We love a good pun, almost as much as a good beer. This Beer Hawk collaboration with Scotland's Tempest Brew Co is both.
Tempest Brew Co is a new brewery based in Tweedbank, on the banks of
the River Tweed in the Scottish Borders. It's a beautiful part of the country, one full of rushing rivers and
sprightly springs. It's the perfect place for a brewery, and Tempest is a brewery that has excelled in a short space
of time, winning Scottish Brewery of the Year in 2016, and entering RateBeer's Top 100 Breweries in the World in
2017… an incredible achievement. After tasting the beers ourselves, we knew that we wanted to be involved with them.
And quickly.
Beer Buyer Paul Marshall was the one who made the first contact. He said: “We have only
been working together for a short while, but the standard of brewing and beers such as their ‘All The Leaves are
Brown' (Brown Ale, 10.5%) and ‘Mexicake' (Imperial Stout, 11%) caught my attention instantly.”
So when we
wanted to create a beer for Oktoberfest, Tempest Brew Co was the first brewery we asked. “This was very much an ‘if
you don't ask, you don't get' situation,” Paul said. “I decided to ask them if they would be willing to collaborate
with us to create something special for Oktoberfest, and the answer we received was much more than I expected! Not
only were we granted access to help determine the recipe, we were allowed to design the label and come up with a
name for the beer also!”
And so here is the genesis of the name too. Another ‘Oktoberfest style pun had
been done to death, so working back from the word ‘prost', the German word for ‘cheers' that is shouted over wooden
benches in Munich's Oktoberfest, they came up with ‘A Touch of Prost'. A great pun, and a
loving nod to one of the best comedians the UK has ever produced, David Jason. The star, of course, of the TV
detective drama, A Touch of Frost. See what we did?
So what of the beer? It's Festbier, the type of Marzen that is brewed especially for Oktoberfest, but with a slight difference. It's a light pale version, brewed with oats and wheat to give it a swishy, foamy head on top of a lightly sweet, effervescent body. The hops offer notes of pine on the nose, and there's a light sourness to it, adding the final part of the jigsaw that makes this beer supremely drinkable. Prost indeed!
