On June 17, a beautiful sunny Saturday, the Carnivale Brettanomyces homebrewers and fermenters market took place at Oedipus Brewery in the north of Amsterdam. A perfect place to try new wild-fermented beers and meet their brewers. With two of my biggest fans, I traveled to Amsterdam to check it out.
About Carnivale Brettanomyces
Carnivale Brettanomyces is a 4-day festival taking place at several venues throughout Amsterdam. It’s been organized since 2012 and focuses on wild fermentation in the broadest sense of the word. You can think of wild fermented beer, cider, and wine. But also vinegar, soy sauce, or makgeolli (a South Korean fermented rice drink).
The festival is not just about consuming any type of wild-fermented liquids. There are a lot of lectures to learn more about fermentation too. To name a few of the topics that were presented this year: the microbial ecology of barrel-aging, the use of tea in beer, and the role of yeast in miso fermentation. Furthermore, tasting sessions are organized with breweries from all around the globe. During this year’s edition, there were amongst others a Brazilian wild beer tasting, French grape ale tasting, and several tastings with lambic beers from Belgium.
Homebrewers Market
The homebrewers market was absolutely amazing. Beautiful weather, a lot of like-minded people, and most importantly amazing beers that you wouldn’t be able to try somewhere else. Entrance was free, tokens were €3 and for €4 you could get an Oedipus tasting glass to fill up at one of the many brewers. Most brewers offered full glasses for 2 tokens and half glasses for 1 token. With all brewers/blenders offering at least 3 different beers, the choice was plenty. Which did not make it easier for us.
What did we drink?
It’s an impossible task to recall all the different beers we tried, so I won’t even try. Our goal was to taste as many new beers as possible, so we went for the 1 token half glasses mostly. We also tasted each other’s beers, so in total, we must have had almost 20 different beers from different brewers. Amongst these brewers were: ‘t Pomphuizeke (a new post about this Ghent-based blender coming out soon), Bakkum Fermentation, Symbiose, Elixer, Terroir Blending, W.O.F.D. Vergistingen, Moryson Ferments, August Farmhouse Brewing, and Conscious Ales.
My personal, but totally recollection biased by recollection, favorites were: Gamza (a Bulgarian grape variety) lambic from Terroir Blending from Bulgaria, Conscious Ales’ Original Sin, and a koji lambic with Scandinavian berries and blue vanilla from Donck. The last one is special as Donck, who gave a lecture about the use of koji in making lambic on Friday, was just visiting the market. However, he was pouring some samples and I was lucky enough to try some of this amazing beer. You can expect an article about Donck and their koji lambics later this year.
Next year
If you’re a wild-fermented beer/cider/wine enthusiast, Carnivale Brettanomyces is a must-go! Check out their website: www.wildegist.com to learn more about this awesome festival. I will definitely be coming back next year too. Next year not limiting myself to the homebrewers market, but attending some tastings and lectures too. For the homebrewers market, I’ve already got something special planned. More on that very soon! Stay tuned and follow my Instagram to get the latest updates.