A perfect range of beers?

When you’re looking for which beers to carry, price, regular supply and certainly flavour all factor in your decisions.   Well, here’s a range of beers, from one of best breweries in Belgium, coming soon.

Back in November, where we went to the lovely little Brugge beerfest, now in it’s 3rd or 4th year, we bumped into a range of quality ales, well thought out, designed and packaged. Plus, we really liked the IPA.    The IPA style has taken something of an upturn in the fashion stakes, both the American and British style,  but not in Belgium.

In Belgium some efforts were done to clone a typical American IPA, but so far nobody could make that typical IPA flavour. The chaps behind Viven went to a very famous production brewery – De Proef, the same place where some of our favourite Mikkeller beers come from, and from a brewer who is one of my all time heroes of brewing Dirk Naudts. Whilst Dirk runs the place, a space age laboratory of three breweries dedicated to high quality brewing and academic study (De Proef, being the Professor, Dirk being a brewing Professor), it’s still up to you to come up with ideas about what you’d like brewed. Not many a better way to get such a beer brewed! There are many famous brewers using De Proef now, the likes of Tomme Arthur springs to mind immediately. The knowledge under that roof is something to really behold!  There is also a Blonde, Brun, Ale and a delectable smoked porter.  These beers present well on the shelf, come from a highly regarded brewery and have diversity in their range to sit well on many many bar and beer people’s lists of great beers.

But back to the beer. The adage the more you know more you realise the little you know is especially true, this beer I had to bring to the UK, and it’s brothers and sisters among the range. The stunning IPA, is a genuine American-esque effort, Savouring the beer gives citric, grapefruit flavours, but in this case much more aromatic, flowery, and wonderfully hop bitter. Nosing is a true marvellous experience. So flowery, so fruity, so complex…. quite amazing really. The beer has that orange, slightly hazy look. The foam has that nice green-yellow colour! Folks, this new beer embodies and reflects what an American IPA really should be.

The curious thing, is that the range isn’t a one trick pony, yes the IPA is gorgeous, but the rest of the beers stack up well and do more than hold their own on the platform that the IPA has created. I can’t wait for them to arrive. They’ll be available in 24×33cl from Cavedirect with kegs to order.

The image below you can see the really nice labels, the Porter is especially nice!

Do enough eating, drinking or walking around in the food-crazed city of Barcelona and the signs are hard to miss: a big, blue “M” on a canary yellow background, announcing the return of Moritz beer to Spain’s Catalonia region. It’s a smart look that’s somehow both nostalgic and modern looking.  “Lovely blend of German and Czech character sorts things out well enough. Clean as a whistle pale gold with a thin white head. Wow, this is actually really tasty. Good slightly sweet malt, really nice delicate citric hops. Lovely balance of sweet and bitter. Very drinkable and without the sharp bite of the usual macro lagers. A pleasant surprise.”

To the ubergeek or the beer newbie, what’s so special about a pale blond lager from Barcelona?   Surely they are all the same?  Not so dear beer lover… this is one that I can honestly say is very very pleasant.   Excuse me if I talk in terms of Brand, rather than brew.

Originally the creation of an Alsatian brewer who swapped his native Alsatian taste buds for the Spanish – going from choucroute to suquet, one might say – Moritz first got going in 1856. Look at any company literature that follows its 2004 relaunch and it often seems like a catalog of its offerings for the past 150 years – good-looking stuff that still seems fresh!

“It’s an old brand,” says Albert Castellón, general manager at Moritz. “It disappeared in 1978 when it was the most renowned brand in Barcelona,””… the brand has stayed in people’s heads”

The brand was founded by the immigrant Louis Moritz Trautmann in 1856. Trautmann was 25 years old at the time, and had moved from Pfaffenhoffen in France in 1851. The beer was initially brewed in a small factory in the Raval district of Barcelona. In 1864 the company moved to a larger brewery at Ronda de Sant Antoni. This factory was in use for a century and was closed in 1966 when production was moved to Parets del Vallès. But in 1978, due to financial difficulties caused by the energy crises, Moritz had to close down.

In 2004, the descendants of the Moritz family relaunched the brand. The beer is now produced under license in Zaragoza. The old factory building in Ronda de Sant Antoni has been rehabilitated to house the company offices, a museum of beer and a tasting bar.   The Moritz website takes the nostalgia trip a step further. Even if your Spanish or Catalan is rusty or nonexistent, it’s a fun romp through world history that has little to do with beer, making hip jumps from subjects like Neil Armstrong’s walk on the moon to poking fun at Spain’s ex-dictator Francisco Franco.

Along with tradition and historical ties,  Moritz is linked to Barcelona, not just giving the city’s name marquee placement on all it’s bottles.

In Barcelona itself, the marketing goes even further. Tiny old Seat cars (natively manufactured in Spain), impeccably restored and decked out with a fresh coat of the company colors, turn heads as they dart across the city, spreading the word. Moritz is also in the process of refurbishing its old brewery in the city center. From the outside, the building’s façade is already a beautiful connection to town. Inside, the corporate offices, which occupy one side of the building, have the glaring fluorescent bulbs, blank white walls, and cheap new furniture of a recently-funded Internet startup, but the microbrewery it will soon open in the rest of the space will be another way to further cement its tie to the city.

“It’s a matter of brand here [in Spain] and people want to drink beer that has a relation with the region,” says Castellón.

In Spain, where much of the beer market competition comes from regional breweries, they have succeeded in the premium end of the market – outstripping growth from San Miquel and the ubiquitous Estrella Damm.

Barcelona’s XiX Bar, a locals-centric café by day and hip bar with killer gin and tonics by night, seems so unimpressed with Estrella and San Miguel that it bucks the town’s trend and offers neither on tap.

XiX Bar’s co-owners Rosa Solà and Mike Cruickshank are impressed not only with the Moritz marketing efforts toward their clients, but also how the company works with the bars that serve its beer.

“I think they’re coming in [to the market] strong and deep,” says Solà.

“Estrella’s beginning to feel the pinch,” adds Cruickshank.

They’re also impressed with the company’s marketing efforts.

“C’est magnifique,” says Solà, employing a bit of the French touch. “They treat us very well and do a great publicity campaign.”

Moritz is also making strong inroads with XiX Bar’s clients. “We had some marketing signs up around the bar and people liked them so much, they stole them,” says Solà. She explains that another bar they own, Pescada Salada (“salty fish”), was one of the first places in town to stock the beer after it was re-released, and people would come to the bar just to try the new brew.

Across town, Cristina Jolonch, food writer for the magazine of La Vanguardia newspaper, “The main difference [between Estrella and Moritz] is that Estrella is very popular,” but does not put a big effort into quality, explains Jolonch. This “cut above” technique seems to extend beyond the taste of the suds. Estrella’s website looks downright corny next to the yellow-and-blue offering of its rival. A visitor to the Moritz site will stay because it strikes a balance of cool, whereas the Estrella site looks like, with enough rooting around, visitors might find offers for free stuff or pictures of girls in bikinis, so 1980…

Sure enough, at the tapas bar Inopia, run by Albert Adria – the pastry chef at his brother Ferran Adria’s famous three-star restaurant, El Bulli – there’s a sort of “Moritz corner,” with a booth set off in a section of the restaurant that sits under a wall-sized Moritz painting.

So,  Albert Adria, and loads of people around Barcelona – I think this’ll be the coolest beer to hit these shores in years!  and their Alfa beer is great!

Cavedirect have even moved the beer from the originally imported 4.7% abv to the exactly same as the one you’d drink in Barcelona, 5.4%.    Sales have gone from strength to strength, suited to the obvious Tapas bars, through to many many independent outlets around the UK.

“It’s all about a beer that  from the Black Forest has become a cult.

Her name is Birgit Kraft, a play on words in her local dialect for “beer gives strength,” and she can be found, smiling in her traditional garb and holding a pair of beers, on the labels of Rothaus beer bottles. The cartoon maiden has not changed a bit since 1972, which is one of the secrets of her success.

Beer from the state-owned brewery here deep in the Black Forest, founded as part of the St. Blasien monastery in 1791, has grown into a surprise hit in big cities around the country, and nowhere more so than in Berlin. Rothaus has managed to thrive in an era dominated by multinational beverage concerns, on little more than crisp beer and its quaint, old-fashioned image.

When the first Oktoberfest keg is tapped in neighbouring Bavaria at noon on Saturday, the tourist spectacle of the world’s largest beer festival will likely produce fresh records for visitors and consumption that will obscure the woes of a domestic beer industry that has been in slow decline for decades.

Rothaus has succeeded in bucking the trend, more than doubling its output over the last 15 years — to nearly 24 million gallons last year from just over 10 million gallons in 1992 — during a period when German beer sales have fallen by more than 13 percent. The company has done it without television or radio commercials, relying almost entirely on word of mouth to sell the beer outside of its local market between Freiburg and Lake Constance in south west Germany.

by Christoph Pueschner for The New York Times

“The ad agencies always wanted to seduce us into making not only a good beer but modern commercials,” said Thomas Schäuble, the head of the brewery and himself a native of the Black Forest region. “But people here in the Wild West of Germany are hard-headed,” he said with a chuckle.

Every once in a while, a product captures the zeitgeist of a nation. Rothaus’s quirks — its famous brown bottles of Pilsener are known as Tannenzäpfle, or “little fir cones” — and even the fact that it is wholly owned by the state of Baden-Württemberg, lends it a sense of homeyness in a rootless era.

That, in turn, has given it credibility with the anti-corporate, anti-globalization crowd. In Germany, where unrestrained capitalism is viewed with deep mistrust and populism is on the upswing, that is not such a small audience.

“It has to do with tradition. They haven’t sold out,” said Basti Wisbar, 31, a bartender at Waldohreule, a bar in the trendy but traditionally counterculture neighborhood of Kreuzberg in Berlin. “I could never identify myself with a beer like Beck’s,” said Mr. Wisbar.

Mr. Wisbar drinks Rothaus himself and said it was one of the most popular beers he served, though patrons often confuse the nickname of the girl on the bottle, asking for Little Red Riding Hood.

The brewery’s fairy tale image stands up to a visit. After miles of curving roads, over forested hills and alongside clean, sparkling lakes, there appears a cluster of pink buildings nestled on a hillside. Rothaus sits at an altitude of some 3,300 feet, and is known as Germany’s highest brewery.

The brewery fell into state hands in 1806 as a part of the widespread secularization of church holdings under Napoleon. According to the brewery’s official history, it was legally incorporated in 1922, with all shares in the company still belonging to the state of Baden-Württemberg.

The beer is brewed according to the German beer purity law, with just four ingredients: water, hops, malt and yeast. The water comes from nearby springs. It would all make for a perfect television commercial, if the brewery actually made commercials.

Max Sachs, the master brewer at Rothaus, was proud to show off the computerized control center and high-tech laboratory for microbiological testing. The freshly filled bottles, clinking in a line, are marked with dates by a laser, and once packed in crates they are hefted by a robot arm.

“We don’t just go around in monks’ cowls all the time,” said Mr. Sachs, whose interest in beer is more than just professional. As he enjoyed a few Rothaus Pilseners among tourists in the small beer garden at the brewery, Mr. Sachs said, “At its heart, a good beer should encourage you to keep drinking.” “# thanks to The New York Times for a great review.

Cavedirect

We have a range of these beers – please contact us

	The ROTHAUS PILS is an elegant, strong, clean and tangy beer with a finely balanced distinctive hop aroma. The Pils is renowned in its 33cl bottle format and is better known amongst those in the know as ‘Tannenzäpfle’ ABV 5.1 %.
	The ROTHAUS HEFEWEIZEN (Wheat beer) is a refreshing, sparkly, top fermented beer brewed from wheat. It has a typical wheat bouquet with hoppy scented tones and a light fruity aroma ABV 5.4 %. This beer is an excellent accompanyment to spicy food and has undertones of bananas, cinnamon and cloves.
	The ROTHAUS RADLER is an alcohol and calorie reduced lemonade SHANDY made with Rothaus Märzen Export ABV. 2.4 %. This Shandy is an ideal light spring and summer beverage which is the perfect thirst quencher with citrus and apple undertones.

Cave Direct Importers and distributors of Artisan and Craft  Beer “bringing you the best of beer since 1979”

We are now seeking beer and sales passionate people to join the small and dedicated sales team.

Job Profile

Responsible for the development of Cave Direct business to independent accounts and small pub groups within the M25, London and South East.  Become fully familiar with the Cave Direct portfolio to include beer styles and origins. Manage product/service mix, pricing and margins according to agreed aims for individual customers.  Focus on increasing sales on Cave Directs core products.

Account Handling Maintain and develop existing and new customers. Optimise quality of service, business growth, and customer satisfaction through close contact and sound knowledge.

New Business

Develop, respond to and follow up sales enquiries using appropriate methods.

Reporting

Record, analyse, report and administer according to systems and requirements.

Education

Attend training  to develop relevant knowledge, techniques and skills including Brewery visits and tasting events

Please complete the form below.