It sounds insane to us modern folk, but beer without hops was a favorite of some of the 280 breweries in Ghent during the Middle Ages. At least that’s what Annick De Splenter, our guest today, discovered while doing her degree in beer-making at university. (Yes! You can study beer-making at university in Belgium!)

After her father sold the family brewery, Annick was on a mission to figure out how beer was actually made without hops and that it wasn’t all a medieval urban myth. Needless to say, she proved her naysayers wrong with her own brewery, Gruut, founded on four beers made with herbs: Wit, Blonde, Amber, and Brown made with nary a hop in sight.

 
Where you can hear me drinking next:
He may have lived […]

The political revolution in Romania may have gone down in 1989, but our guest today is quietly starting one of his own. Heading down to his bar, Fix Me A Drink, don’t expect a menu of 300 drinks. Each one of Alex Ciomârtan’s cocktails is a masterwork of ingenuity. Drawing not only on his studies in Western Herbal Medicine, Alex brings nostalgia, history and passion to each and every drink.

After years of living in London studying, as well as drinking in the city’s greatest bars, Alex felt it was time to come home. He is one of very few mixologists, if not the only, in a city filled with bars that knows sometimes cinnamon is not just cinnamon. Depending on its terroir, even a small […]