New Brewery Urban Alchemy Spreading Hop & Charity!

With COVID still gripping the UK, the hospitality industry is still being well and truly battered, with breweries, pubs and bars having to find new ways to reach the public. But it’s not just these places that are being hit hard, it’s across the board and one thing’s for sure, charitable organisations have had the rug well and truly pulled from under their feet, losing plenty of funding opportunities, with donations down. Beer has always been a force for good and we’ve seen plenty of charitable festivals, collabs and other activities run in collaboration between breweries and charities in the past. It’s been fantastic to see these breweries, pubs and bars are still managing to help out, even despite the imperative task of survival. One brewery that we noticed doing this recently is Urban Alchemy Brewing in Barnet, North London. Despite being only producing beer for less than a year, the brewery set up by Si Morley, Neill Boscoe and Matt Javes has been helping their local church (St. Mary’s) by creating a charitable beer box under the name “Faith, Hop & Charity” to raise vital funds to fill the hole that the pandemic has left.

We caught up with co-founder Si Morley, to find out how this partnership came about, the impact and response. Si started off by telling us where it all began,

“We’d been homebrewing for some time, got into science which eventually became a bit of an addiction. We were brewing 100 litre batches and people were loving our beer and asking to buy it so we decided to set up a brewery. We were on the tightest of tight budgets, no venture capitalists backing us or anything like that. We basically built everything ourselves, including the building that the brewery is in. Now we can churn out about 1000 litres a week – it’s taken us about a year to set up and we had our first stuff out round around December, so not the most ideal time to be honest with what’s going on at the moment!”

When COVID struck, the Urban Alchemy crew wanted to help the community, this is when they came across a local cafe The Wilds Café that was giving vulnerable people meals,

“When we saw that The Wilds Café were doing free meals for vulnerable people during the first lockdown, we thought that we could give them some cases of beers as they sold commercial stuff during the weekend to fund the meals. It was then that we thought that it would be great to do a rotating charity box. It just so happened that one of our customers volunteered for St. Mary’s, and he told us that their funds were down that helped them do good in the community and asked us if we fancied linking up and we were like yeah, that’s brilliant. We then had a good chat with Rector Alec Corio, who’s a really cool guy, learnt where the money will be going and were like yeah, let’s do this!”

All profits from the boxes are going towards community projects around Barnet. This includes clubs for children, coalitions with other charities, running homeless shelters, food banks and poppy appeals and wider social causes. A big cause that the beer boxes are supporting is St. Mary’s work with the elderly who are in isolation which Si confirmed,

“Barnet has a serious challenge with multiple deprivations of poverty index when it comes to the elderly living on their own, vulnerable – so they’ve got some outreach work going on to bring them all together. Another issue in North London, is that they’re building flats on everything, and there’s very little community space. So they’re working on creating some facilities that are open and welcome to everybody. I’m not religious but I appreciate what they’re trying to do being all-inclusive, welcoming absolutely everyone when it comes to equality, no matter what your gender, your sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, disability, they are really forward looking.”

Since launching the boxes the response has been massive, with the boxes selling out virtually straight away, 

“The response has been fantastic, they went in no time and since then we’ve got more coming online and going back on sale. It’s also been nice delivering them and meeting the local residents, having a nice chat with them on the doorstep and feeling a sense of community. There seems to be quite a nice sense of closeness, with people supporting local businesses. It’s been great working with St. Mary’s, supporting the community and seeing people really enjoying our beer.”

Since then, Urban Alchemy have been focusing on brewing solid styles that they like to drink,

“We don’t use purees, milk powder etc, we practically brew to the German purity law. We naturally condition everything, and don’t use CO2, we just let the yeast do all the work allowing those kinds of nuances of flavours that you can get out of yeast really. We use a decent malt selection too, there’s plenty of people that use malt as a platform for hops but we think that you really miss out with some of the fantastic flavours that you can get from the malt and yeast interaction and the hops too.”

Of course, we had to get our hands on the beer to try the fruit of the Urban Alchemy team’s labour! All of their beers are bottle conditioned and vegan – here’s four from their range:

Suburban Druid – This is their cask edition and in their words ‘like a pint from a cask!’ This golden ale is brewed using traditional British malts, along with Challenger, Cascade (UK) and Jester hops. At an exceptionally sessionable 4.5% ABV, it pours a beautifully golden colour, with a slight haze and finger thick head. Slightly fruity with a cracking dry, hoppy finish!

Elephants’ Graveyard – Knocking at 6.7%, this full bodied, oatmeal stout is brewed with Pioneer and Bramling Cross hops. Pouring a fantastic, thick, dense head with rich aromas for coffee and chocolate, which are followed through into the flavour and met by a touch of caramel and finished off with a slightly powdered, bitter, coffee finish.

Fat Labrador – This pale ale uses a blend of British and speciality Belgian malts, with a cracking combo of Citra, Mosaic, Cascade and Admiral hops. At 5.2%, this brew is by far our fav – sweet tropical aromas, which are followed through into the flavour and met by a well balanced dry bitter finish! 😋

Crumbling Ghost –  An amber ale, at 5.4% – Brewed using Challenger, Pioneer, Mosaic and Sorachi Ace hops, this beer is full of body. It has a rich, malty, toasty, feel, with a slight warmth that goes well with the well balanced slightly earthy, bitter finish. Perfect for chilling in front of the fire!

It goes without saying, that what these guys are doing charity-wise is unreal, considering that they are so young! One thing’s for sure – their beer matches their generosity, producing  straight forward, solid styles that are perfect for enjoying and reminiscing ‘the Great British Pub.’ So go out, support your local – Urban Alchemy are delivering the charity boxes along with their own mixed packs around North London. Click here to see if they can deliver to you!

P.S… Nationwide delivery is coming soon! 😉