GRAINSPOTTING: BRIXTON BREWERY X RITZY CINEMA PRESENT A VERY BRITISH ALE

What do you get when you take Brixton’s best-known brewery, its most historic cinema and its most innovative social enterprise scheme? If you add a good dose of all-British ingredients, and a name in no way inspired by A Certain Referendum you may have heard of… you get BRITZY XPA, our new one-off extra pale, extra British ale collaboration with our friends at the Ritzy Cinema, with proceeds going to the Brixton Pound’s community-focused Brixton Fund.

We started with an idea of seeing what we could do with all-British ingredients. The craft beer industry has been pretty heavily dominated by New World hop varietals and flavours, but we have been increasingly impressed by what you can do with what you find closer to home.

We’ve used Epic and Jester from hop merchant Charles Faram. Jester has an intense, punchy aroma of new world proportions, with flavour notes of grapefruit and tropical fruits. We’ve combined them with British ale yeast and our regular Maris Otter (Grand Cru) malt from Warminster Maltings, which has been producing extraordinarily high quality malts using a method virtually unchanged since it first started in 1855. For us, craft brewing is so much about sourcing the best ingredients and using them skilfully to extract the maximum flavour.

The result is a typically British mix of irreverence, dry wit and irony, with undertones of misguided colonial nostalgia. A pint is probably best enjoyed on a disappointingly rainy summer picnic on a windy beach, during the blitz while you and your friends sit around Not Grumbling. But a sunny day on the Ritzy terrace, overlooking the action in Windrush Square would be a close second.

We’re so pleased with this exceptionally flavoursome, very pale and slightly hazy brew, that we can’t resist a little New World-style shouting about it. We took our time perfecting the recipe, and nearly as long cracking each other up with terrible film-inspired punning name possibilities – a pint of With Ale and I or Yeast is Yeast anyone? – before sticking with the straightforward combination of Brixton and Ritzy, with the pleasing symmetry of Br-for-British also sneaking in there.

You can get Britzy while it’s cold and available, on tap exclusively for a limited time at the Ritzy Brixton from 8 July. All proceeds from our side, plus an optional point-of-sale donation from tap sales at the Ritzy will go directly to the tireless community work of the Brixton Pound’s Brixton Fund.

Brixton Brewery Tap Room is open Fridays from 6 til 10 & Saturdays from 12 til 6.

 Brixton Brewery is proud to be an accredited London Living Wage employer.