A beer story

German Economics Minister Rainer Bruederle has arrived in Brazil at the beginning of a five-day trip to South America's largest country. His goal is to get a foot in the door for German business ahead of the 2014 Football World Cup and 2016 Olympics to be hosted by the emerging economic powerhouse.

But it is not only a mutual love of football that Bruederle will be using to bridge the divide between the two countries. Brazilians have also taken to heart, and stomach, the German art of brewing beer.

The setting is a modestly sized city called Blumenau, which most would assume lies somewhere near the Black Forest or perhaps along one of Germany's many rivers. However this city cannot be found in Germany, or anywhere on the European continent.

It lies in the south of Brazil and has become home to what it claims is the world's second-largest beer festival after Oktoberfest in Munich. The city was founded by Germans around 160 years ago and is now home to hundreds of thousands of their descendents.

The city hosts a collection of small breweries that have carried on the world-renowned tradition of German beer-making under the labels "Eisenbahn," "Schornstein," and simply "Das Bier."

Lasting legacy

Master brewer Claudio Jose Gonzales de Matos says Brazilians have taken up beer making and drinking with as much passion as the Germans who brought their special recipes to the country so long ago.

"We live here in a tropical country and year after year, beer consumption has continued to rise substantially. In particular, small breweries here in Brazil are growing very fast," he says.

"They have revived the traditional brewing techniques and distanced themselves from the more modern industrial-style methods. Today, there are many small breweries in Brazil producing beer of high quality."

Every year, Brazilians consume around 10 billion liters of beer - just one billion short of Germans - and the South American country now represents the fourth-largest beer market in the world.

Mass produced, mainstream beer labels still dominate in Brazil, but small breweries are staging a comeback, and have trebled their market share to six percent in recent years.

Solid foundation

Brewer Pedro Paulo Moretzohn, who spent many years perfecting his brewing techniques in Europe, believes that German beer-making methods are underpinning the fight back of micro-breweries in Brazil.

"These new enterprises sprang mainly from German culture in cities like Blumenau and others nearby," he says. "But also because people want beers with a variety of tastes. Here our beers are virtually without additives - nothing other than grain varieties such as malt, hops and wheat. That gives these beers a very special characteristic."

Behind the boom are more than 100 micro-breweries producing "cervejas artesanais," or hand-crafted beers, with varieties including yeast beers, dark beers and even Koelsch-style beers popular in the areas surrounding the western German city of Cologne.

Despite the quality beer offered by micro-breweries, a mass-produced, light, watery version of a pilsner still dominates the Brazilian market. But brewing instructor Ligia Marcondes believes the market for high-quality beer is continuously growing in the country of nearly 190 million, especially among the middle class.

"For example, today I can say that I love hoppy beers, whereas earlier, I might have thought those beers were too bitter," she says. "At the moment I like wheat beer, but of course, I'll still try new beers. I like full-bodied beers. Bitter beers, too. So you could say I have changed my consumption habits a little."

Raising the bar

So successful have some micro-breweries been that they've forced some larger Brazilian breweries to rethink their beer-making ethos, leading to an improvement in the quality of some mass-produced labels.

Brewing specialist Cilene Saorin says what is needed is a shift in paradigm by both beer makers and consumers.

"We need to work on our drinking culture and improve knowledge of beer culture," she says. "We have to explain that pilsner is not the only beer, but that there are over 100 different varieties and that different beers suit different occasions. This process of education will take time".

"We've already made a lot of progress over the last five years. Give us another five years and you'll see that the market will have evolved."

Author: Gottfried Stein/dfm

Editor: Rob Turner