After visiting beer festivals in the Netherlands and Belgium we got introduced to beers and styles we never even heard about before. Sure we had our share of beers, but hey what did we know back then. We had a favorite beer and drank them with every occasion like BBQ's, family reunion's and or birthday party's. But it was unlikely to have a true craft beer in the house. So that changed when we went to our first festival Borefts in 2016. This is the biggest international beer festival in Bodegraven, the Netherlands where more then 20 brewers from all over the world gathered to share true craft beers. Each brewery had their spot on the grounds, and shared their liquid gold with the more then 6000 people over a 2 day period. In total there were more then 120 different beers to choose from. Actually at that periode we started to like the more heavy beers like porters, stouts, quads, barley wine's and barrel aged beers starting around 10% abv. Yes i agree we stayed with these styles a long time before actually starting to try our first sour or wild ales. The first sour beer we tried was a very high rated one from Cascade Brewing, called the Manhattan NW. At this moment it is still rated at 4,20 on untapped with 12k check in's. I remember we took 2 sips and actually threw the rest away. At this moment i can actually say we never throw any beer away anymore. As beer enthousiasts we consider it a lack of respect to the brewers who try to make beers. Sure some are better then others, but then again we don't know the behind the scene's situation of those brewers.

Still after many beer festival's and other beer events we thought it would be a good idea to actually try something ourself. So we took a icebock challenge and took 3 bottle's of Dutch Kanon beers from Grolch brewers at 11,6 % abv and froze them, doing the icebock challenge. It ended up with a smooth icebock at a good 14,6 % abv with the characterisic of the Kanon but with a very high sweet and boozy taste. 

After that, we started to just take any beer, deconstruct them, change them in every way possible, add flavours and just abv the hell out of them. That resulted in our first beers under our Fratelli D'Italia logo, summing up to a total of 20 beers under this brand.

 

This still was not enough, so we ordered a brewing machine from the US to go full monty and do everything ourselves. Due to the Corona outbreak, we don't actually know when to expect the brewing machine, so in stead of not doing anything at all we decided to get a new name, design a new logo and invest in our new brewery, Colossal Cat Brewing.

 

We hope to give you great beers in the forecoming future.

The Colossal Cat Brewing Team.