Last days

The craft beer festival in Düsseldorf last weekend was a great success. I was only able to join Friday, but around 1.000 People came already for that day. That's even more nice as it took place for the first time and is even more likely to happen again there.

Brewing yesterday was great fun and very promising for the final beer. The two young brewing projects Pirate Brew from Berlin and Yankee & Kraut from Ingolstadt came around for brewing an extraordinary beer with us. The Craft Beer Festival in Regensburg was the place where we had the most fun together and which was the starting point for this collaboration. Now, we made a top-fermented, wheat based beer with the highly interesting ingredients eucalyptus, peppermint, juniper berries, lemons and salt. The idea is to have some kind of cocktail character while focussing on the refreshing and special character of the eucalyptus and mint.
We made a small taste test and the extract we made out of the amazing and very intensive qualities fits very well to the hoppy beer we created. Good amount of US hops will get joined with two German varieties.

Now I'm waiting for my friend Boban from Crow Brewery from Serbia to arrive as we will brew our different interpretation of a Kwas tomorrow. On my trip to the Balkans in April, I was able to enjoy several versions of this refreshing, low alcohol drink in different countries, mostly in Ukraine and Moldova though. Also East Germany has it's own history with the style as it was brewed there under Soviet influence.
The version we will brew tomorrow is quite different as it will be quite strong (ca. 6% alc.) and will get produced with a kettle sour, sourdough, a lot of rye bread and rye malt. Additionally, we will also add cherries to the brew which will work in a great way with the dark, bready character and the nice sourishness of the beer. The name of the beer is going to be "Kwasimodo".

Situation in the US

On my recent US trip, it was getting more obvious what I feared and predicted for the American beer scene already in the past. The amount of breweries is still growing while the constant need of rotation is going on in a more radical speed then it used to be. This is because of the amount of breweries and through that also to the fact that popular beer styles are getting done in so many different versions that they are falling out of the trend rather quickly and there is a need for the next trend already more soon.

In my 5 weeks trip, I was quite surprised to see pretty much in every bar I visited at least one Gose on draft. So many different interpretations and not that many really had something in common with the classic, very balanced and nuanced beer originally from Germany. Just the opposite, I found many extreme versions which were challenging in sourness, saltiness and in the amount of coriander or other spices. I wonder when the Gose trend will be over again and the next trend is all around...

At the same time, unique concepts and ideas are copied in so many ways so fast and take away something of the specialty of these great philosophies. The amount of "farmhouse breweries" and everything about it is a good example for that. I think that whole idea will get copied in so many ways and perverted in a marketing way by bigger brewery companies in a rather close future. Then it will be even more necessary for people to know about the original places, people, beers and ideas and a bigger amount of people get fooled for some fake stuff. Well, at the end of the day, it will be the same business shit going on in other businesses as well and our truly amazing beer world will get more eaten up by the big guys. Capitalism at it's best....

So friends, let's work on stuff and ideas they can't take us away (at least so quickly) and spread our true and original philosophies even more!!

Yesterday night, I met my long time good friend Uli (also known as h.ertie in the world of beer geeks) for a pub crawl in Düsseldorf. It's 9 years since we met for the first time at the Weekend of spontaneous fermentation in Buggenhout-Opstal which is a beer festival dedicated to lambic beers and organized by the local beer group called "Bierpallieters". It was for both of us the second year of attending the festival and we met quite coincidentically. Hertie is all about Flemish things, in particular beer and in particular everything spontaneous fermented. Our first meeting had a stronger meaning in the passion we share.
We became great friends very quickly and he focussed on doing a lot of blends with tiny amounts to learn from this type of beer and how to create great things with it. Over the years, he became very known in the beer world with his crazy blends which were always a box of surprises - something you got great results with amazing combinations and sometimes it turned out crazy and off-flavoured. I especially remember that onion Lambic many, many years ago which really crossed the line. However, Hertie always stayed passionate and experimental and we did two blends together over the years: Eszett Geuze (a blend of 5 different Lambics) and Ohrwal (a blend of Orval and Lambics) which were small batches (ca. 130 bottles with Eszett and ca. 330 bottles with Ohrwal).
Now having set up the old coolship at Vormann Brauerei again, we completely focus its usage for spontaneous fermented beer with our very own twist. This winter, we will host Hertie for some brewing sessions to create some great and interesting products again - this time on a bigger scale. Obviously, the release of the products will take quite some time, but you will hear more if it in the process.

Welcome to the Freigeist Bierkultur blog!

Until now, seven years after founding Freigeist Bierkultur, I still don't have a website. With the beginning of this year, I started writing more regulary stuff on my Facebook page, shared by the Facebook page of Freigeist Bierkultur.
On my recent trip in the US, I decided to start a blog for giving more information about the products and everything what's going on around Freigeist etc. to keep you informed and interested. So stay tuned for everything what's coming up.