Meet the Brewer: Jaega Wise, Wild Card
Jaega Wise is co-founder and Head Brewer at Wild Card Brewery, who are based in Walthamstow. We reached out to Wild Card for a little more background…
Hailing from Nottingham, Jaega began experimenting with brewing while undertaking a degree in Chemical Engineering at Loughborough University. After a year working as a Process Technician for the water division of General Electric, Jaega worked for a period as a chemical trader in London. She left this position to help set up Wild Card.
Wild Card originated as a ‘cuckoo’ brewery, using other brewers’ equipment, before using a government start-up loan to establish its own 6-barrel site in Walthamstow in 2014, where it also has a popular tap room. Wild Card have a core range of five beers, and have collaborated not only with other breweries, but with other small businesses in their local area.
For the past two years, Wild Card hosted the London chapter of the International Women’s Collaboration Brew Day, an initiative which sees women brewers worldwide brewing the same beer on International Women’s Day. This is very much in keeping with Wild Card’s emphasis on cooperation and equality. (Cool crossover: IWCBD was the idea of Burnt Mill head brewer Sophie de Ronde, and was made possible by her membership of Project Venus, which in turn was set up by our previous featured brewer, Sara Barton.)
Jaega is also a recording artist, and an increasingly prominent speaker about sexism and other forms of discrimination in the brewing industry. In January 2018, she was elected Director of the Society of Independent Brewers’ South East region.
Queen of Diamonds (5%)
Wild Card’s flagship IPA, Queen of Diamonds is UK craft beer royalty. A winner in the Beautiful Brew category at the 2016 Urban Food Awards, Queen of Diamonds is an IPA with many facets. It’s a continuously hopped IPA, which means that hops are added regularly throughout the boil, rather than at the beginning, middle and end (the traditional way). This results in a lushly complex flavour profile, at once bitter, tropical and spicy, with notes of lychee and grapefruit.
Queen of Diamonds is one of three beers included in our International Women’s Day Craft Beer Box, to be sent out to DeskBeers customers in the week commencing March 5th. International Women’s Day 2018 takes place on March 8th. If you enjoyed this article, check out our features on Fuller’s Head Brewer, Georgina Young, and Brewster’s founder, Sara Barton, whose beers will also be in the IWD box.
Thanks again to Jaega, and to the team at Wild Card for the great beer they brew.
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