Author: Tim Duquenne
In 2024, we launched The Travellers Series, and it has since become an ongoing celebration of collaborations with overseas breweries we admire. So, after visiting Spain in November 2024, New Zealand in February 2025, France in October 2025, and Poland in September 2026… Where’s our next destination?
For our 10th outing in the series, we're taking you to Slovakia for something special with our friends at Firstep Beer… With not one, but TWO collab beers!
We caught up with our head brewer, James, to talk about this collaboration, why it feels very special to him and how it all started:
I met Michal and Rafa a while ago, when they both worked for Sibeeria in Prague, and thought they were very nice, intelligent guys obsessed with making perfect beer. We stayed in contact, and they subsequently set up their cuckoo brewery Firstep Beer, based in Slovakia, focusing mainly on West Coast-style IPAs and Pilsners. They visited us last year for a catch-up and a meal, and then we agreed we needed to collab at ours in 2026. Being experts at Westies it seemed natural to brew one as well as a hazy/punchy NEIPA!
Introducing Only Entropy Comes Easy, a 8% West Coast DIPA (Idaho 7, Krush, Chinook, Columbus) and High Tartras, a 6.5% hazy IPA (Citra, Eclipse, Nectaron, Simcoe, El Dorado).
Lovely people. Great beer. Always learning from each other.
We've also caught up with Michal at Firstep Beer to try and understand how this collaboration came to life and the inspiration behind the recipe & names:
We’ve been friends with the Verdant crew for a while now, and we've never ceased to be amazed by their absolute determination to pursue perfection in beer. We share their belief that the liquid is the king and no detail is too small to mess with. As this extends well beyond the brewhouse, they've built a colourful group of passionate, hugely capable people from different fields in a beautiful corner of England. A true inspiration to witness.
An invitation to join them on the brew deck in Penryn was therefore one we really didn't need to think about twice. Honestly, just the views from the train crossing Cornwall would be worth the trip, but spending the afternoon over pints with James & Richard & their remarkable crew while dissecting dry-hopping techniques, sharing tales from the road or just plain being silly playing pool is the true prize here.
Our Traveller series collab NEIPA bears the name of Europe's smallest great range - High Tatras in Slovakia, where Firstep is based. The goal was to combine some of our favourite hops from around the world to create a more citrus-leaning hazy with a tropical dimension and a nice dank edge. All of that on a perfectly polished Verdant hazy base.
'Only Entropy Comes Easy' is just a poetic way of saying that some things are worth the effort - like steering all the elements of the brewing process to create a pint of beer that is a pure joy. And we do love bitter beers. Verdant have been upping their West Coast IPA game lately, so it wasn't exactly easy to push it forward, but we needed to try: higher ABV, more hop additions in different forms and some beautifully dank hops crowned by a large dose of Idaho7. This is a West Coast DIPA we've been dreaming of for a very long time, and we couldn't have found a better partner in crime to brew it with.
'Only Entropy Comes Easy' is just a poetic way of saying that some things are worth the effort
Thanks so much to our friends at Firstep for this amazing collaboration! Grab you cans on our webshop.
