A brewing revolution has started in Baranya in recent years to offer consumers a quality alternative to large-scale “beers”. In our series, we present brewers from Baranya who work with traditional ingredients. The Pécsi Brewery is the first of the big ones to banish substitutes and reduce its production by a fifth in the name of quality.
Delirium Tremens – this is the pub in Brussels where at least one beer from every country in the world is available, and they have become Guinness World Records holders. In a barely noticeable corner of an alleyway opening from a small street, the pub is marked only by a pink elephant sign, opposite the famous statue of the peeing girl (Jeanneke Pis).
The pub is proud that we can choose from over two thousand beers, and the people of Pécs are proud that Pécsi Szalon is the only Hungarian beer on the menu. Even the new management of the Pécsi Brewery was surprised by this, because they first heard about it from us. The pub itself selected Szalon from the Hungarian beer selection at the time in the mid-2000s.
The Salon has only gotten better since then, and all the unnecessary additives have been removed. The product range of Pécsi Sörfőzde has been completely renewed since the company came back under Hungarian ownership in 2017, which hired one of the most experienced brewing experts, Beátáta Vecseri. The brewery's Research and Development Director is responsible for the launch of Hungarian brewing training after the change of regime.
Beáta drank her first beer at the age of 18, at a May Day parade, in the scorching heat. It knocked her out so much that she vowed never to drink beer again. In contrast, she became enamored with brewing after she started teaching after graduating from the University of Veszprém.
– I had no experience as a chemist in the food industry when I entered the Bercsényi Miklós Food Industry Vocational High School in Budapest. There was a vacancy in the brewing training. My professional development was greatly helped by the fact that I went on a lot of internships with students, which is now Dreher, then the Kőbánya Brewery. This was the best school for me, I was able to learn a lot. Not long after, a decision was made that all food industry training courses must also establish higher education training. That's how I ended up at the University of Horticulture, where we founded the beer and spirits department in 1990. We have trained many brewing professionals in this field, who can hold their own in both large-scale and small-scale production and craft lines – he told Pécs Aktuál
Beáta Vecseri, who started from scratch, was given only a desk, and in almost 30 years, she built a European-standard brewmaster training department.
He also strengthened his brewing studies in Bavaria. He studied at the University of Munich brewery. This is Weihenstephaner in Freising, which is considered the oldest brewery in the world, having been founded in 1040. His greatest beer experience is connected to China, to the Beijing brewery, where they brew as much beer in one place using European technology as all the breweries in Hungary combined. A small-scale Tibetan brewery also left a deep impression on him, where barley beer is brewed in equipment heated with yak dung based on a recipe that is thousands of years old.
– In Bavaria, I learned a lot about brewing lagers, which became my favorite. I realized that globalized recipes only work where they were first brewed, so you can brew good beer at home if you adapt the recipes to local water and ingredients.
My favorite is wheat beer, but in the past, the answer was that whatever is available in abundance is cold and cheap.
Unfortunately, the average Hungarian beer consumer has not yet been freed from this perception, but I hope that if we also brew quality, we can influence public taste in a positive direction - added Beáta Vecseri, who retired two years ago, but started at the Pécs Brewery a day later.
– I received many offers, but this one was close to my heart, here my advice is taken, and we are on the same page with the owner.
“In addition, it is the only large Hungarian brewery that is entirely Hungarian-owned.”
Source: PÉCS ACTUAL
