Mishaps can be a good thing

Sometimes things just doesn't go exactly as planned. 

There are so many factors that make hand crafted ales really fascinating. As when one of our brewers  pitches the wrong yeast to a batch of Tiger Tripel (brewer not mentioned by name...). 

Well, occasionally these things happen and we just have to make the best of these situations.
We soon realized that the beer would not be a Tiger Tripel as we know it, so we began brainstorming.

Pouring the whole batch out was never an option, so our creative brewers came up with a couple of ideas on how to turn this batch into a very special beer.
Several options came to the table. All from far fetched ideas like... well, let's keep those a trade secret... to more feasible ideas like adding flavoring by mixing in different berry juices to the brew.

We decided on the latter, added a good amount of blackcurrant juice to the batch and left the wort to ferment again.
In a week or so we will be ready to bottle a batch of our brand new one-off beer: Cassis Tripel! We hope you will enjoy it!

What is Craft Beer?

There are probably as many answers to this as there are brewers.  The only thing we know is our own definition:
No filtration or centrifuging: To allow the beer to ferment and the yeast to flocculate at its own pace.  To rush a beer through the stage of secondary fermentation and maturation will have bad effects on flavour and complexity.  
Craft ingredients: Using ingredients which are made in traditional methods.  We do not use automation when we produce our beers (in fact we call it hand crafted) and as such we appreciate when our suppliers are able to get us hand crafted malts.  But this certainly comes at a cost. The cost of making the same beers without changes from one batch to the next.
Recently we got a picture (from some dedicated enthusiasts) of two glasses of #100, where clearly one was much darker than the other. The reason: Our chocolate malt is roasted by individuals who use their eyes and ears and noses to assess the roasting process. Sometimes the colour varies.
Right now we have another issue:Tiger Tripel. We use some Scottish peat smoked malt in it. The last shipment of this peat smoked malt was indeed more smokey than previously, and hence our last batch of Tiger Tripel is kind of more assertive than usual.

This is what craft brewing is all about: Hand crafted ingredients used in hand crafted ales, where nothing is rushed.  
This is what distinguishes craft from industry.
We hope you appreciate this. We think this is the charm of it all.