The Inspiration
Many brewers in North America compete to create the strongest beers and ales. They are limited by the yeast they use to about 15% ABV, yet they use various distillation techniques to separate the alcohol from the beer and add it back to the rest of the brew to create beverages well in excess of 20% ABV.
We thought it be great to join in the fun and create ginger beers with high ABVs which would warm you up on a cold winter’s evening or to enjoy with the cheese board.
Following our reputation for innovation, we looked for sugars which are not commonly found and selected two ingredients not yest used in brewing:
- Coconut blossom sugar – this relative newcomer to the health-food stores is made from the sap of coconut trees. It score very low on the glycemic index and has certain residual sugars which don’t ferment out leaving a a latent sweetness in the bottle.
- Apple & Pear Syrup – this wonderfully rich syrup is manufactured by boiling 6 kg of apples and pears for a few days until 1 kg of syrup is produced. We only use the purest syrup as a lot have added cane or beet sugars which detract from their flavour. This syrup, known locally as stroop give this brew wonderful undertones of apples and pears as well as also having some sugars which do not ferment out.
This wonderful and heady brew took over 6 months to develop and is now available commercially.
The Label
Traditional labels emphasize strength with muscular images or some heavy metal item like an anvil. At Sulzbachers we think out of the box and searched for a few months for the appropriate picture to feature on our label. The honorable Mary Graham by Gainsborough with her hair changed from grey to ginger creates an aura of class while hinting at strength.