Meet the Brewer - Trois Dames

When:  Wednesday, 2 April, 6 pm onwards

Where:  Tørst, 615 Manhattan Avenue, Brooklyn

Brewer Raphäel from Switzerland's Brasserie Trois Dames will be in town this week before heading to the Craft Brewers Conference in Denver. He's been making some unique twists on sour beers in his Swiss chalet paradise in the Jura for a while but has recently expanded the range. Come by Tørst to meet him and have a few of his fantastic sour beers.

• Grande Dame - oud bruin with apricots
• La Tentation - a saison fermented first with Dupont saison yeast, then refermented for one year in oak barrels with a witbier yeast. Final maturation with wild yeasts from local Reinette Blanche apples
• Saison Framboise - saison brewed with raspberries and aged in red wine barrels
• Fôret Noire (bottles) - saison aged on Morello cherries then blended with imperial stout and aged further in Kirsch barrels  

Curiouser and Curiouser. Unusual German Beers

We have nothing against the German Reinheitsgebot. Some of our favorite German beers are brewed in accordance with the Purity Law. But there are some traditional beers that have always used ingredients far outside the narrow confines of the Reinheitsgebot and brewers are reviving these lost and archaic styles.

Join us Thursday evening, 13 March, at The Sampler in Bushwick for a few of these unique biers. Traditional beers from Döllnitzer/Ritterguts (from Leipzig) and revivalist brewery The Monarchy (from Cologne).

• Ritterguts Gose - over 1000 years ago, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto praised Gose, the beer from the town of Goslar. Nearby Leipzig became the center of Gose production until its virtual disappearance in the 1960s. In the early 80s, this unique style was revived. The Ritterguts version, brewed with the traditional additions of salt and coriander, is a balanced and complex sour beer with solid lactic notes. Winner of World's Best Gose at the 2013 World Beer Awards.
• The Monarchy Grodziskie - based on a style from the Polish town of Grodzisk Wielkopolski. This authentic version is made with 100% oak-smoked wheat, local Polish hops, and the beer's original yeast. When it was discovered that the original brewery occasionally used willow bark in the recipe, the Monarchy decided to throw that in, too.
• The Monarchy Preussen Weisse - "Prussian White", brewed from an 1831 recipe, is a tart wheat beer that includes sugar beet syrup, ginger, and juniper.

The Sampler is located at 234 Starr Street in Brooklyn.