Stretta Takes Valletta: Maltese Craft Beer Experts Are Launching Their First Ever Lager Tomorrow
Picture this: the air is warm, you’re surrounded by friends on a pleasant Maltese summer night, and your fingers are wrapped around a slim, long glass dripping with condensation, filled with crisply cold premium lager.
Ideal? Yes. Reality? Also yes.
Or at least, it will be very soon. Tomorrow, 7th June, Malta’s craft beer experts Stretta are transporting their new premium lager from the realms of our imagination into the actual world.
Come Friday, we’ll be welcoming Stretta Premium Lager No7 – the first lager Stretta has ever released, a crisp and refreshing pilsner-style lager at an affordable price point
This new brew has promised to deliver a subtle sweetness, where customers will be able to taste the pilsner grain, balanced out with a subtle, lingering bitterness and hoppy notes at the end. Lager No7 has is being promoted as an easy drinking beer, palatable to everyone, from the beer connoisseur to the casual drinker looking for an upgrade.
“I put everything I’ve got in to the creation of every Stretta beer, although often strenuous I find it incredibly satisfying, especially when the end result turns out to be a real winner,” John Borg Barthet, brewmaster at Stretta Craft Beer, told Lovin Malta.
John also shed some light on what to expect from this week’s launch event
“Friday’s launch is a mix of so many of the things we love,” he smiled. “Nicky Slim, Patman & DJ Bob; three favourite DJ friends of mine will be playing anything from soul, indie and house with plenty of groove. Chef Debbie from Barefoot & Curious has created a menu full of reinvented Maltese soul food dishes, we even got a Valletta Festa Committee to throw in some festa decor for good measure”. Err, consider us attending.
Stretta have become one of the major players on the Maltese craft beer scene, being one of the first brands to pioneer into this thriving sector a few years back. So is Malta becoming more aware of craft beer making?
“There is a lot more interest nowadays than when I had started,” Borg Barthet tells us. “People often reach out to find out more about how they can start brewing and I’m happy to help. For people interested in keeping up with what’s happening in the local beer scene, I would suggest joining the Malta Beer Club on Facebook, it’s full of home brewers and beer aficionados”.
So does the brewmaster still have the same intensity of passion for brewing as he did when he started out?
“To this day [brewing] is still the thing that I am most passionate about,” Borg Barthet asserts. “Stretta is both my full time job and passion project, good beer brings good people together so we’re in the business of making that happen”. We’re finding it hard to argue with that.
So head out to the launch of the new Stretta Premium Lager No7 at the Rooftop Terrace, The Fortress Builders, Valletta this Friday
Doors open at 4pm and the event finishes at sunset (8pm)… just in time for you to stumble home and collapse into a beer-fuelled stupor. For those less collapsing-inclined, afterparty options – including a live band – are available at Salumeria in Strait Street, Valletta’s nighttime hub.
Food is by Barefoot & Curious and entrance is free by invitation. If you’d like to join, though, think fast, as invites are almost gone.
Cheers to that!