While visiting Garai Agro Brewery, I heard about another brewery I had to visit in the Basque Country. Meta Edabeak near San Sebastian in the cider capital, Astigarraga. I reached out to one of the owners and brewers if it was possible to buy some of their beers as I was going to head to San Sebastian the following day. Although initially just dropping by to buy some beers, I had to stay longer to enjoy a beer, look around the brewery, and have a chat with Sergio and Igor. Two of the owners and brewers.
Meta Edabeak started in September 2022 after Sergio and Igor were involved in another (nomad) brewery called Gora Craft Beer. The name Meta Edabeak comes from the two Basque words, meta and edabeak. Meta refers to the accumulation of hay for animals in the winter and edabeak means potion. The brewery is located just outside San Sebastian in a warehouse. The warehouse is home to a bar, production area, and climate-controlled storage room. Some barrels for barrel aging are scattered around the brewery too, including an over 100-year-old rum barrel. They specialize in farmhouse ales, brewing mainly grisettes and saisons. All beers are fermented with their house culture.
In just one year they have already produced an incredible amount of beers, over 20 different brews. Besides beer, they make other fermented beverages too. Together with Cyclic Beer Farm from Barcelona, they made Sidra, a dry cider. With Kiwardo, they made a spontaneously fermented kiwi wine with 3 kilos of kiwi per liter. On my short tour through the brewery, I enjoyed a Kentish Longtail, a grisette that’s used as the base beer for most other farmhouse ales. It’s a crisp and refreshing, low ABV, beer with some fresh hop aromas. It was pretty hard to decide which beers to bring home, but I chose to take away a bottle of Doom Calypso, Edi Begi, Ara Mai, and Basotik. Doom Calypso is a sour farmhouse ale infused with anaerobically fermented Aquiares coffee beans, Edi Begi is an oak-aged grape ale with red grape must from grapes from Cyclic Beer Farm, Ara Mai is a fruited sour saison with oranges and lemons, and Basotik is a herbed sour farmhouse ale without hops, cold infused with young spruce shoots and refermented with thyme honey. On top of that, upon leaving they gave me a bottle of Muxu. This beer was brewed for and to be released on the first anniversary which took place the weekend after my visit. It’s a fruited grisette with tons of fresh local strawberries. The result is a fruity beer with lots of strawberries on the nose, like strawberry lemonade or popsicles. This fruitiness however doesn’t really come through in the taste. With a slightly hoppy bitterness and the typical grisette dry and refreshing finish, it paired very well with a smoked and herby vegetable side dish.
Thanks, Sergio and Igor for welcoming me to your brewery and for the bottle of Muxu! The other beers are still waiting for me in my cellar and will be enjoyed during these cold and dark winter months to remind me of this summer time spent in the sunny and hospitable Basque Country.