We are launching the year in C R A F T E D with our second publication for the CRAFTED RADAR series, a series that, as those of you who read us know, has a clear objective: to focus on the new beer projects that fascinate us the most.

In the case of Cervesa Màger,  I want to be quite clear. For me, the surge of this brewery specialized in sour, wild and mixed fermentation beers is the most exciting thing that has happened when it comes to craft beer in recent years.

I remember the first time I had the opportunity to taste one of Aleix Puig's beers, at  Mash 2019, at the Other Half Brewing stand. Coincidentally, my glass was filled by one of the protagonists of our first Crafted Radar, Iván Raho from Oddity Brewing. Like attracts like. Since then, Màger has always been present in my beer prayers. And of course, in my fridge.

ORIGIN AND YEAR OF FOUNDATION

Cervesa Màger was founded in 2018, and the first beer to be launched on the market was Minimal, a moderately acid beer, which recipe was designed to make the Berliner Weisse style known and introduced to the palates of the area.

But the beer history of Aleix Puig, Màger's founder and brewer, began a few years earlier. More specifically in 2013, at a craft beer festival: “When I discovered craft beer a whole world opened up for me, from discovering a drink that I liked, to finding an infinity of different tastes and smells that aroused a passion in me, whether it was to try new beers and different styles every day, or to attend fairs and festivals with intent, and make new friends in the craft beer world. We are neighbors of Sant Joan de Mediona, a place where one of the largest and most important fairs of the Peninsula is held, and it was a crime that I hadn’t attended the previous years, not knowing what a truly good beer was". Like discovering rock music at the Woodstock Festival, so to speak.

The next (and logical) step was to start brewing, as Aleix himself admits, “without resting, every week I made a different beer and never repeated them. After a short time, with the help of a book or two, I started making my own modifications and recipes.”

After a visit to Ales Agullons, Carlos Rodríguez advised him on places that offered courses and workshops in Barcelona, ​​and as soon as he got home Aleix signed up for several of them. He wanted to have as much knowledge as possible about the brewing process. From then on, the Family Beer 5L all-grain kit was too small for him, and he began to make batches of 20L, 50L and finally 100L, in a room set up and intended solely for brewing beer.

During his learning process, Aleix's incessant restlessness led him to create, together with other home homebrewers from the Penedés area, the Club Zythos beer collective. “Once a month we met in the capital of wine, Vilafranca del Penedès, and we did workshops, visits and shared knowledge. During this stage the motivation was greater, being able to share and learn from other home brewers, making a series of elaborations of different styles every week, and trying to obtain the most similar result possible depending on the style, wanting people to try the beers, know their opinions and find possible defects to improve."

And it was at that time when he discovered the sour style. This discovery led him to make the decision to brew his first batch as a gypsy brewer in a brewery located 20km from his town, while combining it with other work in the world of cava and artistic painting, and with the help of his partner, Mireia. At that moment, Màger was born.

THE CASTLE OF DE VILAMÀGER

While he was brewing beers, Aleix thought that the time had come to redo the basement of his family home in La Llacuna, province of Barcelona. And the first thing he did, before starting the work, was to remove all the tools and old junk that were stored, including his grandfather's old barrels: “when removing the old barrels, one of the supports that held them was a stone that we loved when we saw it. From its shape, our logo was born, hexagonal with a triangle in the middle.“

According to Aleix, many of the houses in the town are built with castle stones, and that particular stone used to be a part of a pillar of the Vilademàger castle, guardian of the town. "This is where the name of our brand comes from, Cervesa Màger" says Aleix, who like any other "llacunenc" or "llacunenca" is in love with the castle. "I found even more value in that stone that supported the barrels.”

PHILOSOPHY

If we delve into Màger's philosophy, it is easy to find a strong connection with the environment that has surrounded Aleix since childhood: “I was born in a land of wines and cavas, in the middle of the Penedès, working Cava wineries and always having some kind of relationship with this world.”

For this reason, the evolution that led him to be interested in a style or styles that, as Aleix himself acknowledges, "fuses very similar techniques and brings that wild side to beers", was something that seemed predestined. I would even dare to say that this path is not only part of Màger's DNA, but has somehow been forging the identity and character of the brewery.

A process of revelation full of nuances and experiences that finally materialized in that first Berliner Weisse that, as Aleix says, “changed everything:  it was acidic, fruity and very similar to a cava, which fit perfectly into the area. I loved the end result and the added part of the process (acidification, working with fruits…), something more complex than the beers I had made so far. It was a fantastic experience.”

BEER STYLES

The styles of beer that are part of the Màger project are focused on sour beers, whether it being sour, wild or mixed fermentation.

In fact, when you listen to Aleix describing his beers, you quickly perceive the passion and constant desire to improve that is behind each recipe: “after Minimal, little by little I have been making different brews, always with the same beer as a base and playing with different densities and fruits, until discovering the wonderful bacteria and the wild yeasts; another area that I am passionate about within the sour ones, such as Wild Ale, with more funky or more sour profiles. Playing with wild yeasts, from the fruits themselves or from the barrels, is one of the things that I am most passionate about today.”

The first Wild Ale that Màger launched was Wild Beats, a sour beer acidified with lactobacillus, fermented with saccharomyces, and later refermented and matured for four months with 30% natural raspberries, whose yeasts gave it that wild part. Aleix admits that it is "one of the beers of which I am most proud, it has won several awards and I try to keep improving it every day.”

Other examples of beers that we can find in the Màger portfolio are Ghost Cherries, an aged sour refermented for six months in white wine barrels with 25% cherries and six more months of aging in the bottle, Cosmic Trance, a barrel aged with 30% red currants aged for six months in white wine barrels, or Soul Peach, an Imperial Wild Ale of 9% ABV, with 30% organic peaches from the Ordal, fermented for five months and with an addition of natural Vanilla extract. All of them, with natural fruits and oak barrels from Penedés.

If, like me while writing this article, your mouth has started to water, just wait, because there is more. Aleix tells me that in 2021 he plans to continue launching new Wild Ales along with other beers that he has been making to date, such as the Barrica de Chardonnay, "a Berliner Weisse-based beer, passed through a barrel where we have previously fermented Chardonnay grapes, from one of the high altitude vineyards in our town, an area where wineries seek altitude to achieve acidity in their wines and a better quality.” We will be waiting impatiently to try it.

When asked about the beer that he feels most satisfied with to date, the one he chooses is Soul Peach, although he admits to having a special predilection for Atrapada, a beer that has not yet seen the light in a bottle and that will be released this year, in which "beer is fused with the world of wine, with Trepat grapes from the vineyards of a good friend that we have harvested for three years, and with which we have been doing various tests to integrate it well into the beer. In this case, first a carbonic maceration of the grape is done in its own grain, where we manage to extract the maximum of aromas and flavors, and halfway through fermentation we transfer it to the beer, where it spends half a year in storage passing through the barrel.”

FUTURE PLANS

When talking about the future of the brewery, Aleix is ​​clear: for now, they will remain as gypsies, continuing the same line of sour and wild styles, and with Minimal as one of their fixed references. They will continue to launch news, working with fruits and barrels, and producing small batches to ensure better control.

I'm delighted to hear that, despite the excitement that the takeoff of Cerveses Màger has meant for many in our craft beer scene, the “tarannà” and Aleix's vision remain intact. And the proof of this is seen when he tells us that “one of the things that I now have clear is not to hurry and be patient, because among other things that is what has made me get to where I am now and it is precisely the most important thing and what makes these aged beers so special. Time makes them brighter and more lively, and the more patience the better the end result. This year we are going to try to experiment with spontaneous beers, with beers fermented with natural yeasts from the area and with natural acidification, looking for a “terrer or terroir”, which will create more love for our area, and natural inoculations creating a unique beer and a daughter of the earth and nature“.

Another of his more immediate plans, and make sure to stay tuned dear friends of sour beers, is that there are plans to allocate part of the premises to opening a store and tasting area that will be called L'OR DE LA REPÚBLICA; a space specialized in spontaneous beers, lambic, sour and wild, which will serve to promote the styles of sour beers in the area, "while we continue to enjoy and transmit our passion." Beer enthusiasts, go looking for a room, we're all going to La Llacuna!