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OUR STORY
à santé‘s story begins with a father-son dream of owning and operating a craft brewery, determined to create great beers in their hometown of Adana.
Cem (the father) is a US-trained industrial engineer whose love of beer began in the 70s in upstate NY. In the middle of the pandemic, he felt the urge to come out of retirement and do something productive.
Mehmet (the son) has always loved beer and was interested in brewing beers at home. Having spent many years in Boston, he was influenced by Samuel Adams, but his beers did not taste like theirs.
In 2020, they decided to join forces and build their dream brewery.
However, between them they had no real experience in sales & marketing, brewing, operations, production & quality, budgeting, etc, etc. So they needed help.
Along the way, Cem Güney, arguably one of the best brewmasters in Türkiye, was persuaded and recruited to join the team. In addition to his brewing skills and knowledge, he also turned out to be a great mechanic and electrician, which was an asset to the team.
In addition, Ömer (son-in-law), a highly opinionated ex-management consultant who loves to give advice, joined to give advice.
In summary, everyone brings their own unique skills to the table in one way or another. And they are all passionate about achieving a singular vision: to create the most loved craft beer brand in Türkiye.
GALLERY
OUR VISION
Craft beers around the world offer a wide variety of flavours and styles, and that’s why people love them. In the US, there are now nearly 10,000 microbreweries. In Europe, the number of microbreweries has tripled in less than 10 years.
The Turkish beer market is flooded with standard commercial beers (almost all pilsner style) that are pale and boring. On the other hand, the Turkish craft beer market is virtually non-existent, despite a growing demand for alternative beer styles.
As “à santé“, we want to offer Turkish beer lovers a special and exciting drinking experience that is different from drinking standard commercial beers. We want our brand to be associated with quality, great taste and excellent craftsmanship.
We chose “à santé” as the name of our brewery. It loosely means “to health” or “cheers” in French. Everyone loves a cold beer to quench their thirst. BUT what we really want is for people to drink and enjoy our beers together, happily and slowly. Just like the bears on our bottle.
Our first goal is not to “rediscover America”, as we say in Türkiye. There are so many well-known beer styles in the world that Turkish beer drinkers don’t have access to today. Initially, we want to expand our beer portfolio with well-known gems such as brown ales, hazy pale ales and saisons. (However, all our recipes are proprietary and our own). Later on we plan to experiment with crazier recipes.
PRODUCTİON & BREWERY
Our brewery is in Adana. Beer is more than 90% water and Adana (Çatalan water) has great water quality, which is the basis for making great beers.
After the beer is brewed, it has to ferment for a few weeks. Currently we have started with five fermentation tanks and we plan to add more to increase our capacity and variety over time.
For bottling, we have invested in a top-of-the-range Meheen bottling line, which is preferred by craft brewers around the world.
Our brewery also houses our beer lab, where we are constantly trying out new beers and fine-tuning our recipes. Our lab is where we spend most of our time during office hours.
Our beers are currently packaged in a sophisticated 330ml bottle. We have chosen a cool looking lightweight bottle that is environmentally friendly. Our bottles weigh just 150 grams, whereas most beers on the market come in much heavier bottles.
We source our malts directly from great European maltsters like Viking, Sekado and Castle. Our hops are sourced from Yakima Valley Hops. We strive to learn the characteristics of our ingredients and try to incorporate them into our beer recipes.