Fancy Pants Sunday: Tommie Sjef Sprong
It was not your typical young adult situation. Many early 20-somethings strive to be social media influencers while sipping hard seltzers. A young Dutch guitarist named Tommie “Sjef” Koenen plays different. People often refer to him as a beer blending prodigy. One taste of an oude geueze whilst visiting Antwerp just after entering his 20s changes his life path. Wasting no time, he became well-traveled between Belgian breweries and his parent’s backyard shed in Den Helder, Amsterdam. At the annual Amsterdam sour and wild ale festival, Sjef was the talk of the fest astonishing well-established brewers and critics with his perfectly balanced fruity sour beers, then still homebrew. After a while, he started to chart his own path by ordering base wort for his production and fermenting these in wood barrels with his own house culture of wild yeast and bacteria. Demand for his beer was already high but having RateBeer dub Sjef one of the “Best New Brewers in the World” in 2017 probably didn’t hurt either. As a result, it’s all hands-on deck for Sjef and his family, with everyone chipping in to sort out paperwork, orders, labelling and the like to run Tommie Sjef nano brewery. It’s not all glamour. But then again, they do have a shed filled with glorious sour beer in the garden, and a bottle of Sprong wild ale in the Peaks & Pints cooler, which is the focus of Fancy Pants Sunday — our weekly column highlighting complex, fancy beer and cider. Welcome to Fancy Pants Sunday: Tommie Sjef Spróng!
When Sjef isn’t strumming guitar in his jazz trio, JEFF, the self-taught Dutch prodigy brews with his own yeast and bacteria culture, made of spontaneous starters from the local area and from his lambic blending period. The resulting wild beer is then aged in the same barrels that it was fermenting in, with fruit often added toward the end of the aging process. He likes to do relatively long maturation in barrels, up to 7 years in oak barrels. He also regularly makes cuvées mixing beers and grapes. Due to the high demand for his craft, which is still true today, Sjef had to relocate his barrels from his shed to a bigger location. Still the demand largely exceeds the production.
That’s all fine and dandy, but let’s get to drinking. Spróng is a blend of wild ales varying from 6 months up to 4 years, with Sicilian sage. This vintage enhances the herbal qualities of the sage together with a fresh, and vibrant yet characterful blend of several oak puncheons and a rustic saison. The nose reveals herbal aromas of fresh sage, oak, bergamot zest, green jasmine tea, and even a subtle hint of mint. On the palate, the sage is well-integrated and complements the lemony, earthy, and funky notes from the beer. The acidity is balanced and not overpowering, which works well with the Spróng has a clean and refreshing aftertaste that invites another sip.
You fancy, Tommie Sjef Spróng!
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
