In this episode, we travel to Poland to meet Marcin Ostajewski, head brewer at Fortuna and Grodzisk breweries. Marcin shares the story of Poland’s rich brewing heritage, from the revival of the historic Grodziskie style to the rise of world-class Baltic Porters. We talk about tradition, innovation, and Marcin’s mission to bring Polish beer to the global stage — plus his second passion: cats. A lively and inspiring conversation with one of Poland’s most passionate beer ambassadors…

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BierTalk – Gespräche über und beim Bier.

Markus: Hello and welcome to another episode of our podcast BierTalk. Today we are doing a little trip into our neighbouring country, we are going to Poland, to hear the story of a lot of beers and beer styles, and of a wonderful person. We re meeting Marcin Ostajewski, he will tell us a little bit about himself in a moment. I am very happy that we met some years ago, and I would say we became friends, met very often over the last years and had great times, in several places all around the world.  it´s really wonderful to have such friends and to meet such people, so I hope you enjoy the talk. Maybe, Marcin, you can introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners?

Marcin: Hi. As you said, I am Marcin Ostajewski. Now I am in fact head brewer of two breweries in Poland. One, a very important one for us, is Grodzisk or the place where the style was born. And the other one is Fortuna. They are somewhat connected, I will talk about that later and of course I m a beer judge. I also try to educate people about Polish beer abroad, and I m a humble servant of six cats, which is quite important.

Markus: Yes, and you also see yourself as a cat sommelier and maybe we ll come to that also.

Marcin: Well, you know, it´s a very easy sport, you just snip the front of the cat and you give him 10 out of 10, so.

Marcin: Wonderful. But if you imagine that you have been or still are allergic to them, it´s really so great. So I am really very happy to see that fantastic. So, maybe let s start with, many people especially, most of our listeners still come from Germany, and they maybe don t have any idea about the Polish beer market, especially how it developed over the last 20, 30 years. So maybe you can give us a little introduction about how you yourself came into beer in general? How did you start? What was your first beer? What was your first beer experience? And how did it come about that you are into beer now, so far?

Marcin: So, it´s started when I was doing my Master s in Biotechnology at the University of Toruń, and in fact it´s started because of my wife. Meaning that she bought me a home-brewing kit, with the help of our friend, who you also know Marcin Chmielarz, responsible for the Baltic Porter Day. So I started brewing at home. It was, of course, mainly experiments, and when I see the old recipes, that I even posted on some Polish brewing forums, now I would say they were not the best ideas. But I tested some weird things. But I was also quite lucky with meeting people at important moments, I would say. So, just after six batches at home, I met a friend from Gdańsk, who is now also a brewer and a beer blogger Bartosz Nowak. We met in the old town of Toruń on the first day of the new year, in the morning. And he said, “You know, there is a guy from a restaurant brewery nearby, and he said he s quite open for home brewers, meaning that he wants to buy, scale up and brew home brewers recipes. And I convinced him to do it, so I am brewing the first batch. Then, for the second beer, he wants the second beer to be brewed quite quickly after the first one, and I am not sure that I have enough time. So, Marcin, maybe you can also provide recipes for this gentleman.” And I said, of course, “Yes, why not?” But we even had a small connection with a German beer scene at this moment, because back then, at home, I was of course experimenting mostly with some modern stuff that was already starting in Poland. So I made some IPAs, India Pale Ales, Cascadian Dark Ales, something like that, and then the owner of the restaurant says, “The idea is, every brewer can brew whatever he likes. You just tell me, I want to brew ESB, Extra Special Bitter. That was the first beer from Bartosz, so do I want to brew ESB? “Yeah, we are brewing ESB, no problem.” But there is one thing, the second beer on the list should be a Rauchbock. And the tricky part was that. I had never brewed any of the smoked beers at home yet. And an even bigger problem, I wasn´t a smart guy back then, because I hated smoked beers, all of them, so basically, my only experience and it´s basically begging for forgiveness with smoked beers back then was one approach to Grodziskie from some Polish brewery, and, I believe, Urbock or Märzen, one of those two from Schlenkerla. And both of the beers I only tried, and then I put the rest of the bottle into the sink. I was a bad guy back then. But eventually it worked quite well because, knowing that I am not a big fan of smoking beers, I did this Rauchbock to, kind of, also match my preferences. So it was only, I don t know, 10 or 15% of some smoked malt, and the rest was a basic Bock recipe. It was quite drinkable, and in fact, at the première of the beer, they almost drank all of it. And basically the beer disappeared after two or five days, something like that. It helped me, of course, to slightly lean in to this smoked-beer world and now, in fact, I basically cannot live without a smoked beer from time to time. So it started pretty quickly, because after this one batch in the restaurant ten hectolitres or so another guy asked me, do I want to participate in a contract brewery that he was developing. And of course it´s still a very popular solution in Poland, I believe, not so very popular in Germany, to do contract brewing. So all the, let´s say, new-wave, modern craft brewers in Germany are owning their own equipment and in Poland, when it started, the first possible solution especially for the guys who have a lot of ideas but not a lot of money was to ask an existing brewer, “Can I basically rent your equipment for a time, and do some beers on it?” So we started a contract brewery. It was, I believe, among the first five operating in Poland, from this new wave, let s say, starting from PINTA Brewery and so on.

Markus: Can you say which year that was?

Marcin: I am not very good at dates, I will have to check it later, but I believe it was around 2012, I think, one or two years either side. So we started a brewery called Olimp, so like Olympus and the names of the beers and the characteristics of the beers were inspired by Greek gods. So it was quite fun to try to match the name with the beer style, and so on. Back then, the craft-beer market in Poland was very young and very dynamic. I couldn´t imagine it would work now. Because our first beer being IPA, based only on Polish hops was brewed in a middle-sized regional brewery, and the batch size was 100 hectolitres of one beer. And the market was so young that these 100 hectolitres, I believe, we sold within a week. The majority of it was bought by only one wholesaler, from Warsaw.

Markus: Wow, that s unbelievable.

Marcin: Now it would be the craziest idea possible, to make 100 hectolitres of the same beer and try to sell it. It operated quite well for some time. Then I moved to southern Poland, because my partner from the company found another guy who had some money, and they decided to buy a middle-sized brewery from the 90s that hadn´t been operating for, maybe, two years or something, and the owners rented the brewery to some different parties for some time. It was actually rented by us at the beginning, and in fact bought. But of course, it was a huge leap, to change from basically designing a recipe of a beer, then consulting an actual brewer to scale it up, to check what the possibilities are in this or that brewery. Because in fact we used two breweries before, as contract brewers. Then, for some time we operated in fact, I was sitting on two chairs at the same moment, because I was the brewer of Olympus, but also the head technologist of the brewery that we had taken over. Of course, it was a huge leap for me, because you had to coordinate basically the whole production, not just design one recipe and wait for the result. So it was also a very interesting part of my life. Then I had a short break from brewing. Mainly due to medical reasons, because I also talk about this always openly, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and of course because of that I spent some time, after the surgery, waiting for the developments is something happening or not? Then they found a small metastasis near the kidney. So, basically, I also went to chemo and, because of that, because I always wanted to still be active, of course, after the chemo I started working remotely in some online marketing company. Basically, we did marketing services, or participated in some campaigns for bigger Polish and international brands, mainly from food electronics, something like that. So I spent some time there, and then we moved back to Toruń, as I remember. And during one evening we were never very keen on going to the city centre for the evening, spending a lot of time there, and of course getting intoxicated or whatever, but this one time, we went there to meet our friends. I believe it was around, maybe 3 a.m., when we got back to our flat. Then, again, Marcin Chmielarz, the guy from the Baltic Porter Day appears, because he has a website, a Facebook group called Work in the Polish Beer Industry, so he´s gathering all the possible work announcements from both sides, of course, from the ones who search for possible candidates, and he posted an offer from Fortuna. Okay, it wasn´t the best time to analyse the offer and send the curriculum, but it was on my cellphone.

Markus: So you did it at 3 a.m. in the morning?

Marcin: Yeah! Sober-ish, I was sober-ish. So I sent this document, and in the morning the CEO is calling. Because he was and he still is, when some people are needed for the brewery, for this quality, new-beer development department, he was always coordinating it by himself, because he will be the guy who will later work with the candidate, directly. So I got through this process, I believe some factor that helped me was that all the other candidates who were in this final group. I remember, we were developing a proposed recipe for a new beer and, as I recall, all the other candidates prepared home-brew recipes, and I prepared a recipe for, like, 35 hectolitres for a brewhouse, something like that. So that was maybe part of the difference. And I got the job. And then, in fact, when I started working there, I got to know about, I knew about some connections, of course, between Fortuna and Grodzisk, but then I saw how it really works. So the owners of Fortuna brewery, after some years in Fortuna, decided to rebuild the original building of one of the breweries in Grodzisk Wielkopolski. But then, since this building never had a bottling line, the beers, after fermentation, are moved via cistern for filling in Fortuna. So, if there are no new things happening in Grodzisk at a given moment, or you don t need to travel there to resolve some issues or whatever, basically you have both beers from Fortuna and Grodzisk at your desk, if you are sitting in Fortuna. Because, of course, releasing for filling, preparing, are numbers for bottom-fermentation of original Grodziskie, you still have all the analysis of quality in Fortuna, and then you prepare all the stuff also regarding the last steps of preparing Grodziskie in the same room as Fortuna beers.

Markus: Maybe, to sort it out a little bit for the listeners, because maybe not everybody s so knowledgeable at the moment about all the different breweries in Poland and how it works, maybe we have to first say a little bit about Fortuna, and their portfolio, and also, I think in the timeline it was: first, Fortuna and their beers, and also Komes, I think and Grodziskie was a little later, was it?

Marcin: Yeah, precisely. It was, like, three years difference.

Markus: But when you started, it was without Grodzisk Brewery or were they on board?

Marcin: No, Grodziskie was already in operation when I started.

Markus: Okay. So, maybe we can talk a little bit about the Fortuna part first, and maybe the Baltic Porter part, and then make the complete Grodzisk story?

Marcin: Of course.

Markus: Because it´s big, and otherwise people might mix it up, and it´s already interesting anyway, I think, because the Fortuna portfolio is huge, and the Komes Baltic Porter is also a huge story, especially for Poland. So maybe you can explain a little bit the idea of Fortuna itself, and their beers, and how the Komes brand comes into that thing?

Marcin: Yeah, of course. So, starting from the beginning, Fortuna was built in 1889. It was an old, operating brewery and, as you can imagine, in the Communist times, under-invested in, taken by the government, the quality and the scale of production was declining. And in the 90s, when the, I believe, grandson of the original owner s family took it over from the government, it of course needed a lot of investments, and you don t have this amount of money instantly. So it was also underperforming for a couple of years, and then it was taken over by the current owners, in 2012. They started by investing a lot, to bring the brewery into good shape. Because Fortuna is an original brewery, with quite a long history, with quite a good presence on the market, Fortuna developed a couple of different brands.

Markus: Maybe, just for a moment, Fortuna is a regional brand? Where is the region? What is the main city around it?

Marcin: Fortuna is based in the city of Mirosław, under the German reign it was Liebenau and it´s a small town in western Poland, let´s say, one hour s drive from Poznań, going slightly to the south-east. The town is somewhere around 4000 to 5000 people, and in that town there was a brewery, and that was capable of doing probably a couple of dozen thousand hectolitres. So it was quite big, and it had also exported quite a lot, historically. And then, after taking over the brewery, I am glad that you asked about the city, the main brand was designed to be connected with the town itself, so the main brand was Mirosław, after the city s name. It’s also quite funny, because in Polish there is a man s name which only differs by one letter, so a lot of people, instead of calling our beers Mirosław are calling them Miloslaw. So, this is the main brand that was, let´s say, about classical styles, without any strange special ingredients or different processes. It was, like, making a pilsener, a Kellerbier, Belgian white, something like that – like, more on the classic and light side. Then another brand is Komes, that you already talked about a brand of strong, long-matured beers, because the brewery also was known, even historically, for the Porter and for another different beer, I ll talk about that in a minute, the owners decided that it would be good to develop this into a bigger concept. So, not only brewing Baltic Porter, but a lot of other strong beers were introduced, for example barley wine, which is somewhere in the middle between an English one and an American one; then two beers of Belgian origin, which are also bottom-fermented, Belgian Tripel and Belgian Quadrupel, then some other beers, like Imperial Stouts from time to time, some one-off beers and so on. So we have classical, light styles, we have strong, dark, long-matured beers and the Belgian styles, and then there is also the Fortuna brand – a separate one. Historically, it was connected with a dark, sweet beer known around this part of Poland. I believe and I´ll have to check it and maybe update it – but it has been known since the 1920s or something like that, so it was like a caramel beer, I´d say. And around Fortuna there was a separate piece of portfolio built, and most of the beers were fruit-flavoured beers. And this Fortuna Czarne, this original dark, sweet beer, and also a couple of special variants of it, those were mostly connected with those flavoured beers that, at least in Poland, were known in the 90s. So, fruit beers, but usually the fruits were added just before the pasteurisation, so the beers were obviously sweet. And I think we now have all the beers from Fortuna.

Markus: Very interesting. If you tell about this light, dark, sweet beer, because I think it may be connected with the beer that is known on the German side as Doppelkaramel, which is a slightly fermented, malty-sweet, very tasty beer that has maybe 1, 1½% of alcohol, and it was very widespread before the end of World War Two. It was consumed by children, by ill people, it was known as a sweet, nourishing drink. It was discontinued by most of the breweries, we know have these artificial beers like Vitamalz and Karamalz, which are sweetened, normal drinks, not fermented beers. And only a very few breweries, some in the east of Germany and interestingly, one in Cologne, Malzmühle, they do the old recipe, and that may be quite close to that idea you are referring to. It would be interesting to try that.

Marcin: The only difference, at least since the 90s, is that this beer was usually around 5.5 to 6 ABV [alcohol by volume], but it was still a sweetened dark beer, so that was probably the connection with this old, very sweet beer that was already brewed here. And maybe some connection with the German one.

Markus: You mentioned all these quite strong beers, and also this huge variety of Belgian styles and British styles, American styles and whatever, so was the Polish beer market already open for all these different beers? And was it also really open for very strong beers, or was that more like the normal beer?

Marcin: I would say that it developed over the years, because all those parts of the portfolio Fortuna expanded through the years and I would say that they had been gaining popularity from one or two years before I started working there, onwards. So it was developing faster after more people got the knowledge about different foreign beer styles, and they gained some popularity. But I also wanted to add that I skipped two more parts of the portfolio, or even three. Which is quite strange as, for a brewery, we also do ciders. Those ciders are gaining momentum now, they are a bigger and bigger chunk of the portfolio, and we are one of the biggest cider producers in Poland now. So, another layer of complexity, because you have to handle totally different yeast strains, and of course separate the production because of potential gluten cross-contamination and so on. But there are also two important parts that have changed a lot in recent years. One is, when you talk about strong beers a barrel-ageing programme which, I would say, the majority of the beers that we do are ice-distilled, barrel-aged beers, so basically we concentrate, just like Schorschbräu in Gunzenhausen, we concentrate strong beers to make them even stronger. Then, after concentrating it up to 18, 20, 21 ABV, we put them into wooden barrels, usually bourbon barrels, wine barrels and so on, so of course only used or mainly used barrels. Then we mature them for at least one year, two years, the beer decides. On the other end of the scale, we have a huge portfolio of non-alcoholic beers. We started in, I believe, 2018, by releasing non-alcoholic IPA, and it got great reception on the market. We did it just before the huge, quick start of the non-alcoholic beer market. I believe that, for some of the consumers and the brewers we are kind of the reference of non-alcoholic IPA now. And it´s still growing each year even though you think that, after the previous years, “Now, no, it´s impossible, we cannot get any higher with this beer.”

Markus: I can only recommend it. I´ve had it very often, I love it. And when we were in our booth together, at the last Franconian Beer Festival, I drank it all the time, so it´s a fantastic beer, really.

Marcin: Thank you. And now it´s one of, I believe now, six different non-alcoholic beers we have on offer. It´s a lovely part of the market, because there are a lot of challenges, where you have to make a flavour for one, but still maintain a non-alcoholic character, so it´s fun.

Markus: So, really working on every end of the story: the high alcohol, the low alcohol, the barrel-ageing, the hoppy beers, the yeasty beers, whatever. So, really, a lot of challenges, and all that in one brewery, it´s not easy, I think.

Marcin: Yeah, but it´s also very, very interesting, because you never know what you will develop next time. Because, basically, nothing is limiting the possibilities. And then – because we have all of the beers from Fortuna, you have the second part. So, the rebuilt Grodzisk Brewery, which is also sending the beers after fermentation, one important thing: both of the breweries still use open vats for fermentation, so another obstacle in terms of product safety and so on. So the beers from Grodzisk are also arriving to Fortuna for filling, and for the bottom-fermentation process, where we talked about the original Grodziskie and from Grodzisk we in fact have four or five beers being brewed constantly, and also the ranges from non-alcoholic ale with mango and passionfruit pulp, through original Grodziskie, which is like 2.9, 3.1 ABV, to White IPA which is 5.8 and it´s a white IPA with additional of central rate. So also like from the historical styles to also quite modern solutions.

Markus: That s really impressive. Maybe, before we get into the Grodzisk story, we should just for the listeners to have a little idea about the beer styles, maybe you can talk a little bit about the Baltic Porter, what is it? What is the difference from, let´s say, a British Porter, and what is the challenge to have it on the Polish market? What is the idea behind it, and what are your goals at Komes, Fortuna, whatever, to focus on with your Baltic Porters?

Marcin: Baltic Porter, I would say it´s, like, semi-Polish style. It´s a twist on British Porter, but a bit more on the roasty side, which is more important, using bottom-fermented yeast so, a lager yeast to maintain a cleaner profile and focus on the malt qualities. And then, of course, a bit stronger, let´s say that the standard Baltic Porter in Poland should be at the 21, 22 plateau so, a bit stronger than the British counterpart. And we are quite known as a country for the Baltic Porter, and also Fortuna is pretty successful with ours, because our Baltic Porter won Bronze at the Beer World Cup and Gold at the European Beer Star. Basically, it´s been in constant production since the beginning. What, I feel, is very important about our Baltic Porter,  even though, in terms of this scale of sweetness and roastiness, ours is slightly more on the roasty side, but we do it on purpose, to have better ageing effects, because we know that a lot of people buy multiple bottles just to store them and check how  it´s changing, because we are even stating on the label, with a small illustration, that it will change from  this and this  to  this and that , so people tend to buy more and store it, which is quite important for us. It´s always a blend, meaning that we have multiple maturation tanks, with our Baltic Porter available all the time, because also we want to maintain long maturation time. But each time we prepare for bottling of the Baltic Porter, we do a tasting of those maturation tanks that we know are of age, that are ready. But then, of course, you have totally different ageing speeds in different parts of the maturation cellars, and also in different vessels, just because of some differences in the inside layer, because those are old maturation tanks, with the resin inside, so old steel tanks. So, each time we prepare for bottling, let´s say we have to prepare a batch so that pre-maturation tanks would be enough to join, then we taste from at least eight, ten different maturation tanks, and select which one goes to the blend, and why. Because, from time to time, of course, you have tanks that went too dry during the maturation, but luckily you have either slightly younger, or slightly slower-ageing, tanks that you can add to the blend. So in fact, usually construction of the blend is composed of at least four or five maturation tanks together.

Markus: That s really interesting, because that is another dimension in beer which, for example in Germany, is more or less totally unknown. The only beer culture where I know, it´s still the tradition is the Belgian one, where you have all the blenders with the sour beers, and they blend differently aged barrels and different years together to get a final result. Some of the newer German breweries, like Lemke, started doing that, but to do it at such scale and with such an idea and profession alism, that´s really new. It´s interesting, because it also refers a bit to the original British idea, because the old Porters were always blends of differently aged beers. Also, as you said, it´s just a little stronger than the traditional Porter. We really have to go back, like, 200 years. Because, if you have the modern British Porter, it´s like 4%. That is definitely a bigger difference. But it´s really interesting also to see that continuation, in history, in the whole European beer world, and that s also maybe the name Baltic Porter, because it was in the whole Baltic area, something like that, of course, not everywhere the same stuff. I also think it was very good for the Polish beer scene, to finally have a first, like, its own beer style, something really Polish, in beer. Did you also feel that movement in the Polish beer scene?

Marcin: Oh yeah. I think that especially those new customers so, all the guys who started drinking beer, but knowing what they are drinking after the start of the Prawie Revolution, maybe some part of those old-style customers who were already experimenting with some new beer styles, and so on, they felt very connected with the Baltic Porter, because this is the style when, let s say, properly maintained Baltic Porters, from even the biggest corporate brewers in Poland, are pretty good. You have for example Okocim, which is owned by Carlsberg, and they have had at least, I think, two medals at the Beer [Awards] for their Baltic Porter. All of the big three players talking about the Polish market basically, it´s divided between three big corporations, and then all of the rest is 2, 3% of the market. The big ones are Heineken, AB InBev, and Carlsberg. Now not the AB, it was sold to Asahi.

Markus: Ah, the Asahi part, yes. Okay, so those three.

Marcin: So there are those three, and all the rest is some small producers in comparison to theirs. What is very important about the Baltic Porter is that, even though they of course differ so, if you compare Zywiec´s Porter to the Porter from Tyskie and the Porter from Okocim, they are still even though different from each other, all of them are representatives of the style. They are pretty well-executed, of course. If you want to have something bolder, you ll probably turn more towards ours Kormoran Amber or something like that. And then you have the slightly more wicked ideas, or the stronger, bolder Baltic Porters from the modern craft brewers. But I would say that, if you launch a brewery in Poland, and if it´s very small and you operate only on the local market, or even if you are a restaurant brewery, there is a moment probably the first or second winter of operations that you need to have a Baltic Porter. Of course, sales-wise, it will be a fraction of your portfolio, but there is always a customer who will ask you, “Do you brew it?” So it´s pretty well-established in Polish beer culture.

Markus: And it´s really widespread. This year, at the European Beer Star, on our table we had the final of the Baltic Porters and Mateusz Przecky was on our table. It was really interesting, also because he s really also a specialist on style. It was great to judge together, and to have all the differences in all these really good examples, it is was very, very interesting, great. So, as we now have this first Polish beer style, we finally come to the second one, which now really a big star in the beer world, I would say. We already mentioned the name and the city Grodzisk some times and I think that many people are really eager to hear about it. So now we come to that little secret. You already said that it was something that had more or less disappeared, and then Fortuna decided to revive that story. Maybe you can lift a bit the secret of how that came to life?

Marcin: Yes, of course. Starting from the beginning, the one fixed date that we have in documents about Grodziskie is 1601, when the guild of the brewers was formed in the city of Grodzisk Wielkopolski. From this moment you have some regulations about the quality of the beer, about ways of doing it. But the heydays of Grodziskie are more connected with the 1920s, when Mr. Anthony Thum, who was in fact of Austrian origin, when he moved to Grodzisk, he fell in love with the city. In the 1920s he decided to join all the brewers in the city together. The strange thing is that, again, like the city of Mirosław, around 5000 people, they had more than 30 brewers back then, because the city, since the mid-18th century, was already known as a brewing city. In fact, the brewing school, teaching new brewers, was one of the most expensive in, how do you say, because it covered both independent Poland and the partitions, so let s say that in the current, 21st-century area of Poland, when you go back to those years, Grodzisk Brewing School was still one of the most expensive in the Polish territory.

Markus: Maybe, also for the listeners, you have to explain a little bit that Grodzisk is a city about half an hour west of Poznań. It´s a beautiful city, with a huge history.  it´s not so big, but it was always a big city in terms of brewing and malting. And what together we found out is that, in all the archives and all the stories, it was mentioned throughout the whole of central Europe, so in the German archives, in the Polish, in the Russian, in the Austrian. It was known everywhere for beer, for its own beer but also for the malt it exported, and everything else in terms of brewing and brewing knowledge. So it´s a bit of a forgotten gem in terms of beer, a real beer jewel, history-wise, a great city. And if you go there, you still see that every other building has something to do with beer. There are the chimneys, and typical signs of beer and malting, and everywhere in the city it´s present. So you really breathe this beer history, if you walk through that city. So that is really, sometimes you get goosebumps if you go there. Really interesting. And when I was there, I think five years ago, or something like that, I was really instantly taken over by that mood. Yeah, it´s fantastic, and I love going there, and I love trying the beers, and all that history was revitalised by Fortuna and you, sorry for interrupting. Please continue.

Marcin: So, a short rewind to those 1920s back then, in the heyday of Grodziskie, when Anthony Thum connected a couple of brewers together, in those years the total yearly production of Grodziskie in Grodzisk so, one beer style in one city was over 100,000 hectolitres a year. It was exported to a couple of dozen countries, also outside of Europe, so it was huge. And again, we have the same sad part as with Mirosław, all of it declined during the Communist times. In fact, the guy who helped unite all of the Grodzisk breweries died in poverty. But the breweries were taken over by the government, one by one they were closed. Then, in the 90s, when they were bought by private owners, this building, consisting of brewhouse and fermentation, was taken over by Lech Browary in Poznań. But the strategy back then, from the foreign investors that basically divided the Polish market in the 90s, Lech also bought a couple of other medium-sized breweries around Poznań, just to state, after one or two years, “Oh, they are not efficient enough, so let s close them.” So basically they took over all of the possible local competition, and they basically just closed it.

The original brewery was also closed. Then there was a hiatus of 20-something years, more than 20-something, almost 30 years, when the style wasn´t brewed any more. Oh, sorry, I forgot about one thing, it´s also somewhat connected to the Belgian culture, the brewing in Grodzisk was always, even before the union of all the Grodzisk brewers, it was always a cooperation. They were doing collabs before it was cool, because there were brewers that consisted only of a brewhouse, to sell the ware to other brewers, brewers that had only fermentation, brewers that had, like ours, brewhouse and fermentation, and probably a couple of other options. And there was only one filling line, on the other side of town from our perspective, though this one company was serving as a bottling line to all the others. That also had some connection to the concept we are doing now because, instead of horse and carriage and some wooden vessels to transport it to the other end of town, we are using cisterns to transport it to Fortuna for filling. Of course, rodziskie was in the minds of the home brewers, guys who were still digging the history and so on about your discoveries, of course, walking encyclopaedia of Grodziskie, Mr. Marian Brzeziński,  all of  Grodziskie-philia-collector, he has a huge collection of documents, luckily, we also have scientific papers from the  60s and 70s, describing science-wise and process-wise the full process of brewing Grodziskie. After those slightly smaller-scale restaurant trials by the guys who formed PINTA later so, the approach to Grodziskie from a small restaurant brewery in Lublin, sadly they are not in operation anymore, so something began to happen, slowly. Then, when PINTA started working as a contract brewer, they also brewed a couple of approaches to Grodziskie, I believe the owners of Fortuna started, in 2011, to look at the possibilities of buying those ruins in the centre of Grodzisk Wielkopolski, to refurbish it and start brewing Grodziskie again. And in fact they succeeded, in 2015, when the first batches of beer were released. To maintain the original style, the first batches of beer were original Grodziskie, bottom-fermented, prepared according to all the sources that we have. And basically, since that moment it´s still being brewed.

Markus: What a fascinating story. So really, I can only encourage all our listeners to go there, to see the place, to try the beer. If we talk about the beer, maybe we also have to explain a little bit what Grodziskie is. So, how is it made, what does it consist of, and how does it taste? Maybe you can bring us a little picture of that beer in mind?

Marcin: The first thing that I always say, to any possible listener, is that Grodziskie is never sour beer. That is what s different. When you compare the beers directly, the first thing that you will notice between Grodziskie and Lichtenhainer is that Grodziskie is very dry, but not sour. The other very important thing about Grodziskie is that it´s a top-fermented beer, but the yeast, in fact it´s a strain, because it´s a mix of two strains, the yeast culture used to make Grodziskie, even though it´s an ale strain, it´s extremely neutral. So it gives only slight amounts of like Peru-like esters in the background. But basically it´s almost as clean as lager yeast. Even some brewers from the US, some of our dear friends from the US, who have been brewing Grodziskie for years, and they are doing a great one to maintain this clean profile, they use lager yeast in their breweries, with very good effects. The beer is very light, the beer is extremely highly carbonated, it was even called the champagne of Poland, but you cannot use that claim because of the copyright protection of champagne.

Markus: But there was a Polish word.

Marcin:  Szampan.

Markus:  Champagne, yeah.

Marcin: But you can`t say it anymore, so maybe they will block our broadcast because of that.

Markus: Maybe in France.

Marcin: So, it´s a very light beer. It has 3.1, 2.9 ABV. Highly carbonated, flavourful because of the smoke, because the beer is 100% oak-smoked wheat, which is also quite different from the other smoked-beer styles that are still alive, like German Rauchbier. Because brewing a 100% wheat-malt beer is already difficult. Especially when I tell you that this beer should be crystal-clear, that the haziness is a big fault. So it´s a challenge. This clarity is also probably caused by this high carbonation because, if you don t make it perfectly clear, it would probably gush when you opened it. So it´s an extremely refreshing light beer, we don t say that it´s totally within the No/Low trend, because it´s extremely flavourful, interesting, complex, but it´s very low in alcohol, so it´s also a perfect beer for the hot season. Also, which is quite important, even though it´s a smoked beer and of course the character of the smoke is slightly different because different wood is used, but the smokiness is also meant to be quite delicate. If you compare the smoke levels of Schenkerla Märzen to Grodziskie, totally two different levels. Because, in Grodziskie, because of the low ABV, because of the high carbonisation that also pushes the flavours up, overdoing the smokiness makes the beer less drinkable. One of the things that was very important over the years for Grodziskie, they even state it, that it´s highly drinkable. Between the wars, in the advertisements they also stated that it´s impossible to get drunk.

Markus: Yes. They even advertised it as healthy and nourishing, and all the things that they used in that time to sell beer, yeah.

Marcin: And also it´s pretty interesting about the smoke level, we always say that, and you heard that also before, we didn t find any of the historical advertisements of Grodziskie, in Polish, with the word smoke. The only word that you see in the commercials is, when the commercial is in German, is Rauch. As we guess, because you never know, because we don t have a time machine, we may assume that, because of the modern malting technologies already developing by then, in the heyday of Grodziskie it was probably desired to have the lowest possible smoke levels, to be the modern brewery, yeah? To be the new guy that is able to do the beer without the smoke, because smoke is not so sexy any more.

Markus: That was even the case before. So that we know that, also with the research here in Bamberg, which is today known for that smoky character but, in all the old times, when malting was simply just possible by using fire and also having smoke in the beer, all the maltsters tried to have the smoky touch in the malt as low as possible. So the art was not to have an intense smoke-beer, but they wanted to have the lowest possible strength of smoke-beer. And still, if you talk today to the Speziale Mälzerei, or also to Schenkerla, they also try not to have that too-intense level. Also, in the recordings, it´s the same thing. Around 1800, the first commercial smoke-free kilns started to show up around that time in Silesia. Before that, simply it was the beer, it was the malt, there was no other thing; there was always a little smokiness in there, but it wasn´t seen as smoky beer. That started when you had other beers, without smoke, or potentially without smoke. People started to see some difference and, of course, then there was the differentiation, but that maybe took until the end of World War Two, when people really realised that there is the non-smoky beer and there is the smoky beer, and there is a difference. So, I think that s it´s still a matter of perspective. Because nowadays, for all the people here in the [beer] world, they see smoke-beer as something very special but, if you go back to the old days, that was the regular beer. The special thing was the non-smoky beer. And people tried to get as little smoke as possible, to get it as drinkable as possible, on the other side. And, of course, in these days many beers got sour, many beers had other problems, so you were happy to have something to drink at all. So it was also something totally different from our enjoyment of beer. Even with what we know about beer production in the early 1950s, in western Germany many of the breweries were still using wooden vessels for fermentation, even for maturation, it was a totally different beer. So our idea of an enjoyable, refreshing beer, that maybe started in the 60s, to become what we think is a really good beer, before that was a very different thing. So it´s hard to talk about that, really. What I also found very interesting: you have a lot of things remaining from the old days in your brewery. Some date back to the time of the German Empire, and also World War Two, and you have these brandings where you had the export to the former German colonies, and you had the export to the cruise ships which went across the Atlantic, so they all drank Grodziskie on their way. And you even had some referring to the deliveries to the German army in World War Two, we found in the papers that, even in the last days of World War Two there was still a shipment of malt from Grodzisk to other breweries in the old empire. Which, at that time, with an almost totally destroyed railway network and everything, really showed the quality of the Grodzisk products, otherwise they wouldn´t have taken care about still delivering that stuff, in a time when half of the empire was destroyed. So you really see the importance of the city, the importance of the beer and the quality level that people really saw in the beer, and their love of that beer style. So that s also really interesting, and I think that gives another boost to the Polish beer heart to now have a second style, which is totally unique and totally interesting. Maybe, on the opposite side to the Porter, because you have that strong, malty, bold Baltic Porter, and then you have this light, soft, but still self-confident, bursting with activity, nice Grodziskie, which is the other way, so it´s really interesting to have all these beer styles. So, how do Polish people approach you, when you give them the beer, maybe in the festival in Grodzisk, for example? Are there people who knew it from their past, and how do they see it today, that Grodziskie is there again?

Marcin: There are some customers who still remember the old times but then, especially among those customers who were drinking Grodziskie in the Communist times, quite often you see, when you listen to their stories, you see that for sure there were some quality problems over the years. Because, when we decided to refurbish the brewery, of course you have all of the papers, all of the technology description, but you also needed to have some actual consumers, or former workers of the brewery, who would give you any information that they had. So when the flavour of Grodziskie was, kind of, in the making, and when we were searching for suppliers and so on, we also talked with almost 100 people, former workers, citizens of Grodzisk, and also some well-known people from the industry so, for example, Stan Hieronymus was also part of the small group of people who tasted the beer and gave us some feedback. So, when you read that information, especially from citizens of Grodzisk, and you wouldn´t pick the whole testimonials but only random ones, you could even end up with Grodziskie being a hazy dark beer. Because there were some errors in the production, especially in Communist times. But luckily, for us the most important part was that you also, for example, had those papers from the 60s, when a brewery and university employee prepared a whole description of the process, how it should be. So you knew that, if something occurred and the beer is not good, we could probably guess that maybe it started here, yeah? That some mistake was made, or some qualities of the suppliers, and so on. So luckily, we still have those consumers who remember Grodziskie and they are pretty satisfied because it´s alive again. Of course, you ll have those who say, “Oh, no, I tried it in the 80s and it was different.” But you always have those people, and you can´t blame them because, of course, the memory could change, the taste changes over the years, so even I am not so sure, when I get older, will I say the same things about the taste of the beer? Even though I would know, from the professional side, that the recipe and the beer shouldn´t change at all. So you never know what could change in that. But also you have the second part, the new consumers who were already interested in Grodziskie as a Polish beer style. And I believe that, with those consumers, in the first years of the brewery s operation, this group was not so big, because all of the Polish new wave consumers were extremely interested in new beer styles, mostly from the US, in all of the hop-forward beers. And then they were more interested in Baltic Porters. But over the years, not only abroad but also in Poland, the strength of the Grodziskie community has been growing very fast, because people notice one thing, that was in fact in the DNA of the beer since at least the 1920s, that it´s heavily drinkable, light, interesting, sessionable, when you go to a pub, you can sit with your friends and basically spend a whole evening drinking Grodziskie and nothing happens. So it´s still growing very fast, and I am very happy about it.

Markus: And you re also working on another career of the beer style, because you not only brew it yourself, you also encourage others to brew it. So there is also the competition in Grodzisk, which has been happening for many years now. Many you can tell us a little bit about that story, because now it´s an international beer competition. And on the other side, you have also started to give the yeast to the public, so that everybody in the world can now try to make this beer, and of course there are a lot of breweries doing it. And we have seen, even as far as South America, Grodziskie being Best of Show in a competition, this is a really great achievement. So you can tell us a little bit about that new stage of Grodziskie now?

Marcin: The idea of a new stage, I believe it was born two or three years ago, when we analysed the market and said, “Okay we are brewing Grodziskie and we are in that privileged position that we are the original Grodziskie brewery,” yeah? So, even if you try different versions, if you are interested in the style, at some point you would want to compare it with the original. And we of course knew that Grodziskie was a new niche style – even in the original brewery, in fact Grodziskie is less than 10% of the volume. Of course, you have to brew different things to have the money to brew Grodziskie. Because, especially on this broader market, customers still need to be educated to drink it and be able to love it. Because if you surprise a person, giving him or her Grodziskie without saying anything, you won´t convince them to try it. It´s the same with Schenkerla Märzen, if you see some random people going to Schenkerla and leaving Untapped half a star, with a comment: “Horrible, smoky”, they were not prepared. Because they would either avoid the place or expect something different from the beer. Another beer. So, with Grodziskie we decided that no matter what happens – meaning that no matter how many other brewers, in Poland and globally, will start brewing Grodziskie, they will never in fact harm our sales. And the biggest corporations would probably never brew Grodziskie, because it´s totally too niche for them. So we decided that the best thing that you can do, at the place where the style was born, is to promote the style, to make it easier for all of the brewers to brew it. It was November 23, I believe, when we published on our website the whole brewing recipe, together with salt composition, whole mashing, brewing, the whole process is described in a way suitable for professional brewers. Because, if a home brewer wants to brew it, they have some resources, this is one thing. And the other thing is that for both home brewers and professionals we have contact, directly to me, to ask any questions. So we released the whole recipe, and we spent a lot of time travelling with other members of the Polish judge mafia to different competitions in different parts of the world, to use any opportunity to give a talk about the style, to propagate it even more. But then, after releasing this technology to the public, in Polish and English of course, we decided that probably some of the brewers also want to have access to the ingredients. So, when the brewery was revealed, we wanted to make Grodziskie malt from scratch, made precisely in the way that was stored in malting recipes, because we didn´t add that. A malthouse was also a part of the brewery that we rebuilt. So, we had the recipe, and we tried to search for a malthouse that would agree to do it for us. And finally we found Bruntál in the Czech Republic, which is still a floor-malting malthouse. They had some experience with smoking, because they produce a whiskey malt and they dry it with peat, but they had never malted wheat, they were only doing barley. And the other thing was that they had never used oak smoke. But we convinced them, and they started malting Grodziskie malt according to the old recipe. What s pretty important, in terms of preparation of the malt, is that they were able to kiln with the smoke, whereas other Grodziskie malts on the market usually have wheat malt, which has already been dried, and then they smoke it at the end, to prepare some smaller batches of Grodziskie malt. Which is also good, because for sales of Grodziskie, niche-style, also the malt is probably not so popular. So it´s very hard to produce, for example, 25 tonnes of the malt, just guessing it will sell. So we make it in Bruntál, but we started sharing the malt a couple of years ago, with our friends from Lubbock in Texas. So once a year, when the batch of the malt is being made in the Czech Republic, they order a couple of tonnes directly from the Czech Republic, and all the rest goes to Grodzisk Brewery. And, because we were already sharing with Lubbock and they were also from time to time sharing with other American brewers, luckily each year they need more malt, and they are slightly less willing to share, because they need to brew more. So that s good news. We decided, because in the first year, when we revived the brewery, in fact when we ordered 25 tonnes of Grodziskie malt, even though we were also adding some to other beers, for variations and so on, in fact, those 25 tonnes were slightly too much for us for one year of brewing. So in fact we were using those for one and a half years. And now, with this distribution to Polish craft brewers, we are in fact using almost to just before the next malting season. Of course, it´s good for everyone, because they have access to original malt, and we have fresh malt all the time because, after the end of the old malting season, we are already out of the malt. So basically we both profit from that. When we released the malt, we knew that Tomyski, the hop variety used traditionally for Grodziskie and it was farmed near the city of Grodzisk, and the majority of our hop farms are in the Lublin area so, south-eastern Poland, we revived Tomyski also, because it had been lost, during some sad events during the war, because [the crops] were in fact destroyed on purpose. But luckily, some plants survived and our hop supplier from the Lublin area was able, with our help, to revive the Tomyski variety. Thanks to that, the brewers also had access to Tomyski because, as you can imagine, after the revival of the variety, Pawel farms enough of this variety to supply a couple of brewers, at least. In different styles because, for example, Marek Kaminski is doing a very nice pilsener with Tomyski hops, in Browar Kingpin. So we knew that even brewers from abroad, if they at least contact Polish Hops and ask, they can access the hops. But then we knew that, at least since the 1960s when they had some problems with the yeast quality, because they bought them elsewhere, they started to develop their own culture. But to form this culture, Mr Shmalec, this brewing scientist, wanted to make it as close as possible to the old one. So he started blending several yeast strains that he would obtain and propagate by himself, and in the end his final blend was two parts of one strain and one third of another strain. We knew that back then, at the brewery they did the blend each time.

Markus: And it´s both ale-yeast strains?

Marcin: Both ale-yeast. And we already have some preliminary results about the performance of those yeasts under different conditions, but we are willing to do more. So we took the yeast from the last bottles from like 93, 94 so, the yeast was preserved by a professor at Warsaw Agricultural University, Andrej Sadovnik, who was, I would say, the founder of Polish home brewing. We got the culture, we kept it at the brewery, in fact in Fortuna for a couple of years before Grodziskie was revived and then we propagated it, because Grodziskie uses only open fermenters, and of course the risk of contaminating the original culture is too high. At Grodzisk we use only the Grodziskie culture. After November 23 we know that this blend is very special in terms of its performance, because the main fermentation of Grodziskie takes two and a half or three days, and even fermenting of this White IPA, which is a 13.5 plateau, is probably four or five days. So they are very hard to be contaminated, because basically they eat all the sugars instantly, and you can basically pasteurise them all the time. Now we also know that the culture is very stable because we have some, two strains in it, in a ration of 75:25%, so we guess that those are the cultures that were initially used. So we decided to give this culture to the public. Since we knew that probably the majority of the interested brewers are in the US, we decided to talk with a couple of companies, during the Crop Growers Conference. Then we decided to work with White Labs, because they also have a facility in Europe, in Copenhagen. In exchange for having a safety back-up at White Labs, and in order to compare the results of our culture and the culture that we gave, we can once a year order a Grodziskie culture from them, to do parallel batches. So, only for that, we donated the strain to them, so that they can release it on the market, so that we can say to every brewer, in whatever part of the world, “Just contact White Labs, and you will also have original yeast.” Thanks to that, we still have more Grodziskie, but we also have one thing more: we have some recognition of the strain itself, because we are not the only one experimenting with making different beers with the same culture.

Markus: I also think it´s the awareness of the Polish beer culture, the awareness of Grodziskie, which is much stronger now, because it´s everywhere in the world. Also, I think the competition that takes place and took place in Grodzisk, which started as a reference to that home brewing history, where we always had, I think, two categories, the traditional Grodziskie and the creative Grodziskie. And now, since this year, there is also an international competition where professional brewers can take part, I think that s another keystone of that development, to bring Grodziskie on to the international tableau everywhere.

Marcin: Oh yeah, it´s extremely important for us because thanks to that, of course, when the professional brewers participate, by giving feedback we can improve their approach to Grodziskie to maintain the core of the style, let s say, it started as a home brewers competition, in fact, it was held for at least 16 or 17 editions before the [Grodzisk] Brewery was brought back to life. It was a home brewers competition where the judges were mainly those most experienced Polish home brewers, and also those former workers of the brewery. So they had had this competition for years, being back then only a classical approach competition, it was called Prawie Grodzisk, Grodzisk is just another way of saying Grodziskie, so Prawie Grodzisk  is like “almost  Grodziskie ”. So they knew that it would probably be quite hard to replicate, but they did a tremendous job over the years, to keep the style alive. There was even a case where one of the home brewers won so many times that they forbade him from sending the beers, they moved him to the jury. He was later the founder of one of the Polish contract breweries. They opened, I believe, about one year, half a year before us, I am talking about Olimp Brewery. When we revived the brewery, we also contacted the organisers of the competition, to maybe make it´s slightly bigger. And then I don t remember precisely when, but it was at least in the first year after reviving the brewery, there was one creative Grodziskie as you said, brewed, without the help of home brewers. It was Grodziskie with Citra hops and scented Earl Grey tea. Then, since the second year, the competition had already introduced this creative category for home brewers, of course, there are cash prizes in both categories, but the biggest prize for the home brewer is that next year, for this Grodziskie Festival, his beer will be released, made on our equipment. So each year, of course, depending on the recipe of the home brewer and depending on the amount of time that he declares is needed, but usually in April or, by the latest, the first half of May, we brew the recipe of the home brewer on our equipment. So, 100 hectolitres brewhouse. In most cases three batches, because the fermenters are 300 hectolitres. But with some effort it´s possible to brew two batches so, not to fill the fermenter to the brim. Each year we have a different variation, and after a couple of years we decided that, the competition is already quite known, and we had already had some questions from international professional brewers that wanted to send their beer to the competition, but not to participate because it´s professional Grodziskie. So they wrote, like, “Can I send the beer? So the judges or if I send it too late, so you can send me some feedback about this beer, because I want to make it properly.” So we decided, “Okay, let s make it easier. Let s make a third category, being a commercial one.” So this was the first year when we had the commercial category and we had entries from, I believe, almost ten countries. We had some entries from the US, thanks to Adam Reynolds, one of the judges, who agreed to take all of the American samples in his luggage. Then we had some samples from The Netherlands, the UK, Germany of course, and in fact we had, I personally love their approach, because they are basically brewing a clone, got the Gold in the Commercial Grodziskie category. I am trying to recall the Silver now, because the Bronze was from Lemke, yeah?

Markus: Yes, the Bronze was from Lemke, and the other one was also a US brewer.

Marcin: Oh, Goldfinger!

Markus: Yes.

Marcin: Which is also funny, a brewery which has connections with Poland because I don t remember, the grandfather, or great-grandfather of the owner of Goldfinger was a brewer, and a barrel-filling and emptying equipment producer in Kraków. So he had some connections, and he decided, “Because I am part-Polish, I need to brew a Polish-beer style,” and he is also very good at it.

Markus: And it´s a little bit the same story with Lemke, because their CEO is also from Poland. And we both visited the brewery, I think it was three years ago, at their big barrel festival, where we had the ice destil bottles and visited Bastian, the brewer and I gave him some bottles of Grodziskie and he was really propagating the yeast and working on it. He was very proud that he had made his Grodziskie and he instantly had the third place, the Bronze Medal, he was very happy about that, so that s really crazy how everywhere in the world, people try to approach to that beer style and beer culture. I think, it´s also really good because it brings Poland really back onto the map, also beer-wise. And this is really good, I am very happy about that. Big fun! And everywhere we are in competition, and that maybe brings us to the last part of the interview because, I think also for you personally, it must be a very interesting experience, as you are now judging all over the world and all the competitions, from Chile to Japan. The life as an international beer judge is a lot of fun, because you go to all these countries, you are never a tourist, you are always like a friend or like a family member, and you experience all these cultures and people and beers and everything in a very different and special way, so how is that for you? How did that change your life? Was that something you expected, maybe, ten years ago?

Marcin: Definitely, ten years ago, not. I think it was, again, a lot of very lucky coincidences, because, of course, the first thing that was definitely needed from Fortuna and Grodzisk is that, let´s say, they saw that me being a guy quite involved in that judging culture, meeting other judges, checking other perspectives on the styles, other markets and so on, they wanted to support that. One good thing is that, at the same time, they had the best possible way of educating me about other beers, and also they had some additional recognitions of the beers that are being made in Fortuna and Grodzisk. That was the first thing that had to happen. Then, the second important thing was, because we´ve been speaking now for one and a half hours, that I like to speak about beer. Probably that was one of the factors, because I am very open-minded, very open to others, talkative and communicative and so on. Even when my English is not perfect, I kind of ignore it because I know that when the message is delivered, it´s good. So, thanks to those things, I just started at first applying, and then maybe receiving some invitations to the competitions, and also it´s being strongly supported by my company, because they see some value in that. By the way, when you talked about different countries, I don t know who is listening, but Japan is still on my list!

Markus: “Hello, hello!” Maybe, we will let them know.

Marcin: Especially because they brew quite a lot of Grodziskies. Meeting those judges from different backgrounds and reaching those further parts of the planet, now especially, a couple of years in a row, southern America, because it´s already Chile, Paraguay and Brazil, and each time again it´s Grodziskie done everywhere. I believe one of the most important things, like joining competitions as a participant and also as a judge, was when I judged at European Beer Star, and we also convinced Gillian to have this separate category for Grodziskie. And in the first year which was the most amazing thing about educating other countries, because at EDS you have judges from the whole brewing world, we were able to give that talk about the style to all of the judges, stewards and team members, together with a tasting of two Polish-made Grodziskies. So it definitely kickstarted all the other activities. I remember, after this talk at EBS, we spent half an hour already talking to a couple of judges immediately after the talk, and also we had a lot of contacts, days later, after I got back to Poland. So I love having this opportunity and, of course, I hope that in every country at least one brewer is in the end convinced to brew his approach. For example, I remember, when we went to Brazil, in that competition when in fact the Best in Show was a classical Grodziskie made in Brazil. I remember that, during that stay, we basically brewed four different creative Grodziskies, with two brewers, on two different set-ups. So it was also a very active competition, looking from the Grodziskie perspective.

Markus: So it can be also a lot of work. But also nice work, interesting work, and also expanding knowledge in the end. I can really also only encourage all the listeners to try all these creative Grodziskies, because it´s so interesting to have all kinds of spices and fruits and other ingredients, all together with a lot of experience and experiments in any way. And that´s always big fun, I always love when I am at that part of the competition, to really get to new tastes, new fruits, new spices, new combinations. Together with that smokiness, that s always really interesting. A lot of them really make very rounded, very balanced, very nice, very drinkable versions, even if they sound crazy if you read about them in the paper, that´s really fascinating. I think that´s a great part in both of our lives, to experience how far we can go with beer and what experiences are possible. But maybe, to go back to the beginning, we were talking about you also being a cat sommelier. So maybe you can just give a little insight into your personal history? Because that´s really interesting, that you more or less built a house around your cats, or for your cats. It´s great, and how did that come about in your life?

Marcin: To start with, I was always an animal person, meaning that, even when we lived in another part of town, with my parents, I remember kids bringing injured dogs, birds that had fallen out of their nests, to us, because they knew that we would take care of them. With my sister, and of course with the help of our parents, so it was always somewhere there. In fact, my first pet that I had at home was a sparrow. We got a sparrow that had fallen out of a nest, and we taught him how to fly, petted him, and he stayed with us for almost two years. We even tried to release him in the middle of the protected part of the forest but, after a trip to the trees, it went back to the steering wheel of the car. Later, I would say, that back then I was slightly more of a dog person. I never had a dog or any of the bigger pets. I had fishes, this sparrow, afterwards some canaries so, not so very interactive animals, yeah? But then, when I met my wife, she already had cats at home, I was slightly more of a dog person, basically because I didn´t understand cats so well. I didn´t understand my position in that relationship. Now I know the assignment. That´s why the album that I always share with beer judges, when it clicks, when you hear that probably the other judge is also a cat person, I am already prepared. I remember, I prepared this album and sent this to Ivan from Brasserie de la Senne. So the album on Google Photos is called Cat House, 2 Servants. So, when I met my wife, I was allergic to cats, a bit. Meaning that it was on the boundary of asthma, so it wasn´t very convenient. Because of that, we never took on a cat. But then, when I was at the brewery in this southern part of Poland. Of course, a movie scene: the middle of a storm, heavy rain and so on, and someone just left a box with three kittens in front of the brewery. So we took them inside, too care of them during the week at the brewery, but of course I contacted my wife and said, taking the risk, but also because I didn´t think that it would go so quickly, because I said to her, “You know, I don t know what my reaction is, because they are basically not in a small, closed space with me”, because they were roaming around the offices and sleeping in a cardboard box outside but under a roof, so I don´t know my reactions yet. But maybe if we could find a home for the remaining two cats, we can take the third one.” I believe it took her one hour, to ask some friends, convince one friend on the way back to home, because back then it was almost 300 kilometres from the brewery to my home. So I had spend the week in southern Poland and then I had travel back, usually with the company owner. So we travelled back, we had this cat transPorter, this plastic box with a cage, so I had those three kittens inside, on my lap. Of course, I wasn´t driving, but I remember that, during this journey to Toruń and it was mostly highway, so it took maybe two and a half hours, I used a whole roll of toilet paper, because it was horrible for my nose and for my eyes. But of course, the decisions had been made already, so we had this one cat. Because, at least for a time, for my respiratory tract it was quite irritating, we called this cat Fennel. Sadly, after a couple of years he fell ill with quite a rare condition and we had to say goodbye. But through this, after we had adopted him, I decided that the only way to get rid of this allergy is to come into contact with the allergen as often as possible. Because even if you have those injections that cure you of the allergy, they use the most common cat allergen, the most common types of protein that give you this reaction. So you re never sure whether it´s the same variant your cat has. So I was basically inhaling, in the evening, through the cat. I just put my nose to his belly and inhaled as much as possible. As you can imagine, my respiration was quite loud the first nights, but then slowly disappeared. In fact, since then I have never had an allergic reaction to a cat. At least not a severe allergic reaction because, especially if you meet a totally new cat, of course, I try to meet a lot of cats abroad so, to compare, is petting a Paraguayan cat the same as petting a Polish cat? Yes, as a sommelier, so you never know. Maybe a small rash or a runny nose for a couple of minutes is all you get. And then we decided, when we built a house in the middle of a forest, “Yeah, let s adopt two cats,” because when you have two they have someone to play with when you re at work, so it´s better for the cats. And now we have six. Because we adopted them, like, in waves. First, two, second, two, and then I said, “No, we are not ready to take the third pair,” and I saw a lovely cat after some accident, she was missing one of her front legs, already in the shelter, so I took Christine from the shelter. Also thinking, “Okay, now we are breaking the cycle,” because it´s two, two, one, so it´s the end. We have five. But later it turned out to be six. What´s important about the house is that we have a huge patio and it´s in the middle of a forest, so the outside area is covered in a metal net and it´s also covered with a roof. They have all the possible shelves and scratching posts and whatever else in the house. But then, when we are at home, they can also go through the window outside, and the outside area for the cats is bigger than the total inside area of the home. So they are totally spoiled, of course. But this is the way it´s should be.

Markus: Yeah, like back in the zoo. Fantastic. Great, thank you very much for that insight into your beer life and your personal life, and also thank you for your friendship. I am very happy about that and I am looking forward to the next time we meet, it´s should be quite soon, I hope. Again, thank you very much, that was a great talk and a huge insight into the Polish beer industry, and I can only wish you the best of luck, for your family, for yourself, and also for the beer. I am looking forward to the next time we re meeting each other again. Thank you.

Marcin: Thank you, Markus. Glad to know you.

BierTalk – Der Podcast rund ums Bier. Alle Folgen unter www.biertalk.de.