What do I love spring... the sunny days, not too warm, new green sprouting out from nowhere. And out of the blue, an air balloon that attempts to land in our back yard. www.poppies.com just missed Struise farm from 50 yards.

Struise bottles its liquid art for the global market

Struise however doesn't have a brewery. And they're not professional brewers either. The Belgian brewing team of Carlo, Peter, Phil and Urbain, does its brewing in its spare time away from working their day jobs. They have a relationship with a brewery in Woesten-Vleteren, Belgium -- not far from the former world champion brewers at Westvleteren Abbey -- where they bring in their own ingredients and brew on their own equipment.

The result has unequivocally been nothing short of world class. “Not being a commercial brewery that needs to turn over product in order to stay alive means that we can wait until our beers are perfect before releasing them,” explains Carlo. This means their distributors in Europe, American and Japan, are patient. And their consumers are just as patient. It's not uncommon to get your Struise after sitting on a waiting list at a mail order beer shop.

Selling their beer overseas is critical to Struise's success. Urbain explains, “We have found Belgium to be a very traditional and difficult market. The majority of Belgian beer consumers drink the usual industrial stuff from big breweries. A smaller percentage will experiment with the better Belgian ale styles and trappists. Even there, there's almost no room for innovation.”

Struise is all about innovation. They tapped into the online beer scene many years ago and, unlike most other European brewers, have used internet resources to experience beer from around the world, most notably from the United States and Denmark. They've created a unique style of beer making, harmonizing popular styles from around the world with their own pure invention.

So what's it taste like? You can read the reviews at RateBeer.com but a short preview: Their gigantic Imperial Stout, Black Albert, weighs in at a monster 13% and hammers notes of dark chocolate and plums. Struise Pannepot Grand Reserva Oak Aged matured ten months in Calvados oak barrels. Their ruby-colored Earthmonk is wine-like and tart.

More At RateBeer
RateBeer.com tabulates a list of the best things in beer annually in what is the world's largest beer competition, RateBeer Best. RateBeer has assembled more than 1.4 million beer ratings from tens of thousands of reviewers around the world. Unlike most beer competitions, the amateur judges rate commercial samples, often consumed entirely – not just little sips shot into a spittoon.

Winner is Struise

Top  50 master raters

The Top 100 Beers In The World: 2008

THE BEST BEERS IN THE WORLD BY STYLE: 2008

Best Beers of Belgium 2008

RateBeer

Fotoreportage  William Roelens :  9 uren bij "Struise"


Fotoreportage Danny Van Tricht :  brouwerijbezoek  met Chuck Cook

Press Contact:
Joe Tucker
302.476.2337
Dit e-mail adres is beschermd door spambots, u heeft Javascript nodig om dit onderdeel te kunnen bekijken

THE BEST BREWERS IN THE WORLD

All brewers listed are gold medal winners. (The total number of brewers in our contest is 5,836. The 100 listed represent the top 1.7% of all brewers -- the creme de la creme of world brewing; a greater percentage of the population qualifies as genius for comparison.)

With the Ratebeer winter awards of last year, we were already very happy to be on the 32nd place of the Top 100 best brewers in the world. Since that day, Struise team has been working even harder on issues like quality, creativity, and most off all originality.

Today we are very honoured receiving this award, and it will have a special place at our brewery. It will give us the necessary courage every day in the future to try and do better.

Without the support of all our fans, beer amateurs, conoisseurs, and collegues, we would never have reached this summit, so thank you all for being there for us, every day.

Cheers,

Struise Team