Students brewing beer for Nottingham pub as part of their degree

Video: Nottingham students on their beer which is being served at a local pub.

Nottingham students are brewing a 3,000 litre batch of beer to be served at a local pub – as part of their masters degree.

Four students from the University of Nottingham have been working in teams of two, one based at the Black Iris Brewery, Shipstone Street, and the other at Dancing Duck Brewery, in Derby.

Each group is creating a 3,000 batch of their own beer.

One of the beers brewed in Nottingham is currently on sale at the Kean’s Head pub, St Mary’s Gate.

The other will be launched at the Exeter Arms pub, Exeter Place, Derby, on Thursday, July 13.

The beer is being brewed at the Black Iris Brewery.

Both beers are the culmination of the students’ six-month masters research project, as part of their MSc degree in brewing science and practice.

Students Ashley Wadeson and Daniel Boxall, based at the Black Iris Brewery, have created a lime and coriander ‘Hefeweizen’ brew called Laima’s Luck.

Ashley said: “You take some grain, add water, extract sugars from it – it’s kind of like chemistry.

“Then you add a plant material and the hops for to make the beer bitter and create different flavours. Then you ferment it with yeast. That’s biology, bio-chemistry, there’s some really interesting reactions going on there.

“To be able to determine the exact flavours of the raw materials going in you need that scientific knowledge, to learn what parameters to control to get what you want.

“The amount we’ve been taught on the course in the past year is phenomenal really. When it came to doing this project, we wanted to use what we’ve learnt to try and come up with something unique and a little bit different.”

Daniel added 100 limes were squeezed into the batch of beer.

Alex Wilson, co-director of the Black Iris Brewery, said the collaboration with the university has meant professional brewers have been able to impart their knowledge onto the students.

He added: “And they [the students] bring something fresh and new to the table when we do these things. When the opportunity came for us to do the collaboration with the University of Nottingham we jumped at the chance.”