Many traditional specialties from our region are disappearing, but there are also new initiatives. What beautiful or tasty treats are still made in the Gooi region? Today: beer brewers Ben Luijck and Bas Overbeke.
The ideal recipe for a Burgundian beer: buy a home brewing kit and practice with a 20 liter pot. Then they mess around for months. Brews dirty beer. Keep changing the composition until it is ready to drink. This is how brewer Bas did it: “I had to learn it in a student room, I made all the mistakes once.” A few years later he got tired of his office job and started training to really learn it. In 2018 he was allowed to join the in-house brewers of the Gooische Bierbrouwerij. After a long search, he had found shelter again in Foodhall MOUT. Gijs Troost taught him the rest, one of the founders of the beer brand.
International awards
Ben joined this year and saw the Gooische Bierbrouwers win several medals at an international beer festival, including the prize for the best Dutch beer, Gooisch Zwart. Standing out among more than 600 locally brewed beers is like the making process: details make the difference. In the meantime, they have won even more prizes, and their beers have quickly become perhaps the most famous regional product.
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During the busiest December days, Bas and Ben are busy replenishing the stocks of beer. Cooking together, that’s what they call it. “Flex,” says Bas, who with a sweaty head taps a bottle from the steaming kettle to check its composition. “Stress? Well, no, my reference is the catering industry,” Ben laughs.
sweat off
A fence and a few meters separate the boiling kettles from the bar in MOUT, where Bas is also doing a spot check at the bar. With the foam in his beard of a freshly tapped Gooisch Goud, he explains how they make the difference: “You have to keep the basics simple, even with a small team. Compare the taste with baking bread, the difference is in the grains.” Less is more. According to him, it has become a trend to make beer as crazy as possible with all kinds of flavors, but here they prefer to remain normal. Refining the taste is a matter of making small adjustments, playing a little with the temperature and, above all, not having too many ingredients. Sweating is what the brewer calls the steaming process: “If you smell that smell of boiled cabbage… you shouldn’t taste it, of course.”
Beer brush
“We pay attention to our footprint, we want to make beer with as few kilometers as possible. That is why we use local grain as much as possible.” The creamy-smelling porridge that remains after brewing is sent as a residual product to the cows of local livestock farmer Eric van der Woude van Einde Gooi estate. That so-called beer brush is biological concentrate for the animals. Or you can make biofuel from it.
Now it remains close to home, just like the Sint Jansrogge, which has been grown on a small scale in the region for some time now, a grateful ingredient for the tripel. Just like the revaluation of buckwheat is for wheat beer. Farmers once grew the grain en masse on the poor sandy soil of the Gooi. You can toast beer brewed in the heart of Hilversum as an engine for more local fermenting glory. First check the acidity again, put the lid back on the kettle and be patient.