Very warm welcome to brothers - Radical Way Brewing, a nomadic brewery from Cyprus
1. Short introduction...
Thank you for having us! It was a real pleasure to meet you at the last edition of Super Can Fest, we had a blast! A quick introduction about us: we are Radical Way Brewing, a nomadic brewery from Nicosia, Cyprus. Our small team is made up of Vasilis, Manos and Tony.
2. How did you start, what is idea behind?
We are a group of friends brought together many years ago by our passion for metal music. Beer was always around us: concerts, parties, festivals, nights out and BBQ sessions. When we discovered craft beer, we became instantly fascinated by the amazing things that can be done with this drink. It wasn’t long before our curiosity led us to try our hand in homebrewing back in 2015 with a fully DIY mindset, due to the limited access to homebrewing equipment and materials in Cyprus at the time. The overwhelming support we got from the people who tried our first creations was very encouraging, and we were soon dreaming of starting our own craft brewery.
The beers we love to drink were rare to find in Cyprus, so brewing them became one of our biggest motivations when we officially started Radical Way Brewing in 2019. Beer is our means of expression: by fusing art and science we want to bring together our unique experiences, tastes and inspirations, while changing people’s perspective of what makes an enjoyable beer and having fun!!
3. What is unique about your brewery and beer?
Alongside the driving forces that led us to form our brewery, we are also actively involved in subcultures such as metal music and skateboarding. Beer can elevate all of these experiences and we love supporting these movements through events and collaborations. The art on our beers is another unique element of our brewery and is a reflection of our interests, such as music, history, science, horror movies and video games. Our can labels feature texts that bring the concept behind the art to life, and we recently revealed that each one of these stories are part of overarching storylines. With every new beer you take another step into the worlds we have crafted!
This makes drinking a Radical Way beer an interactive experience that ignites both your taste buds and imagination. What makes our beers stand out is that we strive to achieve the perfect balance between strength and smooth drinkability. We want our beers to blow your mind from the moment you open your can when you instantly feel the aromas bursting out, until you finish drinking it without realizing you’ve just drank such a strong beer!!
4. What is the most challenging part within brewing processes?
At the moment, the rising costs for raw materials are definitely a big challenge for all breweries. Making strong, heavily-hopped beers or pastry stouts with various adjuncts can quickly become costly. Another challenge we face is that, as nomad brewers, we don’t have full control on the equipment of the brewery we are contracting at, which can limit our ability to brew specific styles.
5. Have you ever failed in production? What and how you did learn from that failure?
Fortunately we haven’t had any failures in our productions so far. Regardless of failures, we learn something new from each production, whether that is how to be more efficient in our final yields or becoming more familiar with the capabilities of each brewery’s equipment. Most importantly, each time we brew a style we have produced before, we get a better appreciation on how to achieve a better balance.
6. How did you decide your portfolio? Why you choose these types of beer?
We are currently contract brewing at our great friends Alea Brewing Co. in Athens, Greece. Unfortunately Greece still has a purity law (similar to Germany), which limits what ingredients we can use and what styles we can brew. At the same time, this has allowed us to dive deep into some styles we absolutely love drinking and brewing such DDH NEIPAs, West Coast IPAs, which we try to improve with each new beer. Since we cannot use adjuncts, we have also been able to explore the fundamentals of beers such as Imperial Stouts and Porters, which has given us a good appreciation of these styles to which we will hopefully soon start to add all sorts of crazy ingredients!! The cold winters and warm summers in Greece and Cyprus mean that the seasons also have an influence on what styles we brew, but we are always driven by our thirst to try out new styles and to make the most of what we have available to work with!
7. Where we can find your beers?
Our beers are sold all over Greece and Cyprus in craft beer bars, bottle shops, restaurants and more! The locations can be found on our website. We are also going to be taking part in several festivals across Europe this year.. keep an eye out to see where you can find us! But we do have our eyes set on Europe…
8. What is your favorite beer?
Vasilis: Dark Lord by 3 Floyds
Tony: Death by Coconut by Oskar Blues
Manos: Now I am Death, Destroyer of Worlds by Adroit Theory
9. What will be message for people who want start brewing?
Let your imagination run wild: get inspired by your favourite childhood desserts or the smells you remember from a hike in the forest. Keep in mind the setting where the beer you will brew is best enjoyed: is the beer going to be the main focus, or is it meant to accompany another experience, in which case it should be more sessionable?
10. What is the most exciting part for you, related to brewing and sales?
One feeling that we will never get bored of is the pleasure of watching someone we haven’t personally met drinking our beers and commenting on them with their friends. The suspense of seeing our completed artworks also never fades away as we are constantly amazed by how the graphic designers we work with materialize our insane ideas! Closing message for your followers
Knowing that there are people out there who believe in us and truly connect with our beers and the ideas they represent is a feeling we can’t put into words.. We can’t thank you enough for your dedicated support and we assure you that we are pouring our heart and soul into every aspect of our products. The only way is up, and we’ll be making some important steps in the next few
months!!