Our Approach To Beer - What Does Quality mean to Siren?
The word 'quality' gets thrown around constantly in craft beer. Everyone claims they have it, but what does it actually mean? Is it the complexity of hop aroma, or the passionate brewers behind the product? Is it the ingredients, consistency, or even the sleek packaging that catches your eye?
In its truest sense, the term quality refers to whether a product conforms to a specified standard. But who specifies the standard, and with what aim? And is that standard talking about whether the product, in this case beer, is exciting? Interesting? Does a specified standard at a big brewer talk about the product having soul or story?
At Siren, quality comes down to two fundamental commitments. First, delivering full-flavored, innovative, and genuinely delicious beers that evoke the senses. Then secondly, taking complete accountability for our processes to ensure that we deliver time and time again.
True quality means being fully responsible for the entire journey - ensuring every decision, process, and the surrounding environment gives our beer the absolute best chance of reaching your lips exactly as we intended. No shortcuts, no hoping for the best, no crossing our fingers that external factors won't compromise what we've worked hard to create.
Here's how we make that promise a reality.
In-House Control
By keeping everything under our own roof - from brewing to packaging to quality control - we maintain complete oversight and achieve rapid turnaround times that external labs simply can't match.
Our dual approach to microbiological testing combines the best of both worlds: traditional plating methods confirm viability and living organisms, while PCR technology gives us precise identification within hours.
This combination provides comprehensive coverage - we know not just what's present, but whether it's actively threatening our beer quality. This same rigorous approach extends to our yeast management, allowing us to test and verify our house cultures with the same speed and precision we apply to finished products.
Traceability - Mapping Every Drop
Our comprehensive sampling protocols create a detailed roadmap for every batch. From ingredient delivery through to final packaging, critical control points allow us to trace quality issues back to their source within minutes rather than days. When troubleshooting is needed, we can pinpoint exactly where variation occurred - whether a temperature variation during mashing, a fermentation timeline deviation, or packaging anomaly.
Yeast - Our Living Teammates
Our house yeast strains are valued team members, not just ingredients. Through multiple generations of careful propagation and monitoring, we understand how each strain performs across different styles, alcohol levels, and conditions. This allows us to predict fermentation behavior, optimize timing, and maintain consistency. Our Vermont strain has been with us since 2015, and our house lager strain underpins Siren Pils' success.
Access to Ingredients - Lasting Relationships
Our hop contracts aren't just purchasing agreements - they're partnerships that give us access to the world's finest varieties while ensuring consistency year over year. These relationships have earned us invitations to visit hop farms, participate in harvest selections, and collaborate directly with growers on variety development. Similarly, our malt suppliers provide detailed quality assurance documentation with every delivery, including extract potential, moisture content, protein levels, and enzymatic activity. It doesn’t end there! From cacao to coffee, orange zest to oak spirals, sourcing of ingredients is incredibly important to our final outcome.
Continual Investment
When we switched to canning from bottles in 2019, we underwent a £1.2m crowdfunding raise in order to get the best canning line available to us. We even had to take an additional industrial unit to fit it in! Although our 6,000 cans-an-hour capacity was probably not necessary for us at the time, the investment was important from a QC point of view.
We get the lowest possible dissolved oxygen in our packaged cans, critical to longevity and freshness. Additional technology checks for correct fill levels, seam quality, and foreign object detection. Similarly, our kegging operations utilise precision flowmeters ensuring consistent fill volumes. Our view is that investments in quality are always worthwhile, as we want to be a lasting, sustainable brewery.
Accreditation - Third-Party Validation
While we're confident in our internal systems, we recognise the value of external validation. Our SALSA+ accreditation for beer demonstrates our commitment to food & beverage safety management systems recognised throughout the industry.
Our membership and active participation in SIBA provides additional oversight, accreditation and best practice sharing with fellow craft brewers. We also work closely with major retailers who conduct their own audits and quality assessments, providing another layer of verification that our standards meet and exceed market expectations.
The Human Touch
Last but not least, and despite all the technology, our trained sensory panel remains our most critical quality control tool.
This team conducts systematic evaluation of appearance, aroma, taste, and mouthfeel for every single batch - no beer leaves Finchampstead without real human approval! Their palates are calibrated through regular training and they're empowered with absolute authority: if they detect any off-flavors, astringency, or quality concerns, that batch doesn't ship.
This multi-layered approach ensures that quality isn't just a ‘buzzword’ in our brewery - it's embedded in every decision, every process, and every person involved in creating our beer.
