Lumina: Our Shining Light

A Star Is Born

We’ve considered there to be an obvious gap in our range for some time, a bridge between 3.6% Yu Lu and 5.6% Soundwave. A straight-up crushable session beer that ticks all the boxes - thirst quenching, easy drinking, full of hops and uncompromising on flavour.

Introducing a beer into our flagship range is a big deal. We want to add value to our Sirens. It needs to be something that represents us as a brand, something we love to drink all year round and that complements our wider output. But beyond that, we don’t just brew beers for the sake of it. There are a myriad of amazing session beers out there already (believe us, we tried most of them in the research phase of this project!), and we want to bring something new to the game.

For that reason, Lumina has been a long time in the making. We’ve been brewing a pale ale series called Suspended in... for some time, working on hundreds of different combinations of malts and hops, taking notes on how they play together. Earlier this year, Lumina then took a life of its own under the guise of Refractions. Even then, tweaks were being made to each recipe to really hone what this beer is about.

All of this seemed like it might have been futile when lockdown hit. But while we can’t launch this beer how we’d like, out there all over the country sharing it among friends, we decided to press ahead anyway and try to embrace the circumstances. We’ve seen first hand the love shown to independent businesses trying to do cool things in the current climate, so we’ll be doing our best to get as many cans out there as possible and truly hope it will be enjoyed throughout summer - more on that later.

Our Session IPA Epiphany  

Each of our flagship beers features a stream-of-consciousness style canvas, delving into the character, the story and personality - fictional, abstract and intertwined with the liquid inside. You actually only get a small sense of the scale of this from the can itself, so like others in the range, you’ll see this start to expand into various crops for special releases over time.

Lumina is an epiphany moment for Siren, a coming together of experience, experimentation and evolution to create our most accessible session beer ever, with poise and adventure of universal appeal. It’s that feeling of epiphany that first sparked the ‘energy’ of this design. A central burning energy source emanates movement across the canvas, with themes of luminosity and navigation weaving in and out of the sky.

Tying back to the ancient themes of our brand, nothing has ever quite been such a source of inspiration to humans over the ages - from the stars guiding sailors to the mythical figures behind constellations. Star lore is the building of mythical stories about the stars and constellations, and its history is epic, having been practiced by nearly every human culture in history dating back as far as 5,500 years ago.

So broadly, Lumina draws inspiration from the celestial world. As the stars have fascinated, inspired and guided us throughout the ages, we designed this beer to be the shining light of our flagship range that you can always look towards. We want this beer to be the shining light of our range, but also the shining light that represents a reliable and yet exciting beer on the bar or on the shelf - quite literally in this case, with its glowing centre point.

Tropical Space Juice

So more importantly than all of that, what should you expect when drinking this beer?

It pours with a beautiful glowing haze, quietly glistening in the surrounding light. A tropical fruit salad of aromas immediately emanates from the glass thanks to a supermassive dry-hop. Azacca brings a punchiness and a touch of pine, Mosaic offers tropical mango and guava, Ekuanot with pineapple notes and all of this balanced by Hallertau Blanc, with trademark white grape and mandarin.

Lumina is a beer influenced by modern tastes as much as it aims to inspire them. Those same hops were joined by Chinook in the whirlpool, so in drinking there’s a welcome edge of pine and grapefruit flavour to the overall juicy profile. The mouthfeel is soft with layers of oats (making up around 15% of the grist) helping this, along with some nice body. There’s just enough perceived bitterness there to freshen up the palate and get you ready for the next sip.

Lumina is easy drinking but always satisfying. We’re fermenting with our unique house-strain of Vermont yeast. We love the subtle peach and apricot notes this yeast provides, it’s perfect for hoppy, hazy beers and we have it to thank for the majority of IPAs and Pale Ales in our range. 

Universal Appeal

Lumina is designed to be accessible to all, and a go-to once you’ve discovered it. It’s available at a price-point in 330ml cans that we think represents great value. In addition to the cans, it’s going to be available in Cask and Keg too, for those pints we’re all longing for when the lockdown finally starts to ease. It will be vegan in all formats. Lumina is also qualifying as Gluten Free in the EU, coming in at below 20ppm. We hope this beer will convert plenty of non-beer drinkers to our world.

Craft Beer & Stargazing 

To celebrate the launch of Lumina, we’ve teamed up with the incredible Dr. Becky, an astrophysicist and research fellow at the University of Oxford who also happens to share our passion for the night sky and great craft beer! Lumina is the perfect beer to enjoy summer evenings with, so we think it’s an ideal time to get outside with friends and family.

We’ll be putting together the perfect selection of beers and some Lumina exclusives to help, including planispheres that we’ve crafted ourselves - guided of course by astrophysicist advice.

Look out for more on this soon, pre-orders will start from 1st July and the special live stream, including top tips from Dr. Becky - will be on the evening of 31st July. Watch this space!

Where To Find Lumina

Lumina is on-sale now from our website.

Nationwide release: Check who’s already stocking this beer near you right now - however it will be widely available very soon!

Investors: Check your inboxes for a very special gift.

Beer52 Subscribers: You’re in luck, it’s coming your way in this month’s box.

Trade: Contact your account manager or email orders to get yours.