Enzo and his team are brewing some of Europes best IPA’s in Bavaria, Germany.
In the winter of 2016, the two Augsburgers, Enzo Frauenschuh and Matthias Gruber, founded FrauGruber Brewing (FRAUenschuh + GRUBER = FrauGruber) and brewed their first beers as Gipsy Brauer’s (Contract brewers) in the spring of 2017 in the Old Factory in Gundelfingen, Germany. Over the next three years FrauGruber managed to start exporting their beers to over 20 countries around the world.
During this time as craft beer wholesalers and beer distributors we kept our beady eye on how they were progressing. We were looking for German breweries with modernity and vision.
However it quickly became clear that all the ideas, experiments and further developments would be very difficult to implement, without having their own brewery and the creative brewing freedom that comes with it.
In order to grow quantitatively and conceptually, FrauGruber had to grow.
They managed to realise their dream of owning their own brewery in January 2020. This helped them achieve their goal of creating a kind of “way of life” and building a community with which they can share the enthusiasm and passion for beer. We’re proud to be importing a range of craft from the guys – from the best in class ‘Helles’ that really lets the Seffi malt shine through, to experimentations in darker more adjunct led beers like ‘Shakerato’ an Imperial Stout with Madagascar bourbon vanilla, Vietnamese Robusta coffee beans, and Belgian chocolate. They’ve plenty of time for the pale family too with various iterations with experimental hops seeing them rate highly.
In their words:
‘It’s about testing and living with the incredible variety of beers, acting sustainably and it’s especially about giving beer a higher value.It is important for us to have the greatest possible influence on technology and the raw materials used.
Regionality is a big issue for us, which is why we have our own brewing barley of the Steffi and Marthe varieties grown by 4 friendly farmers and then malted by a nearby malt house. While in 2019 there were still approx. 11ha (approx. 60 tons) of cultivation area, we were able to increase this to approx. 40ha (approx. 220 tons) in 2020. In this way, we ensure that we do not have to work with new high-performance varieties that are only bred for yield and resistance, but rather the things that are important to us, such as full-bodiedness, fermentation behaviour, technological processing, etc.
We also grow the 13 yeast strains used in production ourselves in order to be able to control both the quality of the yeast and the quantity of yeast cells ourselves.
All this effort is essential for us to make FrauGruber beers, simply FRAUGRUBERLICIOUS…..’
