Beers From the Past
LIMITED EDITIONS
These Limited Editions are only brewed for special occasions but regularly appear in the brewing calendar:
Friday 13th
On Friday 13th October 1995, 6 geese flew over Tongham and crashed into the Brewery's main power supply, causing a power cut during a crucial brewing stage. To save the brew, the staff added honey, which made the beer taste so good that we now brew "Friday 13th" whenever that date comes around.
FARNHAM WHITE
A 4% Golden Ale brewed with fine English malts and Farnham White Bine hops. Once common around Farnham, these heritage hops disappeared but have been revived in our own hop garden. First brewed with hops harvested on September 21st, 2016, these unique hops aren’t grown anywhere else. Enjoy a glass of history!
ADVENT ALE
A deep chestnut coloured ale, brewed with the finest English malted barley and local hops, for a refreshing fruity nose, a sweet liquorice and roasted malt flavour, with a rich dark chocolate aftertaste. It’s a perfect dark ale for a cold winter’s evening.
MISTLETOE & SWINE
A full-bodied, deep amber ale. With subtle hints of sultana, ginger, cinnamon and orange zest. Made with a mulling recipe.We couldn’t put a real Christmas pudding in our beer, but we think our brew team have got the flavours spot on with this full-bodied festive cracker.
ENGLAND’S GLORY
Easy drinking, dark golden beer but with bags of taste. Robust malty tones with slight citrus hints, it is often described as “caramel orange”. Brewed to celebrate all that is good about England!
THREE HOGS
English Golden Ale. A beer of two halves: refreshingly hoppy up front, followed by a balancing bitterness and a hint of sweetness to finish.Supporting England can be a bittersweet experience, just like our beer, so we expect Three Hogs to raise a few smiles. And while we always love to see our boys progress all the way, experience suggests that our football-themed beer should be on the bar before the finals!
UTOPIA
Every 1,000th brew, we like to have a little celebration here at the Hogs Back Brewery. What better way to celebrate than by creating a unique beer? Completing our 7000th brew felt pretty special. That’s over 80 million pints and counting!Utopia 7000 Golden Ale was brewed with Fuggles and Cascade hops from our own 2020 harvest, complemented by a fine trio of US hops – Centennial, Mosaic and Ekuanot. For the first time, we decided to can Utopia.
GREEN TEA
The same well-balanced amber beer you expect from traditional TEA but with a fresher and more floral aroma. Green hopped beers (using fresh hops in the brew) were the traditional way to celebrate the gathering in of a successful hop harvest. Each year the Fuggles hops are freshly harvested in the morning and taken straight to the brewhouse to be put into the brew – you can’t get Greener than that!
HOME HARVEST PALE
True to its name, our unique 4% Home Harvest Pale Ale is brewed with 100% home-grown and harvested hops, courtesy of Matthew and the team.
With Fuggles, Cascade and our heritage Farnham White Bine hops all in the copper, before dry-hopping with Fuggles and Cascade, expect a beautifully balanced autumn cracker in cask!
MAJESTEA
Brewed with 100% Fuggles, grown in our hop garden less than 100 yards from the brew house, and speciality English-grown malts, this traditional ale has a beautiful balance of malty, caramel notes and hops. Dry-hopping with our Fuggles gives wonderful grassy, mint and floral notes, to this very British brew. Brewed in honour of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee and His Majesty King Charles III’s cornonation. A momentous beer for momentous occasions.
SOVEREIGNTEA
Our special Limited Edition brew, SovereignTEA, celebrates the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Brewed with Fuggles hops, grown and harvested here at the Brewery, and dry hopped with Bramling Cross, this classic 4.2% traditional ale is a take on TEA. But for this most royal of occasions, it’s grandly spiced with ginger, chili and cinnamon, for a gentle warmth, and crowned with citrus. A proper celebratory ale! We knew you’d love our Jubilee beer, so we made two of them! Double the beer, for double the fun on this memorable bank holiday.
FAIRY TALE OF NEW PORK
Seasonal smoky 4% amber ale brewed with authentic beechwood smoked German malt and English pale and crystal malts. Flavours of cinder toffee, caramel, biscuit and a warm smokiness.
HOP YARD PALE
Bursting with hops, this 3.4% ABV Pale Ale certainly belies its somewhat benign ABV as a real summer treat!
Brewed with Pale and Munich malt, and a touch of wheat, to give it a nice, light, crisp base for the hops to sing out. With home-grow English Cascade and complemented with four US hops. Upfront, there’s Mosaic and Ekuanot in the copper for a zingy citrus burst. Then it’s dry hopped with Citra and Amarillo, for another blast of citrus with some tropical notes too!
SPIRIT IN THE STY
Spirit in the Sty is the inspired name for our cask ale collab with Phantom Brewing Co.
It’s 4.5%, hazy and heavily hopped.
This full-hopped golden beauty is brewed with Mosaic and our home-grown Cascade in the copper, and dry-hopped with more Cascade, Ekuanot and Azacca – named after the Haitian god of agriculture.
With a beautiful blend of citrus, mango and tropical fruit notes, it’s mellow and moreish, with the trademark Phantom haze
BLACKWATER BLACK IPA
A full bodied 5% beer, with hints of caramel and chocolate finishing with pine and stone fruit hop notes. This black IPA has a clean malt base, finishing with a fruity and piney resinous hop character. Brewed for St Patrick’s Day, we are sure this black IPA will give you a kick of the good ol’ Irish spirit.
BLACKWATER PLUM PORTER
Dark and delicious, Blackwater Plum Porter, is the newest additional to our seasonal cask ale line up.
Our latest 4% seasonal, brewed with chocolate malt and home-grown Farnham White Bine hops, is oozing with rich fruity sweetness, and will flow nicely, just like the local river it is named after.
BLACKWATER COFFEE PORTER
We have got 2024 off to a buzzing start with our brand-new Blackwater Coffee Porter. Our latest seasonal 5% cask ale is brewed with locally roasted, freshly ground, real coffee beans put in a bag in the boil to diffuse that authentic flavour.
STONED FRUIT IPA
Don’t miss our latest gem, Stoned Fruit IPA. Easy-drinking at 3.8% it may be, but Miles didn’t stint on the hops for a rich apricot stone fruit aroma and decidedly fruity taste. Brewed with Mosaic, Amarillo and Cascade, with added oats for super smoothness.
BIG SQUEEZY IPA
Let our bright and breezy Big Squeezy ease you into spring. Brewed with real lemons and loads of citrus hops, our aromatic, zingy 3.4% easy drinking IPA will be spreading its sunshine in the Shop and Tap soon.
SHADOW OF THE HOG
Shadow of the Hog is a 5.5% hazy IPA made with Pale, Munich, wheat, and oats for a creamy mouthfeel. It features a blend of Citra, Ekuanot, and Cascade hops, with dry-hopping from El Dorado, Simcoe, and more Citra, delivering a tropical, hop-forward punch. A unique yeast strain adds complexity to the fruity high notes and aroma.
YULE HOG
A festive red rye beer with characteristic spicy notes.Session ales are becoming ever more popular and we spotted a gap in the market for a lower ABV festive ale – Yule Hog fits it perfectly. A 3.8% session beer with plenty of flavour but also allowing Santa to enjoy a great half pint and still steer his sleigh safely back to the North Pole.
CITRUS PALE ALE
A cask version of our ever-popular Hog IPA. Perfect for summer - light and hoppy with a blend of floral and fresh citrus notes upfront, balanced with a long, dry finish.
HOGSTAR SKY BLUE
Our new 4% Hogstar Sky Blue is less hoppy and less bitter, so perfect as a summer session lager! It’s everything you would expect from Hogstar – unpasteurised and suitable for vegans, but as it's unfiltered, there's a haze.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
We have to say goodbye to some old favourites to make time to explore new beers. Some of these beers are a real blast from the past!
HBB
Our 3.8% easy-drinking light amber draught bitter. HBB was originally known as ASB, “A Session Bitter” but is seemed a little mundane for a really interesting beer. So we changed it to the marginally more creative HBB, “Hogs Back Bitter”. We notice a long while ago that it didn’t taste quite the same as it used to and found that we had forgotten a key hop, Bramling Cross. But we soon rectified that to get the brew back to its wonderful, luscious best.
FARNHAM WHITE
4% Golden Ale brewed with fine English malts and Farnham White Bine whole hop flowers. 100 years ago, fields full of Farnham White Bine hops were a common sight around Farnham. Sadly these have all gone. But our brewers have revived this famous heritage hop in our very own hop garden. This unique beer was first brewed with hops harvested by us on September 21st 2016. These hops are not grown anywhere else in the world. Enjoy your own glass of history!
HOGSTAR JUICY LAGER
This super-hopped version of our ever-popular Hogstar lager has the refreshing upfront crispness you expect but is bursting with a juicy hop finish. Brewed with 5 hop varieties including home-grown Cascade, and dry-hopped late in the brewing process with US Amarillo, Simcoe and Citra hops for that ultimate juicy character.
Brewed for Valentine’s Day in 2021, we just love it!
MONTEZUMA’S CHOCOLATE LAGER
Chocolate engineering at its best! This creation is a well-balanced and fulfilling drink with a hint of chocolate that is both unexpected and beautifully complementary.Working with Montezuma Chocolate makers, we developed a unique way to use the chocolate nibs in Montezuma’s Lordy Lord dark chocolate, and added them to our Hogstar lager rather than a more traditional darker ale. It was a real surprise to us but it was launched to much acclaim and has gone on to win a number of awards. We think it’s the world’s first genuine chocolate lager.
SNOUT
Snout was developed in 2013. It was named by Charlie Hunt in a staff competition and her prize was a whole pint! What better name for a stout from the Hogs Back Brewery?
EAST COAST IPA
A perfectly balanced, 5.8% naturally hazy IPA with a smooth creamy backbone from the oats, perfectly complemented by tropical notes and the slightly piney finish that we all love in IPAs. Think stone fruits, berries, lemons, papaya – it’s all there!
LONDON’S OUTBACK
Our 4.5% golden Pale Ale.
The Hogs Back Brewery takes its name from the nearby Hogs Back ridge in Surrey. From here on a clear day, you can see London. You can even see fields growing barley and hops. Although Surrey is not remote, it feels like brewing on the wilder side of the capital, in “London’s Outback”.
HOME HARVEST ALE
4% Pale Ale with a well-balanced, citrus aroma is brewed with the hop varieties we grow on site within 100 yards of the Brewery.We wanted to create a really innovative beer using all the varieties we grow in our hop garden here at the Brewery, so Hop Harvest Ale was born. In 2016, it was brewed with 3 hops, Cascade, Fuggles and Farnham White Bine and in 2017 we added our fourth hop, Pioneer.
HOGSWALLOP
Our 2016 rye ale with spicy notes and a sweet, hoppy finish.Hogswallop was originally created to mark the EU Referendum in 2016. Our Referendum Beer is designed to loosen the tongues of “pub politicians” and encourage a lively discourse in the run up to the vote on 23rd June. This beer may appear increasingly bitter as 23rd June approaches but should mellow somewhat thereafter. The beer was so popular, we decided to brew it again in 2017.
SANTA’S WOBBLE
Brewed but once a year, our festive bombshell is aptly named. One glass of this 7.5% English Pale Ale will surely put a spring in Santa’s step!
BREWSTER’S BUNDLE
A celebration 7.4% golden, strong English Ale. Specially brewed to commemorate the birth of our then lady brewster’s baby girl, Charlie, who weighed in at 7lbs 4½ oz!
TOO MANY TO MENTION
There’s too many beers to mention them all but here’s a selection of the most popular limited editions:
Damson in distress, our 2015 rich damson porter.
Hoppy Ever After - brewed to celebrate the wedding of Harry and Meghan, with the perfect marriage of American Centennial and English Cascade hops.
Summertime Buzz, our honeyed ale in a bottle.
Biker – our 3.4% golden ale with French aroma hops, brewed to coincide with the Tour de France and the Farnham Bike Ride!
Rye January – our take on a post-Christmas special!
Cochon Noir - all the zest and citrus of an IPA but balanced with dark, roasted malts for a complex and rewarding drinking experience. Brewed with 5 speciality malts and 4 aroma hops, including our own home-grown Cascade.
Ratfink & RipSnorter – our limited edition bitter is rich, ruby and rambunctious! Brewed with Crystal and a touch of Chocolate malt for a powerful malty base, with Fuggles and Golding hops adding refreshingly hoppy high notes.
Last of the Summer Swine – a 4% golden summer ale with a hint of elderflower
A Cascade of Errors – a happy accident that turned into a triumph! A refreshing 4.5% pale ale packed with a blend of lemon, tangerine and toffee aromas with a bitter-sweet, crisp finish.
Hop Dog - Our latest 5% hazy IPA has been brewed on the pilot plant with copious quantities of Citra and Cascade hops, before being dry hopped with Amarillo, El Dorado and more Citra. Think stoned fruit with some zingy citrus, for a perfectly refreshing, summer thirst-quencher. Did you know? A Hop Dog was traditionally a tool used to lever hop poles out of the ground?
Hopping Hog IPA - A complex 5.4% IPA launched in cask in 2015, followed by keg and bottles.
O’Hogerty – our 5% St Patrick’s day black IPA
FootTEA – football themed fun for the 2024 Euros, when England came so close!
