Award-winning beers
Hiver has won a number of awards from ‘Britain’s Next Top Supplier’ to being the only British medal winner at the World Beer Challenge (with two gold medals) in 2018, a recent European Beer Star Gold and an industry award for Corporate Social Responsibility gets Hiver into the ‘Best of British Beers’.
We don’t pasteurise our beer, which means you always get the freshest, most natural beer in your glass. And, just like the bees as they go from flower to flower, we tread lightly in all areas of our daily business, so there’s plenty of reasons to feel good about enjoying a Hiver. Here’s how we brew our beers with a touch of honey to bring you a crisp taste of Summer all year round.
HIVER blonde
Our flagship blonde beer is a fresh & naturally brewed lager with a special ingredient, honey.
Our flagship blonde beer is a fresh & naturally brewed lager with a special ingredient, honey. We’re really proud that it won the European Beer Star Gold medal in 2018 and we’re about to tell you why.
We use honey as an ingredient, rather than as an additive or sweetener. This means that much of the natural honey sugar is fermented out so only the aroma and flavour remain, (the same way that the barley sugars are used in brewing). This innovative use of honey in the brew means our blonde beer has a fantastic velvety mouthfeel while also being quite dry on the finish, making it really moreish. It took 6 trial brews to test this theory of fermentation out and get the right balance of our ingredients together. Using a lager yeast means the beer is clean and the flavours can really mesh and mature together. We use our blend of urban and rural honeys in this brew in the way you might use hops for aroma or bitterness in other styles and our UK cascade hop, brings some citrus to the nose without overpowering the delicate honey esters as well as complementing the urban honey lemony aftertaste.
Eye:
Golden amber in colour
Nose:
Opens with an inviting honey and biscuit aroma
Taste
A flavoursome and easy-drinking beer with medium body and low bitterness. Honey adds a creamy mouthfeel to create a moreish, clean and refreshing blonde beer
Food Pairing
A flavoursome and easy-drinking beer that works perfectly with lemon roast chicken, BBQ wings, manchego cheese, charcuterie and a chilli prawn pho.
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HIVER blonde
Our flagship blonde beer is a fresh & naturally brewed lager with a special ingredient, honey.
Eye:
Golden amber in colour
Nose:
Opens with an inviting honey and biscuit aroma
Taste
A flavoursome and easy-drinking beer with medium body and low bitterness. Honey adds a creamy mouthfeel to create a moreish, clean and refreshing blonde beer
Food Pairing
A flavoursome and easy-drinking beer that works perfectly with lemon roast chicken, BBQ wings, manchego cheese, charcuterie and a chilli prawn pho.
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HIVER AMBER BEER
Beer derives all of its colour from the malted barley base and in this craft ale, our darker roasted malts produce a copper coloured beer with a rich, chocolatey nose.
The original trial brews for this beer were all about trialling Scottish Heather honey, which looks and tastes quite fudge-like and is very different to other UK heather honeys. But once this honey was fermentated, the fudgy flavour had gone and no matter what, we just couldn’t make it quite work, so it was back to the drawing board.
Our Beekeeper David Stott of Tomlow Bees had sent over a sample of a late season blossom honey, which he describes as ‘The Worcester sauce of honeys’ due to the late season forage sources of bramble, clover, rosebay willowherb, heather and ivy that give a bit of bitterness. It started to bring out some dried fruit notes in the cereal base that hadn’t been there before and voila! We were on the way to our World Cup winning Amber beer. Admiral and Bramling Cross hops support the fruitiness of the raw Warwickshire blossom honey, and offer a delicate but lingering bitter finish.
We hope this beer offers the perfect balance of roasted barley, honey and a refreshing hop finish.
Eye:
Copper coloured beer
Nose:
Rich and chocolatey
Taste:
With toasted malts on the palette and bramling cross hops on the nose, this beer is fermented with late season blossom honey to complement the rich bitter-sweet character
Food
Pairing:
Great with crispy pork belly, fruit loaf, rye breads and mature cheese such as gruyere or emmental.
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HIVER AMBER BEER
Beer derives all of its colour from the malted barley base and in this craft ale, our darker roasted malts produce a copper coloured beer with a rich, chocolatey nose.
Eye:
Copper coloured beer
Nose:
Rich and chocolatey
Taste:
With toasted malts on the palette and bramling cross hops on the nose, this beer is fermented with late season blossom honey to complement the rich bitter-sweet character
Food
Pairing:
Great with crispy pork belly, fruit loaf, rye breads and mature cheese such as gruyere or emmental.
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HIVER SESSION IPA
Our session IPA took quite a bit of thinking and preparation, the process of creating a distinctive IPA that we could be proud of, where only British ingredients were used and where the hops didnt totally swamp any honey character, was a great challenge.
Our Session IPA has a real richness in taste with some fudge and bitter notes complementing the hops. This character comes partly from the use of one of the last sources of forage for bees before the winter, Tree Ivy. We work with a Norfolk Beekeeper to source Breckland Forest honey which has quite a marmite flavour to it, heavy in Tree Ivy Nectar and it’s harvested at the very end of the beekeeping season. Tree Ivy only comes into bloom late in it’s life and needs to be around 15 years mature before pollinators can start frequenting this natural woodland creeper.
We then use Pilgrim and Bramling Cross hops to give a woody and earthy nose and mid roasted malts that produce a lovely digestive biscuit flavour alongside the character coming from the honey. But enough of our droning on about sourcing…here are the stats….
Eye:
Golden amber in colour
Nose:
Woody & earthy with honey and bramble top notes
Taste:
A digestive biscuit-malt base with a delicate honey aftertaste and a peppery finish.
Food
Pairing:
Best enjoyed with light and creamy cheese such as goats cheese and dried meats including biltong.
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HIVER SESSION IPA
Our session IPA took quite a bit of thinking and preparation, the process of creating a distinctive IPA that we could be proud of, where only British ingredients were used and where the hops didnt totally swamp any honey character, was a great challenge.
Eye:
Golden amber in colour
Nose:
Woody & earthy with honey and bramble top notes
Taste:
A digestive biscuit-malt base with a delicate honey aftertaste and a peppery finish.
Food
Pairing:
Best enjoyed with light and creamy cheese such as goats cheese and dried meats including biltong.
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