Life

Craft Beer: Down on the Bellaghy farm with Heaney's Way Over Yonder

Way Over Yonder, a farmhouse ale from Heaney's
Way Over Yonder, a farmhouse ale from Heaney's Way Over Yonder, a farmhouse ale from Heaney's

WHAT makes a farmhouse ale? Is it one that is brewed up next to the mooing of inquisitive cows or is it simply something that’s knocked together in a barn with a discarded old bath tub from the 1960s and fermented in a potting shed?

Mention farmhouse ale and all sorts of pastoral images get conjured up and you think hay bales and unending summer evenings, but in the brewing trade, a farmhouse ale isn’t so much about where it is brewed as what is used in the process.

Perhaps the most well-known farmhouse style is the saison, given that its origins lie in giving Belgian farmhands some seasonal refreshments when the high summer sun drained them of hydration.

Saison may have been born of its setting, but it differs from other ales now made by craft brewers in that it uses farmhouse yeast. This is to replicate the spontaneous fermentation that went on way back when the beer was put into cold storage on Flemish farms.

So, when Heaney’s, an actual farmhouse brewery on an actual farm, released what they termed a farmhouse ale, I was intrigued.

Way Over Yonder is a farmhouse ale in the sense that it’s brewed using farmhouse yeast on a farm. So, it ticks all those rustic boxes. However – and not that this was claimed – it’s not really a saison. Like the saison origin story, though, the wording on the can states that this one is “for the grafters”.

It pours a deep amber, almost orange colour and there’s plenty of fizz going on in the glass.

Way Over Yonder is brewed with apricots, which lend a fruity, almost sour vibe to proceedings. Indeed, it has the kind of lip-smacking refreshment which sees it straddle some of the territory of a sour beer.

But then there’s the peppery spice of a saison bursting through, with that funky tinge of the yeast encircling it all before a nice dry finish.

However, the stone fruit flavours front up a lot more than you would get in a regular saison, taking the edge off the bite of the spiciness and bitterness. It’s a got a zesty freshness to it too and the easy drinking style of this 5.7 per cent beer could see you sink a few with a minimum of fuss among the hay bales on warm summer’s day. Now, how many of them do you get around Bellaghy?