Ask An Expert

Paweł Leszczyński, founder of the Warsaw Beer Festival

WI: How would you describe Grodziskie?

PL: It’s got a bready aroma with hints of apple and pear – it’s a bit smoky as well, like Polish Christmas kompot. There’s also herby, spiced elements. It’s crispy, highly-carbonated and refreshing.

It went extinct, right?

Yes! A big corpo brewery closed the Grodziskie brewery in the 90s and disposed of the yeast.

How did it make its comeback?

A few people, including Andrzej Sadownik and Jan and Wojciech

Szala, recovered the process and the yeast – it’s revival became a common project shared by members of the Polish Homebrewers Association.

Why do you love it?

It’s really refreshing in the summer – you can drink it fast with no negative consequences.

Not everyone shares your enthusiasm for this very ‘specific’ beer – why should we try it?

Everyone needs to be open to new tastes and experiences – but loving smoked food definitely helps. Mostly though, everyone needs to try it at least once just to see how diverse and complex the world of beer really is.

Tell us something we don’t know…

TRY ME!

More and more breweries are experimenting with the Grodziskie style – search ontap.pl to see which Warsaw tap bars will be serving this sip.

It was called ‘beer champagne’ –not just because it was sparkling and refermented, but because in the Communist era the quality was often so bad that the bottles would explode – breweries would lose 4% of stock this way in their cellars!

Anything else?

If it’s not pasteurized, it gets better and better with time.