Craft beer that’s as fine as any champagne

The drinktec blog regularly presents the coolest newcomer on the craft beer scene. This time we feature Cerevisium, the innovative Freising-based start-up that is currently sharing its unique specialty beer during drinktec at place2beer in Hall B1.

Take a closer look at the international craft beer movement and the growing variety of specialty beers will immediately strike you. Every beer aficionado can now embark on a unique taste adventure and enjoy true rarities. At the still rather young start-up Cerevisium, the team of Donatus Duran Perez, Stefan Hör and Daniel Martin has brewed a very special beer that’s rather unique in this part of the world. Packed full of meaning, the company’s motto of “make time for the truly unique” guided the team in creating a beer that spends at least nine months maturing before its aroma fully develops. The three men also bestowed their company with a quite fitting name: Cerevisium means “beer” in Latin.

Made like champagne

The Cerevisium collective honed their trade at the oldest beer university in the world, the Technical University of Munich in Weihenstephan. Even before commencing their studies, the three founders spent time as home brewers, working on various concoctions and experimenting with novel methods to create beverages. For five whole years, they worked on fine-tuning their current recipe. Thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign, the three men from Freising transformed their dreams into their own brand in 2016. The creative brewers found their unique selling point by using a very unusual, high-quality brewing process. Cerevisium 1516 is purportedly the first barley beer refined according to the Bavarian purity law that uses an approach called “méthode traditionnelle.” This technique is actually used during the production of high-quality sparkling wines such as champagne.

Craft beer: Shaken, not stirred

Before Perez, Hör and Martin begin with this unique method, they first produce a special spice using selected hops and malt varieties. This process alone takes somewhere around 20 hours to complete. Once the spice mix is ready, a broth is then fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast that supports formation of the desired fermentation byproducts. After bottling the beer in champagne bottles, the brewers add yeast from French champagne at a precisely coordinated time to begin the second fermentation stage. They then place every single bottle headfirst in a pupitre. By rotating and shaking the bottle each day, the yeast sinks into the neck of the bottle. This sediment freezes in place at a particular point. Later when the bottle is opened, the yeast plug will shoot out due to the pressure that built up inside. This is how natural filtration generally works. As a last step, the brewers seal the glass vessels with natural cork. “We handle each bottle at least a hundred times,” says cofounder Daniel Martin.

The result is a very fine product that stands out on the shelf thanks to its packaging and label. For a touch of elegance à la française, the brewers recommend serving the beer in a champagne glass. The Cerevisium beer, with its 11.5 percent alcohol content and an original wort of 24 degrees plato, glimmers and gleams with a golden orange hue. Its aroma is complex and reminiscent of yellow drupes and honey. On the palate, it has a fine perlage and boasts a full-bodied aroma of peach and honeydew as well as pleasant, dry notes.

Beer lovers at drinktec

During the upcoming trade fair drinktec, the Cerevisium team will be serving this innovative specialty beer at place2beer. Located in Hall B1, this is the gathering place for the most creative and exciting newcomers on the craft beer scene to talk about their projects and new brews. If you are a brewer or love the taste of truly unique beers and, of course, the ingredients, this is where you will find a rich assortment of aromatic and bitter hops, standard and special malts, malt extracts, and yeast varieties. The gathering place will also feature live tasting sessions and panel discussions on such current topics as women and beer and beer and food. You can find an overview of what’s going on by checking the drinktec schedule database.

place2beer supporters:

• Barth Haas Group
• Bayerische Brauerbund
• BeverageDaily.com
• Brewing, Food & Beverage Industry Suppliers Association (BFBi)
• Deutscher Brauerbund
• Gebo Cermex
• KHS
• Sahm GmbH
• The Brewers of Europe
• William Reed Business Media