First up is Proteus Volume 1, which features Motueka, Amarillo and Citra hops. According to the brewery, there will three brews of this combination, each experimenting and refining how they are used and when they are added.

Three of the Siren team, Steve, Felix and Alan have been tasked with developing the first ever Proteus brew.

They explain: “The thought process behind this one is to try and keep everything well balanced to provide a good basis for experimentation and tweaking of the next two developments, although the brewers have decided to lead with Motueka, so it’s roughly a 40% / 30% / 30% split across the whole brew.

“We’ve used Citra and Amarillo in the first wort. First wort hopping means adding hops while the kettle is still being filled, and therefore while the temperature is still rising. This extracts oils (and therefore flavours) in a gentle way, as well as developing bitterness and aroma that is smooth and well rounded.

“We use the same technique in Soundwave. The reason for using Citra and Amarillo at this stage is to try and extract floral and tropical notes at an early stage, as all three hops in Volume I are very citrus-focussed and we think that this will come through strongly later on.”

Motueka and Citra were used at the 40 minute addition in the boil, so most of the bittering came through here while picking up aroma at the same time.

Amarillo was featured again late on at the 5 minute addition, for maximum pick up of the more floral side of tropical fruits which won’t be provided from the other two hops.

They added: “In terms of dry hopping, nothing was planned until we could taste the beer and see where additional and complementary notes could come into play. As expected, a really juicy and limey profile had come through strongly from the Motueka, so the first dry hop was largely Amarillo to balance this out somewhat.

“We then did a second dry hop of all three hops in equal proportion, the idea being to lift everything up a final level before release.”

The debut kegs and casks of the Proteus series shipped from 8 February.