English couple turn El Torcal water into Antequera’s first home-grown craft beers

John and Maria Monk have spent a quarter of a century in Antequera. After Covid they shut the old chapter and opened a two-person brewery on the industrial estate, using spring water that has filtered through the limestone of El Torcal. Provincial food brand Sabor a Malaga has now listed El Guiri Brewery as a specialist Malaga Province producer, and local papers have finally caught up with what neighbours already knew: this inland city has its own bottled beer.

Why they call it El Guiri

John is English. In Spanish a guiri is the northern European who never quite stops being from somewhere else. He has lived in Antequera for more than 20 years, worked and travelled abroad for much of that time, and started home-brewing about 15 years ago. That hobby grew until it no longer looked like a hobby. Maria works every stage with him. They founded the brand in 2024. They speak Spanish and English on the shop floor. Bottle labels keep the joke going: El Ingles Tostada, El Frances, El Aleman, plus a Pale Ale, a hazy NEIPA and a Stout Negra.

You will not find a taproom on the old town plaza. Production is in Avenida del Romeral, 8A, among workshops and lorries. Grain to bottle is done by just two people. Days run from six hours to 16, depending on whether they are mashing, fermenting or filling 330 ml bottles. “We both work every phase,” they have told local reporters. Spain’s small-brewery market, they add, is “practically closed” to outfits this size. They do not want to fight Cruzcampo or Victoria on volume. They want beer that tastes of Malaga Province and still sells at a price locals will pay.

British residents who have built a life inland rather than on the coast will recognise the pattern. Euro Weekly News has followed British families putting down roots away from the shoreline and the wider expat scene in Malaga province. El Guiri is that story in liquid form.

Water that already has a mineral story

Most Spanish craft brewers strip tap water with reverse osmosis, then rebuild the mineral profile for each style. John and Maria looked at the cost of that kit and walked the other way. El Torcal, a few kilometres south of town, is a Jurassic limestone karst. Rain sinks through fissures into an aquifer that feeds Antequera, above all through the Manantial de la Villa. That water is hard, calcium-rich, anything but a blank page.

They start with it and only add minerals each recipe needs. Mouthfeel and flavour change with those tweaks, but the geology stays in the glass. Unesco already treats El Torcal as part of the Antequera Dolmens World Heritage Site. Walkers know the stacked rock from the Torcal nature area pages on spain.info and the Antequera tourism listing. Now that same massif is an ingredient.

Six beers now, a seventh on the way

Current bottles on the Sabor a Malaga website are El Ingles Tostada, El Frances, El Aleman, Pale Ale, NEIPA and Stout Negra. Two styles have sold harder than expected: the cloudy, punchy NEIPA and the creamy black stout. A witbier with coriander and orange peel from the comarca is in closed tastings, lined up for late 2026 if those tasters sign it off.

Customers used to industrial lager often say the aroma hits first. Six styles is a sliver of the hundred-plus beer world, yet it is more variety than Antequera bars used to pour from a local vat.

What they want next

Plans are modest and local: more points of sale in Antequera and the wider province, extra styles, one-off batches for hospitality clients, and a bigger nave if cash allows. They are open to working with other small Andalusian breweries. Competition is fine; so is sharing kit and know-how.