Will Hemp raise Germany's Brewing Consciousness?
By Asbjoern Gerlach
back to page 1
page2
 The place is called the "Bier-Company" and is located in the center of Berlin in the district of Kreuzberg. It couldn't have happened anywhere else, for Kreuzberg is known to be a melting pot of people of different colours and cultures, of various creative types and dropouts of every kind. It is a very lively but somehow suspect neighbourhood to the authorities.
We started experimenting with all there was, ignoring the Reinheitsgebot, sticking toonly two rules we made up right from the start: Rule 1: Taste is what counts. Rule 2: You may only use natural ingredients of food quality - no chemical or artifical aromas, preservatives or colourings.
So far, we had more than 40 different brews on tap, covering all the classic German beer styles as well as bitter, brown ale, stout, porter, mild, Belgian abbey beer and wit, as well as more exotic performances such as cinnamon stout, manioc-chilli-porter and a Koelsch fermented with champagne yeast, to name a few. Of course, we had to give these products fantasy names, as they were no beers.
We also brew at customers' requests on a 1-hl scale for weddings, parties, brthdays and so on. Our goals are (1) to help people become committed to the art and fun of beer and brewing by showing them all the diversity there is, and (2) to teach them all we know so they may become conscious consumers able to trust their own senses and taste buds instead of the TV ads. We believe that this is the only way quality will once again rule the German beer market.
The feedback we got from the brewing scene was that they thought we were some kind of freaks or outlaws. Only a few people understood our true motivation and gave us support. The others just ignored us. Anyway, we have been able to attract massive media coverage to get our message out to the world.
In 1996, when the farming hemp plant (cannabis sativa) became legal in Germany again after a 50-year ban, we instinctively knew that we now had the tool to open the door for more diversity in the German beer market. This legal variety of cannabis is closely related to the hop vine and is grown only for the production of clothing, rope, paper, cosmetics and medicine.
continue
|
