It is always a great feeling to recruit a new customers. But when it is a specialist beer bar, or beer café as they are called in this part of Belgium, I am especially pleased.
Dr Beer offers a large selection of beers and ales, but there are only two gluten-free beers on his menu, and they are both from Sulzbachers.
Jeroen Peeters
The owner of Dr Beer, Jeroen Peeters, has been familiar with Ginger Tipple since its early days when he worked at Antwerp’s famed Beer Lovers Bar. When I went to show him the latest versions of our Tipples, he was impressed with the progress we have made.
As a brewer and foodie, Jeroen runs beer and food pairing workshops and tasting events.
And of course there is always a selection of excellent beers available, some of them as good as Ginger Tipple!
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.
Alan O’Grady opened his bar, The Corner House, earlier this month on Antwerp’s trendy Nationalestraat. He designed it to be the perfect place to pop in for a drink on your way home after work or a place to spend the evening.
This is not a bar which wows you with a selection of hundreds of ales, by bringing brews from Brunei or beers from Beer Sheba.
This is a bar with atmosphere. When I went there to deliver some samples, I immediately felt the impulse to sit down and have a pint, or pintje in the local lingo.
Allan @ Work
The Perfect Stella
I ordered a glass of Stella Artois. Many bars and restaurants serve Stella on tap, but not all are the same. The quality can be affected if the keg is old, storage at the wrong temperature, tubes not cleaned properly etc. This one was perfect!
Sometimes, the challenge of pulling a perfect pint, is in fact not that simple. It does help if you enjoy what you serve.
The Tipple Effect
New customers are critical to the growth of any new business and we invest in selecting potential clients. I was delighted to receive the order from The Corner Shop for the regular Ginger Tipple and our Ginger Quad.
I delivered yesterday evening and within a few hours was happily surprised to see pictures of Ginger Tipple in the bar and on the menu. This must be the record, as it usually takes a few weeks or even months for bars to change their menus. The Corner House is featuring the Ginger Tipples as their gluten-free offerings.
Nationalestraat
This long road links the Antwerp’s Old City with the artsy Antwerpen Zuid which is full of Art Nouveau buildings, galleries, museums, bars, cafés and great shops. The road was widened in 1884 and has now been restored and is home to a lot of the city’s trendier shops.
The Corner House is open from 10 am until 3 am, so you can Tipple 17 hours a day!
