When we talk about fresh, we talk about apples

Hi, my name is Mike and I've been working for two years with a lot of fun and pleasure at Uiltje Brewing Company. I am responsible for customer service and the logistical part of the webshop, I also write content about our brewery and think about how we present Uiltje to the outside world.

I want to talk to you about something we at Uiltje value highly: FRESH.

What is fresh and how far is fresh? A question we at Uiltje Brewing Company often ponder. Word clouds, models and mood boards of trees, cans and picnic tables have passed the revue several times to continually to grasp the comprehensiveness of fresh . It sometimes evokes confusion. Is it about the ingredients, the brewing process, the marketing, a way of thinking, a way of dressing? As I said, all-encompassing. And yes, it has to do with all of the above, but where is the core? I read now that I have haven't used the word "fresh" for three sentences. Herewith.

In my quest for the importance of fresh and what that means for beer, my default stop is with Mattia. Mattia is our head of the lab and head of the brewhouse. As a young Italian brewer he always knows how to bridge the gap between the technical world of the brewery and the world of laymen to which I belong. Between brews I was able to tackle him in the taproom. Mattia recognized my questioning eyes and looked up from his phone in anticipation. "Mattia, what does fresh mean?" asked me. He put his phone away and you could hear the bridge in his head being built from his world to my world. 'Think about an apple,' said he. Genius, and I'm going to explain to you why.

When we talk about the symbolic meaning of the apple, one initially thinks of Eve and Fall, Newton and gravity and the proverbial apple that doesn't fall far from the tree. Mattia explained to me that the beer we want to convince you of is the same is like preserving an apple. I paraphrase and translate:

Just cut an apple in half. One half You leave in the kitchen. Open and exposed in the heat and light. The other half you put in the refrigerator and wrap in aluminum foil. The next day you will see the impact of cool, dark and dry storage.

No sooner said than done. I scored an apple and cut the fruit in half and I followed the instructions of Mattia carefully (however simple they were). 24 hours later, the results in. The warm desolate apple on my desk was brown, dried out, the skin curled inward, and the taste mealy. The chilled half was fresh, almost unchanged and the moisture was still on the flesh from the day before.

'This is what happens in beer too,' concludes Mattia. The chemical processes of aging that make an apple brown and dry can be compared to the flavor degradation of beer. By keeping a beer cool you slow down these processes and can enjoy the apple the way the brewer intended. Beer I mean.

Our brewery is passionate (or obsessed) when it comes to hop-forward beers. These are beers with a strong fruity hop profile that should pop out of the can. To make sure you drink the beer as we intended, it is critical that the beer, as with the apple, is kept cold.

That's why we say at Uiltje: store cold, drink fresh.