When you arrive at Utopian Brewery, you’re not just stepping onto a brewery site — you’re stepping into a vision of how beer should be made. The first thing you notice isn’t the stainless steel or the scent of malt in the air. It’s the field. Their own barley field, growing right there beside the brewhouse. That’s Utopian in a nutshell: grounded, thoughtful, and quietly pushing UK brewing in a direction that’s more local, more sustainable, and more… well, utopian..

Step inside and the lights hum on, motion-triggered, revealing a brewhouse that gleams like a sci-fi lab. But this isn’t flash for the sake of it. Everything has purpose. Wastewater? Collected daily, sent off for treatment, and returned clean into the Devonshire taps. CO₂? Captured, stored, reused. It’s as circular as brewing gets.

I was down to brew a West Coast Lager — a crisp, piney take on a style that demands balance, clarity, and boldness in equal measure. Lager is a funny thing. It looks simple. But the thing about clean beers? There’s nowhere to hide. No over-the-top hops to mask faults. No lactose or adjuncts to smooth over the rough bits. Just malt, water, hops, yeast — and skill.

That’s when the brewing team let me in on one of their secrets: the art of decoction. It’s a technique that helps explain why Utopian’s beers are so characterful, so layered, despite their clean, elegant profiles.

Now, decoction is a bit of a brewing throwback — a traditional Czech method that only a handful of UK breweries still use. Here’s the gist: during mashing (the first step in brewing where grains are steeped in hot water to release sugars), a portion of that mash is pulled out, heated up in the kettle, and then returned to the mash tun to naturally raise the temperature.

It sounds faffy, and it is. But it adds something unmistakable: a deeper malt richness, notes of toasted bread crust and warm cereal, a gentle sweetness that underpins the clean bitterness of a great lager. It’s a process that requires time, patience, and real intent — something that runs through everything Utopian does.

Unless the label says otherwise, Utopian uses 100% British ingredients. As much of barley as possible is grown on site, malted and kilned to their own spec. It’s hyper-local in the best possible way, and a reminder that you don’t need to chase foreign novelty to make something exceptional — you just need to care.

So here we are: a West Coast Lager, brewed with intention and collaboration, rooted in British soil and Czech technique, filtered through the shared values of two indie beer obsessives.

Keep an eye out — this one’s going to be special.