A Radcliffe brewery is bringing a taste of the continent to the borough with its festive spiced ale.

Brightside Brewing Company on Pheonix Way has released its latest Christmassy beer, a spiced ale Glühbier.

The Family-run brewery are big fans of the festive season and release many new beers in cask & bottle every December to celebrate.

Inspiration for the festive beer was drawn from the delicious warm spices, orange and ginger flavours in the mulled wine they’ve enjoyed over the years at the Manchester Christmas markets.

Sales and marketing director Carley Friedrich said: “We thought we’d invented a brand new beer style, switching out wine for beer and calling it Glühbier as opposed to Glühwein, but we found that it’s already an established tradition in Europe.

We just brought it to Manchester!”

“It’s a favourite among many loyal customers who return to our brewery shop in Radcliffe at Christmas to pick up some bottles, and we find a good number of people buy it for Secret Santa gifts too since beer is usually pretty well received!”

The brewery became fully gluten free at the start of the year, so Gluhbier can also be enjoyed by those with an intolerance to gluten.

The move to gluten free brewing across the board, and more recently the use of vegan finings in their cask beers, has been an important step in the growth of the business.

It means that the full range of 18 bottled and canned beers, and the regularly changing range of cask and kegged beers is open to many more drinkers.

Carley added: “We love seeing the surprise in customer’s faces when we tell them that all the beers are gluten free and that they can choose from any of them.

“So many people tell us they are used to having a choice of 1 beer. We’re happy to be able to change that.”

Anyone wishing to to try the beer for themselves, can find it on the brewery’s website or at it's Radcliffe shop at Unit 10, Dale Industrial Estate, M26 1AD.

Trade enquiries should be directed to Carley carley@brightsidebrewing.co.uk