Welcome to Dorst! Much has changed since I set up this website, but other things have not.
Hoi! My name is Erwin and I started this weblog shortly after I moved from Amsterdam to Oxford, UK in 2014. Dorst is my chronicle as a small beer brewer and you just stumbled upon its presence on the Internet.
So what is Dorst? Dorst is a Dutch word and has several meanings. This is what the most famous Dutch dictionary states:
dorst (de; m)
- behoefte aan drinken (The need to drink)
- hevig verlangen (intense longing)
It is a reference to the roots and the purpose of this page; making beer and sometimes write about it.
My origins as a brewer go back to Amsterdam, 2014. After an evening of drinking beer at cafe Gollem with a friend, we got the idea to also start brewing. Horribly unprepared we made our first few steps into the wonderful world of beer brewing. My beer snobbery far exceeded my skill as a brewer so the first few batches were a bit rough. Luckily I have friends that were less discerning and I could brew a new and better batch. When I got the opportunity to move to Oxford my brewing took second plan for a while.
After I got settled in Oxford I caught the brewing virus again! I bought a Speidel Braumeister, drove over some equipment from the Netherlands, and got some swanky stainless steel fermenter tanks. I joined the local home brew club, Oxford Brewers Group, and was back in brewing business. Looking back this was the time that I made the most mistakes and thus improved my brewing skills the most.
2017 was an interesting year. Early that year I started our contract brewing project Dorst in Sofia, Bulgaria with my good friend Dean. A few months later I moved back to Amsterdam. In this period the page took a bit of break as well, but I promise I’ll try to update a bit more often 😉