The Chronicles of Siren Craft Brew
It's been quite a journey since we started brewing in 2013! Slide through the year reviews below for a deep dive into our story, and scroll down further for some beery highlights from the archives!
2013
Let's begin at the beginning...
On Thursday 7th February 2013, the first Siren brew went into tank. Maiden has been at the heart of Siren ever since, a statement of intent and philosophy that we stay true to. Soon after followed beers like Broken Dream, Liquid Mistress, Undercurrent and Soundwave, the opening core range, each designed to be reliable go-to's but with their own personality and unique twists. This year we brewed some incredible collaborations with the likes of Pizza Port, Mikkeller, Hill Farmstead, Evil Twin and Cigar City Brewing. We also launched the first ever Rainbow Project and organised our first ever homebrew competition in collaboration with Omnipollo.
2014
The difficult second album...
After a hectic first year it felt as though the hard work was starting to pay o, as we were awarded 'Best New Brewery in England' and 'Second Best New Brewery in the World' by Ratebeer.com.With rapid growth, we gave our bottling line an upgrade that could help us out with 2000 bottles/hour. It's been a reliable friend ever since, now used exclusively for barrel aged beer releases.Calypso was added to our core range, one of the first examples of a regularly made sour beer in the UK, with rotating hops each time.The ‘digit’ series came into existence in collaboration with Danish brewers To Øl, and The Rainbow Project stepped up a gear as we set up seven collaborations between UK and European breweries, which sparked a couple of iconic beers like Omnipollo x Buxton’s Yellow Belly.We also reached our 100th batch, and celebrated by brewing Shattered Dream, an imperial version of our core range breakfast stout with added cacao nibs, coffee and vanilla.
2015
Festival season...
To celebrate the 2nd Anniversary of our launch, we held our biggest event to date, The Festival of Wood, a huge party at the brewery where we welcomed over 500 people over the course of 7 hours.Now in its third outing, the Rainbow Project really stepped into gear. Excitement was rife after the success of the European creations, and as word got around that we were looking to the USA for inspiration, we were lucky enough to pique the interest of state-side breweries considered to be brewing some of the best beer in the world.At the back end of the year, we decided to bring back Caribbean Chocolate Cake, aided by our shiny new Spinbot. We said goodbye to our original Head Brewer, Ryan, but were delighted to be named best brewery in England by Ratebeer.com.
2016
Brewing for barrels...
After investing in some more FVs, we closed the brewery tap room with a view to re-opening a better space down the line. A flooring project put a standstill to brewing for a while, so we took the opportunity to brew solely for barrels. A whole shipping container of mixed bourbon barrels arrived, and the team set to work on filling them with the future in mind. Some of these beers went on to be classics - the likes of Bourbon Milkshake, Acid Jam, Old Fashioned and Sheltered Spirit all came out during this period.We celebrated Batch #500 with Tidal Wave – Double Soundwave.
2017
We're gunna need a bigger brewery...
Craft beer turned introspective at the start of 2017, with much of the talk centred around cask beer and some high-profile decisions from our contemporaries to move away from it entirely. Fortunately, we weren't deterred, as Broken Dream began its convoluted journey into the following years' Champion Beer of Britain competition. In February we took delivery of a new brewhouse, integral to allow us to keep growing. We also secured a new unit on Hogwood Lane Industrial Estate which could house our growing barrel collection, add 4,000 sq ft of cold storage, and towards the end of the year, became the home of our Tap Yard as it now stands.We spotted another opportunity to add to our core range of beers with Yu Lu. Love of Work had evolved into Vermont Tea Party, and we were enjoying it so much across all formats that, we decided to run a competition to rename it with a finalised recipe and new branding. The beer launched with National Tea Day and swept bars across the UK.Later in the year we held a week-long residency at Craft Beer Co Covent Garden with an audacious lineup of kegs and casks, to the point where we only just managed to squeeze the lineup on the back of a t-shirt. We began experimenting with barrel aged coffee for the first time and launched Project Barista. Four unique beers, four unique styles, four unique uses of coffee with four unique roasters. It's still the project you never knew you needed.
2018
The Sirens awaken...
We started on a high, with Odyssey 008 picking up Silver in the World Beer Cup Wood and Barrel-Aged Sour Beer category! To celebrate our fifth anniversary, we released special editions of Caribbean Chocolate Cake, Limoncello, and Ten Dollar Shake.In August, Broken Dream was awarded CAMRA's Supreme Champion Beer of Britain. We opened an investment opportunity to raise funds for a canning line; 1,500 people came on board raising £1.2m in total.We ended the year by handing over custodianship of the Rainbow Project to Left Handed Giant. We’d had a great final party in the summer, and felt it was the right time to start the next era.
2019
Yes we can...
2019 was busy! First Sean Knight joined us as Head Brewer, right before all of our investment into canning line, lab and new 'massive tanks' arrived. In the lead-up to a switch to cans, we took the opportunity to refresh our branding for the first time since 2014. Our first ever gluten-free beer, Futurist, hit the shelves.We poured beer at the first Down At The Abbey, a picturesque music festival in Reading, and picked up a 'Best IPA' award for Soundwave.
2020
Next slide please...
We kicked off the year with Sins & Virtues, celebrating our 7th Anniversary.By the time we hosted a Maiden event at the Tap Yard the tone in the news was changing, and only 2 weeks later we were in the first full lockdown. Any team members who wanted to take furlough did so, and the remaining core team set to work on keeping the brewery alive in the safest way possible.We brewed a prolific run of special releases, at the same time doing our best in the circumstances with the likes of mini-kegs, colouring in sheets, 'Brightside' boxes and the incredible 'Cyphstress' virtual escape room. Lumina was launched into the flagship range with 1,000 beer fans joining us in a beer and stargazing extravaganza... from our own gardens.This year, we experimented with Nitro beers for the first time. Our first ever beer advent calendar was created, and we went big on Caribbean Chocolate Cake to round out the year.
2021
Grateful...
We kicked off 2021 with Lockdown Calendars, made possible due to us ordering 2 years' worth of advent calendar cardboard.We also set to work on an award-winning, one-of-its-kind online beer festival, The Grateful Eight.We took the opportunity to say thank you for the support, with a crowdsourced anniversary beer and personal dedications on the cans.We installed a new water treatment system and brewed Pastel Pils for the first time.Later in the year we managed to squeeze in the Pompelmocello-bration and another Project Barista event.We took ownership of our country pub, The George & Dragon.
2022
Twists & turns...
The year kicked off with a delivery of frozen fresh Azacca hops from Yakima Chief, the first time we'd ever brewed with loose leaf hops.With the announcement of the horrific invasion of Ukraine, Lana from Varvar reached out to us with #DrinkersForUkraine, a worldwide fundraising effort. We rebrewed Mavka, a Varvar collaboration, and raised £19,755 in support of humanitarian aid – thank you for your support and generous donations to this cause. We hosted Time Hops festival, a celebration of hops. We enlisted the help of Sierra Nevada, Bear Republic, Russian River and The Alchemist, not to mention The Craft Beer Channel who put together an exceptional documentary.In a departure from the annual Caribbean Chocolate Cake release, we worked on three brand new concepts with some of our all-time favourite stout brewers and landed them as a cheeky surprise – this was C.C.C.
2023
One decade...
We celebrate 10 years of Siren!Our home-based beer festival since 2018 was supported by an additional 100 venues worldwide, with an outrageous beer lineup featuring releases throughout the year, including comebacks like Uncle Zester and Liquid Mistress.we launched an exclusive Beer52 box which was entirely made up with Siren beers. This equated to an incredible 16 beers, 13 of which were collaborations. This pushed our brewery team to the limit pushing a million cans packed in total!Other highlights included a launch of four Calypsos in summer, and the ‘double Lumina’ Illuminati, which formed part of a campaign that raised £10,000 for good causes.
2024
There's something in the water...
We released our first ever low-alcohol beers in collaboration with Mash Gang, soon followed by our own Sparkling Hopwater. We opened up the doors to our new Flagship Bar in Reading after raising £271,732 in just 28 days from crowdfunding efforts. A collaboration between Siren and Disney / 21st Century Studios saw Something In The Water grip the nation – a red berry sour released alongside the movie Alien: Romulus. This outrageous campaign was a massive win for us and a ‘pinch me’ moment for Founder Darron, whose favourite film of all time is the original Alien. Later in the year, we packed a record-breaking 1,000 craft beer advent calendars and teamed up with gold-medal-winning and world-record-breaking athlete Dan Pembroke MBE on a celebratory batch of his Paris Gold homebrew recipe.
