secondary tank in preparation for packaging day. Then, mere days before we were due to package up the beer, we get a phone call from the brewery, informing us the un-imaginable had happened. Our tank had “failed” (the word they actually used was 'exploded') and we had lost 75% of the beer. To this day, we still aren’t certain exactly what happened. Which highlights one of our main cautionary tales for anyone about to venture down the path of cuckoo brewing. Coming from home brewing backgrounds we didn’t (still don’t) have much in the way of technical know-how when it comes to production brewing equipment, so when someone says to us ‘the tank failed and this is why’, we weren’t really in a position to question their explanation. I’ve spoken to numerous brewers we’re acquainted with about this since, all of them unsure how something like this could have happened. Was it possibly just human error? Could it have been a genuine equipment failure? My main point here for anyone thinking about cuckoo brewing, if like us, you aren’t fortunate enough to be experienced with production breweries and their equipment, you will have to be reliant on a brewery and brewer you can trust.

However uncertain and stressful cuckoo brewing has been for us so far, one of the main things we’ve been able to take away with each brew day (successful or otherwise) is a lot of practical experience in production brewing. One of the main advantages of cuckoo brewing for people in our position who come from home brewing, is that we are able to work with this different breweries, learn firsthand, see how they might approach things differently, and apply those experiences to our future development.

As it turns out some of our hardest lessons haven’t actually been around the brewing process specifically. Brewing this beer again is in some way for us an act of defiance, Whyte Bär Brewing has had its fair share of setbacks since we incorporated, and seeing Yellow Sub finally go out to thirsty consumers will be a reminder to us to not let the setbacks get us down, and to confidently continue forward.

Thanks for taking the time to read about our woes, I hope knowing the story behind this beer adds to the enjoyment of drinking it. We do hope to put this beer into cans soon, as we have some incredible artwork at the ready, whipped up by the very talented Xander Lee (@ahrekisanda), so keep your peepers peeled!

All the best,

Andy Whyte

#003 Warm Hearts and Sore Heads

by Joel Barnard • 27 January 2019
Tryanuary is a nationwide campaign, founded in 2015, to encourage support for the beer industry throughout January. Last year, we attended a Tryanuary event at The Malting’s Taphouse, one of our favourite watering holes. We attended the event as punters, not as brewers, as at the time we were yet to kick things into gear with Whyte Bär Brewing. The last couple months have brought some incredible moments for us, we had our Nothing’s Easy Pale debut at Malting’s Taphouse in November, and also our Yellow Sub DDH IPA beer launch at The Pursuit of Hoppiness at the start of January. Having only been going for a handful of months, being invited back to Malting’s Taphouse for this year’s Devon Beers Tryanuary event means so much to us. Given all of the setbacks early last year, attending an event like this makes it all worthwhile. It is now the day after the Tryanuary event, and as a result, I am filled with appreciation, admiration, and gratitude. I am also hungover. See, these events not only encourage support from consumers, but it also allows likeminded brewers to rally together, share ideas and support one-another. The craft beer community in Devon is so damn vibrant and brilliant, it is such an honour to be involved, the Devon beer scene is flourishing and it’s only going to continue to develop and thrive, so watch this space! Last night we were pouring alongside; Stannary Brewing, New Lion Brewery, and Topsham Brewery. It was truly a fantastic line-up, and I am excited to see these talented bunch of brewers grow. We spent a quality evening with some great groups of people, Vessel Bottleshop (Plymouth), Tap Tinn (Tavistock), Wild Weather Ales and Riviera Brewing all made an appearance to support the evening. Now January is almost over, we’ve got our eyes set on February. We’ve got a big brew day lined up, doubling our output and for the first time we will be putting our beer into cans. I don’t want to give too much away, we have some exciting times ahead and we’re only just getting started. Cheers, Joel, The Bear of Whyte Bär

#001 Bears and Beers and Blogs, Oh My!

by Joel Barnard • 12 October 2018
Whatta do everybody, it’s your boy Joel, We are Whyte Bär Brewing Co. and we are a “Delocalised Cuckoo Brewery”. Yeah, i know that sounds heavy, especially if you don't happen to be ‘in-the-know’, so let me break it down. Cuckoo birds are known for their brood parasitism (thanks Wikipedia); this means that they actually lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. And so, a cuckoo brewery is a company that brews beer in other people’s breweries! So basically, me and Andy are brew daddies, and we lay our beer eggs in other people’s brewery nests. So why delocalised? Well that is because we have no base of operation. Andrew Whyte and myself are based in opposite sides of the UK and so it would not make sense to be labelled as a brewery based in a specific location. Plus, this allows us to produce some outstanding beer by taking advantage of the water chemistry and brewing equipment in different locations. I first met Andy at The University of Plymouth through a mutual friend (you know who you are boy-o). We immediately clicked and found ourselves drowning our sorrows at Plymouth’s finest boozeries… or at our local down the road. It just so happened that some of these pubs had a modest selection of keg and cask beers and so we started to try different styles. We were hooked! So much so that my wife Rebecca said; “You know what would be the worst idea ever? If you started a brewery together”. Now i’m pretty sure at that point she thought we had a problem, but once an idea like that goes into your head you’re gonna need a drill to get it out! So we bit the bullet and decided to make a go of it. So there we are, Whyte Bär Brewing Co.; the “Delocalised Cuckoo Brewery”, born from myself Joel BAR nard and my partner in crime Andrew WHYTE . We are both huge fans of the craft beer industry and so we thought it would be a fun social experiment to document our growth from the very beginning in the form of a blog. I hope you get as big of a kick from our ups as you do from our inevitable downs! Cheers, The Bear of Whyte Bär