fbpx

Beer

What We Drink @ Home

by

What we drink @ Home

People often ask me which beers do we drink at home? Do we only drink Ginger Tipple or do we also enjoy other beers?

Foodies

Ginger BeerFirst, you have to understand that not only is my wife a superb chef, but we all enjoy her delicious food. Even a simple sandwich can be upgraded into a culinary pleasure, although it often requires some creativity.

Last week I was gong to make hamburgers, but took out schnitzels instead. I baked fresh rolls, which came out more fluffy inside than usual.

After assembling the freshly fried chicken schnitzel in the bun with vegetables and sauces, all it needed was a Oude Geuze Boon.

The award winning Oude Geuze Boon is one of the finest examples of the traditional 100% spontaneous fermentation Lambic style. To moderate the sourness, Boon Brewery only brews Lambic in the 7 cold months, from early October until April, according to the traditional “turbid mash” system. This Lambic beer is aged for 1, 2 or 3 years in oak casks. The blend, a mild average 18 months old Lambic (unsweetened, unfiltered, unpasteurised) is refermented in the bottle and can be stored up to 20 years.

We also drink Ginger Tipple

This was a more simple sandwich on which we added some horseradish relish (chrain).  Unlike the shop variety, this one was coarsely grated and with less vinegar and sugar, this was a chunky chrain and full of flavour. But it turned the basic salami and mustard sandwich on 13-grain bread into an absolute pleasure which could only be enhanced with a Ginger Tipple or two.

Market Research

There are other other beers which we drink at home or when we go out, but that would fill a few more blogs. However, tasting other beers on the market is an important part of a brewers work, market research. Who said you can’t combine business with pleasure?

Ginger Tipple Gets Ahead

by

Ginger Tipple Gets A Head

One of the criticisms of Ginger Tipple, especially from Belgians, was that there is no head, no foam, no froth, no Belgian lace, therefore it cannot be a beer.

Appearances are important, even before one tastes or smells the beer, and while Ginger Tipple scores high on the flavour, aroma and colour, the froth disappeared within seconds. Even though plenty of lambics and geuzes do not have foams, but they are part of Belgium’s beer psyche. Ginger Tipple is not yet there.

This is about to change!

Ginger Tipple with a headWe carried out an experiment with some bottles of our new beer, the soon to be launched Tipple Hop. We double dry-hopped with two different hops giving it tons of hoppy flavour and aroma. At 7% ABV it also has a pleasant soothing effect on your nerves. A touch cloudy; if we could classify it, we would call it a New England Ginger Pale Ale.

In our laboratory, we developed a gluten-free non-chemical based additive which adds proteins to the Tipple Hop without affecting that delicious blend of ginger and hops.

Brewer Jeremy Sulzbacher commented “The commercial additives I tested left an unpleasant taste, so we developed our own natural foaming agent. This one even enhances the flavour!”

We are keeping the details secret, and it will be a few months before we can go commercial with it.

Helping People is Wonderful

by
Ginger Beer

Helping People is Wonderful

Ginger BeerI first met Marc Struyf 3 years ago. I was developing Ginger Tipple and I found out that he was one of Belgium’s leading hop expert. He travels each autumn to America’s main hop growing area, Yakima Valley to try out their latest varieties, and gets there before the big Belgian breweries.

He also grows some hops nearby and there is a big event each September when they are harvested.

He invited me to visit him on a Friday afternoon in late May. The weather was perfect and the garden of his brewery is idyllic. His microbrewery, Den Triest, is located in a small rural town near Brussels called Kapelle-op-den-bos,

We sat in the garden and after I explained to him what I was trying to achieve, a ginger beer with hops which had to be Kosher for Passover, and possibly organic, he suggested which hops to use, and even gave me some samples.

The Beers

Ginger BeerAnd then we started tasting his beers. They are among the best you can ever taste. As a hop expert, his IPA is supreme. There are a number of skills to brewing an excellent IPA. Most importantly, the underlying ale has to have body and flavour. Too many IPAs are dishwater with lots of hops. If you taste his regular beers, the blondes, bruins, doubles etc, you will taste the excellence in his brewing.

Then there is the dry hopping, when the hops are added towards the end of the fermentation or after it. Besides the selection and proportions of the hops used, there is the timing. Again, a lot of IPAs have a nasty kick from leaving the hops in for too long.

Kriek

Ginger BeerAnother of his wonderful beers is his Kriek. Most of the cheaper krieks are sweet. The high-end lambic krieks are very sour. Marc achieves that perfect balance of a pleasant sourness with only an undertone of sweetness. Of course, the colour is wonderfully natural.

Marc taught me how to take our Ginger Kriek to a higher level, using a technique not found in textbooks.

 

The Bar

Marc brews mainly in 200 litre tanks and sells his brews in 75cl bottles, mainly for export. His bar is open on the first Sunday of each month. So if you want to taste his beers you have to catch one of the 12 days a year it is open.

The healthiest way is to go there by bike as there are a lot of few bike routes in the area.

Ginger Tipple

Ginger KriekI get particular pride when I hear from other brewers who work with Marc that they tasted Ginger Tipple when they visited him. Yesterday, one of his regulars approached me and said that he had heard a lot about my ginger beer from Marc and wants to sell it in his bar in Mechelen – he stocks over 300 beers.

When I went to pay, I looked in the kitchen and saw on his shelf of favourites a bottle of Ginger Kriek, I beamed with pride.

What I like most…

When I thanked Marc for his help and told him that his advice was perfect he replied “I am happy for you .
Also for my self , helping people is wonderful.”