- Tasting of unique artisan beers in the boga. That superior quality of every house. And comment on the nuances of one and the perfumes of the other. What part of the planet do all these things come from? Boga looks at this, explaining each of the elements behind the word “autochthonous”. We also have foam there.
The members of the boga have explained to us what is the latest wave of brands they have caught in the craft beer market to “get a position”: “Make special beer editions, for beer lovers, using last-trend hops, a variant type IPA. It is in this circuit of innovations where people try the last beer, to see what flavors and smells it has… focused on the highest quality. For people who are immersed in this culture, what everyone is looking for is to be fashionable.”
They say that the mouthpiece is nothing in other waves: “We offer bridges to meet this culture to people who are not yet present in this new culture. We go to a more general public. In our catalog we have the most demanded styles in this new culture and with quite basic styles to learn. But we give that added value: prioritizing local producers and suppliers.”
80% of the bottle is packed with items from the Basque Country
We need water, cereals or grain, hops and yeast to make beer. “We play with these elements to create some flavors or others, some smells or other sensations in the drinker.” They use network water because “in Euskal Herria it is very good. We have our factory in Mungia,” they said, suggesting that they use the water in the area.
Barley malt is mainly used in cereals or crops and wheat malt is used in the background. But they also play sometimes with other crops (oats, etc. ). “We bought barley malt from the malting company Intermalta, located in Navarra. In this way, the economic impact remains in the Basque Country, which takes the wheat from the fields of zero kilometers and mallets it: the waste is the germination, drying and roasting of the crop. According to that, it gives some degree of finesse to beer.” Intermalta brings the cultivation from Navarra, Álava and Burgos. 80% of the malt used by the boga is purchased from Intermalta: “In craft beer it is usual to bring malt from England, because that gives you a few nuances in quality and better performance: you need less kilos of malt per liter of beer. But of course, the ecological temptation is greater. We also prioritize the contribution from the perspective of sustainability.”
“The hops sector is not so prepared,” they explained. For this reason, the Basque Brewers Association is working on the promotion of the primary sector: “For example, in Álava we have set up a hop plantation in Berantevilla to create different varieties, because at the moment there are very few varieties that we can bring from Álava or Navarra.” In the case of hops, they can only bring 20% from the Basque Country: “That’s the challenge, working together with the rural world to create more and more. But in weight, hops are not so important: we use one tonne of malt for each brewing and a 10 kilogram hops (40 kilograms in IPA-style beers).”
The last element is Legamia. Its weight in beer is very small, it takes 1.5 kilograms for each operation. “But it’s also important for the beer process, because that’s what causes fermentation, eats sugar and produces alcohol.” They recognize that they bring yeast from the labs. “In countries where beer culture is widespread, yeasts remain alive in the factory. This is the best way to ensure the standardization and quality of the product. But those of us who don’t have a professional lab at the plant are brought from other labs.” The boga is brought from a laboratory in Barcelona, “it is difficult to find it around”.
In addition to using the ingredients as close as possible, the role they play on bottle labels is also special: "It is a material of mineral origin and trees, water and chlorine are not used in its production," the Health Observatory explained.
Basque Beer Association
Currently, the Basque Beer Association brings together 17 companies. “We are competitors in some way, but we are all interested in working together. We are immersed from the very beginning in partnership.” In this sense, they have explained that they have taken out a collective seal that "guarantees that it is manufactured in the CAV". Because the words ‘basque’, ‘basque’ and ‘artisan’ are widely used in communication by multinationals or sub-multinational companies, and we have created this collective brand to regulate and guide the drinker. In addition, we are studying the incorporation of Euskolabel together with HAZI”.
Projects related to the primary sector are being carried out in collaboration with several technological centres, such as the hop plantation of Berantevilla described above. Uribegar is another similar project: In the region of Uribe, the old crops are being recovered through this project: “We just launched a wheat beer in the boga with a variety of wheat called martzela: this variety was lost and recovered by Neiker from a seed bank, replanted in its natural environment and has now begun to extract wheat. Once we have meshed that wheat, we have used it to create beer, and this has also been baptized with the name Martzela.”
FICHE
What it does: Craft beers.
Workers or partners: 7.
Created: 2014.
Residence: In Mungia.
Contact: 944 06 28 48 or info@boga.eus