by BeerDrinkerBeavertown Brewery were set up in 2011 by Logan Plant, son of Led Zeppelin rockstar god Robert Plant. What started out as experiments in home brewing involving rice cookers, cool boxes and tea urns as equipment, soon moved into the kitchen of a BBQ restaurant/brew pub venture in Hackney. Here the brewery continued experimenting with their beers, mainly producing twists on the IPA style, but also brewing a bitter based on the West Midlands style, named Neck Oil, which has arguably become their most popular offering.
A move to Tottenham Hale in 2014 vastly increased their output capacity from 5 barrels per batch to 30 barrels. But the brewer continued to grow year on year, and demand quickly outgrew their new site. To help fund their expansion, a minority stake in the business was sold to Heineken, and this enabled the Beavertown Brewery to move to a 129,000 square foot custom built site in Enfield, and increased capacity to 500,000 hectolitres per year. Their new facility, named Beaverworld, finally opened in August 2020. However, the subject of this review, Beavertown Lazer Crush, is not actually brewed at this plant, or even in the UK. Instead it’s one of the many alcohol-free beers given to De Proefbrouwerij in Belgium to brew. Beers from this Belgian brewery tend to have similar flavour profiles, though Beavertown are using a different yeast for their beer, the NEER® solution from Chr. Hansen in Denmark. Will this yeast strain give Lazer Crush it’s own character or will we get the distinctive De Proef passionfruit/grapefruit esters coming through?
The beer pours a pale straw colour and we get a decent frothy head. There’s a slight haze to it, and carbonation looks good. On the nose the first hits are of citrus, with grapefruit and lemon aromas developing. Some tropical comes through in the form of mango, and I could discern some vanilla sweetness in there too.
On tasting we get tropical lychee and mango fruitiness, which develops into some milder citrus flavours, and even a hint of melon. There’s a slight sweetness to the beer, complementing the fruity flavours, but also a tart bitter edge to it. The body is good, with the carbonation levels not too high, making for an enjoyable sup. We get a slightly sweet finish with a little tart-ness.
Beavertown Lazer Crush is really quite good, easy to drink with a nice balance of fruity flavours, and with a character of it’s own. The flavours could be ‘bigger’ in my opinion, and the drink is on the milder side of things, but for Beavertown Brewery’s first AF bev they’ve certainly crushed it. Hopefully Mr Plant will let some more choice alcohol-free brews escape his new beer plant in the future.
Buy Beavertown Lazer Crush
Beavertown’s beers can be bought far and wide in many pubs and off-licenses, and of course you can buy cans of Lazer Crush from one of the following online retailers:
| Nutritional Information (per 100ml, taken from the side of the can) | |
|---|---|
| ABV | 0.3% |
| Energy | 25 kcal |
| Fat | <0.5g |
| Carbohydrates | 5.9g |
| Sugar | 3.0g |
| Protein | 0.5g |
| Ingredients | |
| Water, Malted Barley, Hops, Yeast | |
| Additional Information | |
| Country of Production | United Kingdom .png) |
| Brewer | Beavertown Brewery – https://beavertownbrewery.co.uk/ |
| Gluten Free? | No |
| Vegan Friendly? | Yes |
Beavertown Lazer Crush Low Alcohol IPA Review
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Taste
Summary
Milder than I’d have liked but still bursting with fruit, a NA beer you could easily crush any time.
