Embracing the natural beer haze

Moncada was launched only a year later in 2011 – a pretty rapid turnaround in business terms – but here Julio’s career-hopping proved useful; the research he had done for setting up a deli wasn’t wasted. ‘I had already done a huge amount of homework in terms of acquiring the necessary licenses and navigating the mountains of paperwork involved in opening a food and beverage business here in the UK,’ he explains. ‘So when we decided on the brewery, most of the groundwork had already been done.’

So far so good – with premises secured in a prime position just around the corner from Portobello Road in Notting Hill, this Cinderella story seems almost too good to be true. But it hasn’t been without a lot of hard graft. ‘It started off as a one-man show,’ says Julio. ‘I did all the brewing, cleaning, bottling, selling and distribution on my own. There were many long, long days.

‘We still learn new things all the time,’ he continues. ‘Every day has its challenges and we have to adapt our business to accommodate for those circumstances.’ That adaptability is key to the future success of the business – although Britain is experiencing a huge craft beer revival, this can cause its own problems. ‘We are currently faced with the challenge of sourcing one of our key ingredients – hops. Because of the politics of the beer industry, all of us craft brewers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure a constant supply of hops, so we need to be creative and adapt. At Moncada, we are currently experimenting with new techniques and playing around with sour beers that require far less hops.’

It’s taken five years but Moncada has now grown to include a team of eight, a tap room above the brewery and a wider range of beers on offer. Starting with just three varieties, two remain on the core list today (the Notting Hill Blonde and Amber) but Julio and the team still take the brewing process very personally. ‘We love exploring and experimenting with different flavours and techniques,’ he says. ‘If we don’t personally like a beer, we just won’t ever brew it again. One of the first beers we ever brewed was the Bitter. The public seemed to really like it but it didn’t really do anything for me personally, so I found it increasingly difficult to make – I need to love the beer I am making to be passionate about it!’

Moncada prides itself on several things: brewing naturally, creating vegan-friendly beers, sourcing local ingredients, supporting local businesses and constantly innovating and experimenting. The drive for these choices comes very much from Julio: ‘I believe that brewing is fundamentally very simple,’ he explains. ‘Beer only needs four ingredients – water, hops, malt and yeast. They are all natural. Anything else just makes it over-complicated, so why use it?’

What differentiates the natural brewing process is the lack of filtering, as most commercial beers are ‘fined’ (or filtered) to ensure that the end drink is clear. The push for natural beer has two main arguments; that clarifying the beer removes some of the yeast which affects the overall flavour, and secondly, that the most common fining agent used is isinglass – made from fish swim bladders – making the beer unsuitable for vegans or vegetarians.

Julio firmly believes that natural brewing produces beer with ‘a much fuller flavour’, but the resultant cloudy haze is harder to win people over to. ‘I find the biggest obstacle is old school thinking,’ he says. ‘There is this entrenched school of thought that says if beer is not clear then it must be off. While there was a very positive perception of natural beer as an idea, we had to work hard to overcome the prejudice against cloudiness.’ The growing awareness of isinglass use also means that vegans and non-vegans alike are coming around to cloudy beer, with a London Vegan Beer Festival being held for the past three years.