By Harley Zipori. I was pleasantly surprised when I was flipping through the Friday (Sept. 23) edition of Haaretz in English when I got to the Anglo File page and saw a familiar face. There was a picture of Denny Neilson and an article about brewing beer.
Now I have mentioned Denny in a few of my blogs. He is the one that started me making beer. I met Denny at the Maabarot Beer Festival 3 years ago this Sukkot. A few months later, I drove up to Mevasseret Zion and purchased my first beer kit and equipment.
Since then I have run into Denny a number of times at various festivals and events. At the Longshot festival in July he was in the booth next to mine.
Denny is truly a national treasure when it comes to anything to do with beer and brewing. He deserves the newspaper article and the publicity. His store attached to his home in Mevasseret is a great place to visit and learn about home brewing. Denny also makes some excellent beers and seems to like to ferment anything he can get his hands on. In addition to beer and wine, Denny makes a home made fermented cider that I assure you all is worth coming back for a second or third glass. Watch out for that fourth glass, it’s so refreshing that it sneaks up on you.
Seeing that we live in the land of milk and honey, Denny makes mead, a fermented honey drink.
Denny also runs courses to introduce people to making beer and wine.
You can find out more at the Isra-Ale website. The link was not in the Haaretz article but my purpose of this blog is to promote those very people who are advancing the culture of craft beer and brewing in Israel so I will not hesitate to post websites and contact information. If any of my readers have anyone in mind they would like me to know about and perhaps to tell about them in my blog, please send me the information at my email, [email protected].
The Latest Brew
I took some time off of work last recently and managed to actually brew a batch of beer. It is an American Pale Ale based on a newly developed hops variety called Citra. As the name suggests, Citra hops imparts citrus like flavors and aromas to beer. It has a lovely smell in pellet form but really comes through in when boiling the wort before fermentation. When I bottled it, I tasted a bit and it has the distinct flavor of grapefruit. I will be hard pressed to convince people that I didn’t put grapefruit rind or zest in the beer. Just a point of information, some Belgium beers are brewed with orange peels or zest so it’s not such a far out idea. You will just have to believe me that I didn’t. I won’t taste it again for at least a week as it goes through final fermentation in the bottle to produce all those lovely bubbles that we just can’t do without. I will report again when I finally drink it and when I can get some feedback.
Restaurant Update
I recently visited the Tavola restaurant in Hertzlia. I was pleased to find 2 varieties of Bazelet Beer from the Golan Brewery. The Golan brewery is one of the first licensed micro-breweries in Israel and has been operating several years. They have a restaurant pub in the industrial area of Katzrin, very close to the Golan Heights Winery. The varieties on the menu at Tavola are the Pilsner and the Amber Ale. I tasted the Amber Ale which is very pleasant and reflects the European origins of the brewmaster. I remember the Pilsner being very refresh and a clearly a cut above the standard industrial Pilsners served in Israel. I will have to do a more exhaustive survey of locally made craft Pilsners soon. There are a few that I know of that offer a different drinking experience from Heinken or Carsburg without going the dark beer route.
