Isabel with "her daughters of her" of her.
Isabel Perez Jimenez She was a philologist in Barcelona. She lived there with her husband, and there they had her son. When the two of them were left without a job, they decided to set out on their way back to his town, Come out.
With less than 300 inhabitants, the great attraction of Saldes is the imposing mountain that rises behind it: the Pedraforca massif. A sharp, rocky protuberance to which its neighbors have found an undeniable resemblance: the profile of a fairy tale witch (if you don't see it, just rotate the photo) . During the summer and as long as it endures the good weather, spring and autumn colors, Saldes attracts tourists, in winter this area of The Berguedà, in the Catlan pre-Pyrenees it remains rather deserted.
When they moved, Isabel saw that there were no job opportunities either, and she began to think. She then was awakening in Spain the fashion of craft beer and she realized: "With the good water we have here, the beer has to be good." And she so she made her.
The good witch of Pedraforca.
She wasn't a brewer, she assures her, but she started trying. She to look for recipes, processes and to try and try. using the water from one of the springs, from the Sant Andreu fountain, she and some other local ingredients she ended up coming up with beers that the brewers liked. She had one advantage: "All high altitude fermentation processes are better", she explains her. The witch of Pedraforca is good.
Almost six years after starting, after a long and difficult process, Isabel goes ahead with her business, the Pedraforca Brewery. She produces 50 liters of each of the four or five varieties that she keeps fixed because they already have followers: the blonde, the black, the tan and a special one, with ceps i mel (boletus and honey) “which pairs very well with meat”. And she continues to experiment to create new ones, especially when the Saldes beer fair approaches, which has been going on for three years.
To try it, for now, you have to go on an excursion there or in the area. Her beer is a local product. Isabel makes it, bottles it and distributes it. "It's a natural product, it can't get hot, you have to take great care of it," she explains. "It looks more like a cheese than an industrial beer and it spoils, it's no longer useful."
They are more like a cheese than an industrial beer.
In the same place in the main square of Saldes where she brews her beer, she has set up, at the entrance, a small bar and some tables where you can spend some time and taste all its varieties, with a little shop where you can buy other local products from her area: cheeses, flour, boletus, black chickpeas... Isabel's great goal is that "all the ingredients of the Pedraforca beer were from the region of El Berguedà".
Meanwhile, she continues to brew 100% her own craft beer, which she once, she says, it has been criticized by the so-called brewmasters of this industry (also dominated by men) for considering it bland or unorthodox –perhaps for including the boletus–. Y? That will be because they have not tried it...
*With this article we follow a series of stories that claim the work of rural women.