Craft beer production
“Les Clandestines de Montferri” are real beers, with a small presence of yeast. They are not pasteurised which means they keep their flavour and the properties of a natural beer. We use local products such as the water from the River Gaià, barley malt, hops and yeasts along side other ingredients, for example, thyme and honey. This gives a very unique flavour to our beer. The brewery is in the constant process of evolution of creating new craft beers. All our recipes consist of the same 5 phases: brewing, filtering, cooking, fermenting and bottling.
The water
The water we use to make our recipes comes from the village well in Montferri, which is fed by a large underground waterbed found on the banks of the river Gaià. The river starts at Santa Coloma de Queralt inland and travels all the way to seaside town of Altafulla. It is a hard water river that has a deep chalk rock bed and banks from which the water gathers important minerals as it travels. It is these minerals in the the water that allow us to make the perfect Ale type beer.
The thyme
The herb Thyme is the key ingredient in order to obtain our “Thyme Beer”. With flavours and aromas that remind us of our local area, we get fresh, organic supplies from the company Herbes de la Conca. In April, when the herb is in full flower, it is traditional to pick it on Good Friday” to get the best bouquet, flavour and medicinal properties of the season.
Honey
We make our own honey, under the name of “Entre Flors” (Amongst Flowers), which we get from our valuable bees which gives us different flavours of honey typical of Mediterranean plants such as Rosemary, Carob Trees or Heather. In addition, these small insects are essential to maintaining our environment, without them our ecosystem would collapse.
Hop growing
Hop is a plant that grows naturally in our rivers, we also plant it to harvest its flowers and use them to make our beer. At the Clandestines we grow about 200 different varieties of hops in “Ye Olde Laundry Garden”, a small vegetable plot found near the brewery which is where the people of Montferri used to wash their clothes back in the olden times, before electricity and washing machines. The area has a renovated old stone washing area with water in. In this way, we can control the quality of the production and harvest the flowers to make our seasonal beer “The Refreshing Laundry Garden”.
