fbpx

Order! Order! Order!

by

No, this blog is not about the speaker of the House of Commons in London. It is about the customers of Sulzbachers who are ordering Ginger Tipples again and again.

You can also order a Ginger Tipple

Re-Ordering

When I started selling Ginger Tipples, we were so excited with each order, especially if it was for more than a few boxes. Then when customers would re-order a few months later we were even more excited.

Today with 5 ginger beers on offer the repeat orders are coming in by themselves. Some customers order by SMS, others call, some text on Facebook or Whatsapp and some send me emails. There are still a few more who prefer if I call or visit them.

One of the owners of Café 22b saw me in the street and re-ordered on the spot.

In fact, to date our re-order rate is over 80% and our distributors are showing similar statistics.

Reassurance

When brewing a new style of beverage like the range of Ginger Tipples, I go through stages of doubt about how the market really enjoys the drinks. When cafés, bars, restaurants and stores order again and again it reassure me that the tipples are good drinks.

So, thank you to all of our customers and, of course, the Ginger Tipple drinkers.

Jeremy

Tasting Beers – Special Event

by

How to Taste Beers

Ginger Beer
A Blissful Bavik Super Pils

On March 12th I ran a beer-tasting event for the Jewish community in Antwerp. My good friends at the Special Belge Taproom hosted the evening and supplied a broad variety of beers on tap.

One of the challenges of arranging a beer tasting is to line up a suitable variety of beers which are good representatives of the different styles. As this was an introduction to beer tasting, the selection had to be more main-stream. While I would have loved to present some sours and lambics, this was not the appropriate forum.

The wonderful pictures are courtesy of a beer loving photographer, Moshe Yonatan.

The Selection on Tap

For a beer tasting where you are explaining to people how to enjoy and savour beers, you have to ensure that the beers are from the best available. When they hear the word beer, a lot of people think of the cheap lagers they see in the supermarkets. They are often unaware of the wide variety of styles and the skill that goes into brewing a beautiful pint. Here was our selection:

  1. Bavik Super Pils 5.2% – Belgium’s only unpasteurized Pilsner beer on tap from de Brabandere
  2. Lupulus Hibernatus 9% – a strong dark beer with an extra flavour
  3. Lachouffe Houblon 9% – a classic American style IPA
  4. Franc Belge 5.2% – a strongly hopped Belgian Amber, a joint venture with De Ranke and Spécial Belge
  5. De Nest SchuppenBoer 8% – A full bodied strong Belgian blonde
  6. Hof ten Dormal Gin Barrel Aged Blonde 12% – A special blonde to finish off the evening.
Jeremy Sulzbacher explaining a Lupulus

Content

As it is difficult to taste 6 beers one after the other without any breaks, we arranged some content for discussion.

Although each beer had an introduction, we looked at some other issues:

  • Judaism and alcohol and its association with life events
  • How beer with hops in the Babylonian Talmud predate hops in Europe by about 500 years
  • Beer in Jewish law and custom
  • Beer’s major contributions to civilisation

The Next Tasting

Quite a few people missed the beer tasting because they had prior commitments, and we hope to arrange more beer tastings in the future.

High Impakt

by

Last week I was invited to the launch of a new beer at the Special Belge Taproom in De Pakt, Antwerp. The four guys running the bar also intend to open a brewery on the premises, which I understand will take quite a few more months,

De Ranke

In preparation for this, they have been honing their brewing skills by collaborating with one of Belgium’s best craft breweries, De Ranke. Located just over the border in Dottignies, Walonia, De Ranke beers are easily identified by their extra strong hoppy bitterness from brewing with whole hops. They are also specific about brewing natural beers at higher temperatures while using solar energy to reduce their carbon footprint. They use whole hopes instead of pellets and have specially designed fermentation tanks to increase the hop flavor during fermentation.

Franc Belge

The Special Belge team worked together with De Ranke to develop a strong amber, a style which they were not producing.

The result is a great amber beer with a particular hoppy flavour which can only mean one thing – De Ranke. Unfortunately, it was served on the cold side, but when you let it warm up a few degrees, you really are in for a pleasure as you savour the underlying ale and then the fuggle hops.

The aftertaste lingers for over an hour – depending on how much you drink. This is not surprising as they hop the Franc Belge with serious quantities of whole hops. If this is their first beer, then we can seriously look forward to when they actually start brewing at the Special Belge Taproom.

Ginger Kriek

Another reason for attending the launch was that they just started selling the 2018 Ginger Kriek. There are four different batches from this vintage and the Special Belge are selling the one which is least gingery with only a touch of sourness. Catch one while you can, the stock is limited.