Published by Leonardo Calcagno
Who are you and your current job?
We are Oscar and Quionia, the owners, the brewers, the farmers, the sellers… and most of the tasks of Lo Vilot Company. We are based in the north-east of Spain, in the western Catalonian area, 180 Km far from Barcelona, in a village called Almacelles, where we have our lands, our brewery, our malting system… and our home
What was the inspiration behind your brewery?
Cervesa lo Vilot has a Full Circle Beer Project doing organic craft beer production.We produce craft beer officially since September 2015, although we are not yet using 100% of the production of our own ingredients, we are gradually incorporating them in the craft beers we produce. Nowadays all our beers are already made with our organic hops and hopefully, during 2017 we can offer you a beer produced 100% with our Bio-Ingredients.Regarding the malt, we started planting a hectare of beer barley in 2014, two and a half hectares during 2015, and five hectares in 2016. Last year we were designed de malter and this year we have built it, with three tons of malting capacity each cycle. Today we are doing the tests period with the help of the Agronomist University of Lleida (Food Technology Department), who is responsible for conducting analyzes and quality control of the product obtained.As regards hops cultivation also started in 2014 with the first playback tests in pots, playing two varieties of different hops (Fuggles and Nugget), today we have 4000 hop plants in two hectares with 14 different hop varieties: Cascade, Centennial, Magnum, Perle, Taurus, Columbus, Chinook, Smaragd, Spalter Spalt, Northern Brewer, EK Glodings, Styrian Goldings, Nugget and Fuggles.Today we produce more than 10 different types of beer, some mixing fruits, some in collaboration with other breweries,… we are open-minded in craft beer production.
Can you give us a tour of your beer scene?
Most of our events and customers are in our production area; Catalonia, although lately, we are growing towards the capital of Spain (Madrid) and other important Spanish cities.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to start a brewery?
Because there is a lot of competition and a lot of companies that are engaged in the production of craft beer in our region (Catalunya), is very difficult to make a place in this world, so we recommend that if you start now you have to find something different to offer the consumer, with its own character, that distinguishes you from the majority.