Who said that only good wine is drunk in the Alentejo?
Luís Ramos, an Alentejano from Portalegrense, says with great conviction that you can also drink good craft beer in this region.
Despensa Franciscana went to the village of Fortios to see Luís' project, called Casa do Penedo Brewery, and was able to see that excellent craft beers are indeed being made.
The mentor of Casa do Penedo, who never abandoned his Alentejo roots and always studied in Portalegre, has a master's degree in nursing and specialises in medical-surgical nursing. At the age of 27, he started working at Santa Casa Marvão, worked at the Beirã long-term care unit and is currently working at the Portalegre hospital.
As a curious person, he began to study fermentation processes and even thought about making wine, but quickly realised that his focus would be beer. He started brewing beer in plastic buckets, using a kit he had bought, and that's how his first production began.
Luís also said that great ideas are born in the most difficult times!
That's how it happened with Casa do Penedo... in a pandemic environment, where creativity prevailed as a solution to decompress, the first beer was born and the process was so passionate that it ended up legalising the project to make the business more serious.
It quickly made the leap and entered some national competitions where, in November 2021, it won second place in the national craft beer competition in the outstanding category. From then on, he made the leap to producing a larger quantity of litres and today he is already a benchmark in the upper Alentejo.
It is also expanding nationwide and has its own factory in Fortios, where it works alongside its hospital activity.
Luís said that he had a great source of inspiration, which he always likes to mention, and that was his fellow brewers at Barona beer in Castelo de Vide.
It currently has 10 beer references with the 11th brewing soon. All the bottles have an illustration according to the style of the beer, made by Castelo de Vide illustrator Paulo Belo Costa.
As future projects, he is developing two craft beers with low alcohol content, following a trend in American speciality magazines. Luís is working alone on this project and wants to continue in order to guarantee the quality he has seen so far, because there are secrets that are actually part of the business!
Casa do Penedo Brewery
Rua do Cimo da Vinha, Lote 6H
7300-658 Fortios, Portalegre
Contacts:
+351 963879729
casadopenedo.net
casadopenedobrewery@gmail.com
