Biodiversity, Samba, and Lederhosen — A Craft Beer Journey in Blumenau and Florianópolis, Brazil
When my girlfriend asks me if I want the last coxinha, I nod, smile, and carefully reach out my hand. She hands me a warm, teardrop-shaped Brazilian croquette and I take a bite. I turn up the volume to our Gal Costa playlist and settle into the drive.
We’re on the outskirts of Blumenau, about 25 miles inland from the Atlantic coast in southern Brazil. Our Google Maps application routes us through a maze of farmland, cattle pastures, and dense patches of Atlantic Forest—the humid coastal jungle that competes with the Amazon for biodiversity. We open the car window, turn off the music, and slow our speed. Calls of capuchin monkeys and parakeets ring out through the forest. Our slow pace along the glimmering Itajaí Açu River suddenly ends with a rush of passing motorbikes. We turn the music back on and pick up our pace.
At 5 p.m., the city of 360,000 appears in the distance, spreading out over the hills along the Itajaí Açu riverbank. Newly built high-rises dwarf a mixture of concrete apartments and two-story complexes with weathered Bavarian facades.
We park our car near a graffiti-covered river steamer. This same rusty boat and others like it once transported waves of German and Prussian immigrants to this area in the late 19th century. Those same people brought their love of brewing with them.
For two blocks along Rua Paraguai, we hear our own footsteps and nothing else. In the distance, faint voices and barroom clatter grow louder. The smell of fermenting wort and French fries lingers in the air. We take in a deep, thirsty breath and step into Omas Haus Brewpub.
Greeting us with a warm smile and handshake is owner Gustavo Kielwagen, who explains that the meaning behind his brewery’s poetic-sounding name is completely literal.
“This is my grandma’s house,” he says. German trinkets, steins, and old bottles cover the walls of the taproom. “It took us about one year, with one other guy, to fix this up and turn it into a brewery. My family were dentists, and this was their office. One day I said, ‘Mom, you need to retire. I want to open a brewery.’”
Kielwagen takes us inside through a maze of malt containers and fermentation tanks. Omas Haus is a small brewery, producing around 26 barrels per month.
I’m sweating profusely and so are the fermentation tanks. Kielwagen looks at me and laughs. “It’s hot here, man. The humidity is unbearable sometimes.” I ask what the typical winter is like. “It gets cold as hell. Because of the humidity, you really feel it.”
Omas Haus is a small but significant player here in the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, roughly 460 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro. When most of Blumenau’s breweries were making predictable beers in just a handful of styles, it started turning out terroir-driven beers. Most rely on local malts, namely from Malteria Blumenau and Maltes Catarinense. When possible, the team uses Brazilian hops and ambient yeasts isolated from the area’s citrus peels. As he explains the ingredients in his Brazilian Farmhouse Ale, Kielwagen starts to glow. “We make truly Brazilian beer with Brazilian malts, Brazilian hops, and Brazilian yeasts.”
My family were dentists, and this was their office. One day I said, ‘Mom, you need to retire. I want to open a brewery.
We follow Kielwagen to the taproom. The state of Santa Catarina is the birthplace of the Catharina Sour—tropical-fruit-infused, kettle-soured Wheat Ales—so I try a version made with dragon fruit. Next, Kielwagen pours us a Double Barrel Dark Sour Grand Cru that’s been aged in American and French Oak. Then he offers the team’s signature Brazilian Farmhouse Ale and another made from wild Brazilian yeast. I close my eyes and savor each sip. The beers blow me away with their complexity, flavor, and aroma. “It’s those wild Brazilian yeasts, man—good, right? If you’re interested in yeasts, you have to visit our friends at Levteck in Florianópolis. They’re the ones isolating the yeasts that we and a lot of other breweries use.”
I ask Kielwagen about the design on the Omas Haus label. A stenciled tree with a face—reminding me of the trippy carved buddha head encased in gnarled tree roots I saw a decade ago in Ayutthaya, Thailand. “That’s the tree out front, bro! It’s a jaboticaba.” The tree produces hundreds of dark purple edible berries every year and is the symbol of the brewery and the fruitful nature of his grandmother’s house. As the evening crowds pour in, Kielwagen’s attention shifts. “What are your plans tomorrow?” he says. “Come over. We’re going to grill the best steaks in the city.”
THE STILLNESS OF THE OFF-SEASON
We part ways with the team at Omas Haus and check in with our hosts, Martha Lanser Bloemer and Leonardo Tedesco, on the other side of town. The couple live near Vila Germânica, the German-themed commercial park that hosts the second largest Oktoberfest in the world.
“You have to come back during Oktoberfest,” says Lanser Bloemer. “My great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather also produced their own beer. We have their recipes and everything. Beer made our city famous.” In the hot, stuffy October sun, hundreds of thousands of people arrive for weeks of debauchery, lederhosen, and beer.
It’s hot here, man. The humidity is unbearable sometimes.
In early May, it’s a different vibe. The streets are empty, aside from locals walking dogs or chatting about neighborhood gossip outside their homes. “What I love about my city is that I can walk by myself even when I’m alone. I can come walking from my work at 10 p.m. and I feel safe,” she says.
Blumenau and greater Santa Catarina State are far from the stereotypical party-till-dawn atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro. As we sit outside and talk at 9 p.m., neighbors pass by and say hi. Once they pass, pure silence.
“People are really nice, plus the geography of the city is amazing. If you like hiking, there are a couple dozen places nearby; some of them are pretty hidden. Or, you can drive 40 minutes one way and get to the woods and mountains, and go 40 minutes the other way to get to beautiful beaches,” says Tedesco.
The rivers and steep terrain that make Blumenau’s geography special also make it deadly. Since its founding, it has been periodically devastated by floods. The most catastrophic events—in 1983, 1984, and 2008—isolated the city for weeks and caused billions of dollars in damages. It was after the 1984 flood that the first Oktoberfest was held by city officials to draw tourists to improve the city’s damaged economy.
After our hosts part with us for the evening, we sit outside on lawn chairs. The neighborhood remains quiet, aside from colorful birds playing in the tree canopy above us. Nature makes its presence known. This is Brazil, after all.
THE BIG GUYS AT CERVEJA BLUMENAU
On Saturday morning we wake up early, eat ripe maracuja, aka passion fruit, and get in the car. Google Maps takes us on another detour, through dirt roads and steep winding passes. We cross the historic Salto Bridge and drive to one of the city’s largest producers, Cerveja Blumenau, where we meet brewer Alexandre Mello.
With a warm greeting, Mello takes us inside. Memorabilia, including steins, awards, and posters from past brewery events, cover the walls. A poster of a capybara mascot hangs proudly above photos of the crew. Cerveja Blumenau is one of the largest craft breweries in Santa Catarina State, producing on average 1,300 to 1,700 BBLs per month, with a capacity for about 2,600.
Brewing craft beer is relatively new to Brazil. “Of course, people have been making beer for 200 or 300 years here, but the homebrewing part is only about 15 years old,” says Mello. Cerveja Blumenau is known for a dependable American Lager, its most popular beer, as well as traditional German styles like Märzens and Pilsners, and seasonal beers. Its labels are related to historical figures and events: Macuca, a Barrel-Aged Russian Imperial Stout, takes its name from the first train to arrive in the city in the early 20th century. It earned a gold medal at the International Beer Challenge in 2017.
Mello reveals that Cerveja Blumenau didn’t start out as the brewery it is today. It started in 2015 as a team of contract brewers who made beer for other companies. That same year, it sent samples of its Hop Lager and an American IPA to the Brussels Beer Challenge.
“We won a Gold Medal for the American IPA. This helped the start of our business, because we had a lot of free marketing because everybody was talking about that,” he says.
We have breweries in the north of Brazil that make beers with regional ingredients that are not known outside of that region. The Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, it’s very diverse.
Leading us through the large space, he gently pats a GEA centrifuge. At the filling line, I see crates of cans ready to be filled. “We also have the plastic bottles. This type of packaging saved a lot of breweries from closing during the pandemic,” he says. When Brazil’s bars and restaurants closed, craft breweries relied on plastic bottles to sell and distribute to clients. “They’re still popular even after the pandemic.”
I look over at plastic bottles stacked and ready to enter the flash pasteurizer. “We have to pasteurize our beers here in Brazil. It’s a tropical country, and the microflora is very rich,” he says. “Even if you take all the right steps, it’s very easy for unpasteurized beer to spoil here.”
He leads us from the large industrial fermentation tanks of the main brewery into a section of small tanks. “Here’s our fun place for brewers, our nanobrewery,” he says. At only 500 liters or 4.26 BBLs per batch, its Craft Lab brand is made to appeal to Brazil’s growing number of beer fanatics and the brewers themselves.
He explains the different yeasts and bacteria that go into Craft Lab’s small-batch styles. Some are variations of the Catharina Sour. That style started as a way to show the Brazilian consumer what Weiss beer could taste like, he notes, by adding fresh fruit for a local flair. “The people at the bars would order a Weiss beer that was sour and think it was bad and send it back,” he says. “So, we thought, let’s create a name that when people read or hear about it, they know what to expect.” Catharina Sour became the region’s signature style. “I personally like to make Catharina Sour with Brazilian fruits like pequi, açai, camu camu, araça, and other rare fruits you can’t find anywhere else in the world.”
We round the corner and step into a small room where we are surrounded by 65 French and American Oak barrels. Cerveja Blumenau’s barrel program focuses on Lambics, Flanders, Barrel Stouts, and blends. “After three months, we have to taste test everything,” he says. “It’s a hard job, but somebody has to do it.”
Mello grabs a glass and pours some beer for us to try. It’s 10:30 a.m., but I oblige. It’s a rich, barrel-aged Catharina Sour, refreshing and complex, which oddly reminds me of a racy Alsatian Riesling with a tannic, tropical-fruit twist.
I ask Mello what makes Brazilian beers stand out.
“We have breweries in the north of Brazil that make beers with regional ingredients that are not known outside of that region. The Amazon, the Atlantic Forest, it’s very diverse. Different fruits, woods, spices, you name it—even ants.” Herbs, like the mouth-numbing jambu, a favorite in cachaça infusions, provide craft brewers in the country with a new range of flavors to work with.
Mello thinks that the next style to carry the face of Brazil will probably be related to maturing beer in native Brazilian wood barrels. Guarana and other tropical and subtropical hardwoods already used in cachaça can add levels of complexity and flavors found nowhere else.
CHURRASCO AND BEER
It’s almost lunch time, so we say goodbye to Mello and head back to Omas Haus, where Kielwagen explains what he’s grilling.
“We’ve got Filé Duplo, it’s the best cut, a popular one here in Blumenau,” he says. To go with it, we order a Rye Lager and a Munich Helles. The beers come out first. Then, the smokey T-bone arrives, followed by the Brazilian essentials: farofa—a side dish of toasted cassava flour—as well as rice, beans, and hot sauce.
It takes us a while to work through the massive, flavorful meal, after which Kielwagen joins us. In his hand is a fresh hop flower grown on his grandma’s porch. Brazil’s tropical, semi-arid, and subtropical landscapes are far from the climates known for cultivating world-class hops. Yet, the country’s hop industry is growing fast thanks to Santa Catarina’s demanding craft beer industry and the state’s high-elevation hop farms. Cascade, Comet, Chinook, and Columbus varieties all thrive in the country’s cool highlands. The Brazilian Federation of Hop Producers, known as Aprolúpulo, estimates that the entire country produced just under 25 tons per year in 2022. That’s far less than, say, Washington State, which produced about 42 tons in 2021
Although the beer scene is dynamic and growing, things in Brazil aren’t exactly rosy for starting a craft brewery. First, taxes are high compared to other countries, and keeping up with the big guys who sell beer at cheaper prices remains a constant challenge. “There used to be a lot more local breweries here, but the big guys like Heineken and AmBev bought them. They buy everyone up here in Brazil, about 73% of the market,” Kielwagen says. As of 2019, Brazil had just over 1,000 breweries in operation, though that number has probably decreased slightly since the pandemic. As of 2021, the state of Santa Catarina is home to 239 breweries.
A TASTE OF BRAZIL’S LITTLE GERMANY
After lunch, we return to our neighborhood and walk off our food. The city’s neighborhoods and one-way streets rise along steep hills, making every block a leg-burner. A mixture of glass office buildings and Bauhaus condos mix with crumbling low German houses swallowed by the encroaching jungle. Volksmusik hits rotate with samba, funk, and bossa nova in stores and bars.
We pass the Colonial Family Museum, one of the oldest structures in the city. On this spot in 1846, a team of Europeans landed, inspired to leave the growing political and economic despair of 19th century Germany and Prussia. Led by the German pharmacist Dr. Hermann Bruno Otto Blumenau and his boatman Ângelo Dias, they made several journeys up the valley, later known as Vale do Itajaí. Attracted by the flora, fauna, tall trees, and screams of jacutingas—a South American bird now threatened by extinction—they continued up the river, until they found an easy bank to settle. After returning to Germany for two years, Dr. Blumenau assembled a group of 17 Germans who traveled here and built their colony in 1850. Unlike many other colonizers in Brazil at the time, the German colonizers prohibited slavery. Many of the new transplants died due to tropical diseases and the backbreaking work. Still, immigration continued.
The land was already settled by Indigenous Kaingang, Xokleng, Botocudo, and Guarani peoples. For years, they fought against the encroaching Europeans. Eventually, waves of immigrants from Germany, Poland, Italy, and Portugal settled in the valley. The newly formed local governments relied on hired militants, known as bugreiros, to terrorize the Indigenous peoples from the new colonies.
For decades, Dr. Blumenau considered the colony to be his personal property, until the Brazilian government ruled it unlawful for one citizen to hold that much control. As a trade-off, Dr. Blumenau was kept on as a head administrator. After he moved back to Germany in 1884, where he would spend the rest of his life, the city became an official municipality bearing his name.
After our long walk through the historic center of the city, we return to Vila Germânica. A server brings bottles of beer and a plate of sausages to a rowdy group of customers seated outside. There are gift shops selling steins and clothing embroidered with the flags of Germany and Brazil. Alpine decorations and German kitsch hang from traditional Fachwerk-style timber-framed houses. It’s over 80 degrees Fahrenheit. After walking several miles, we are hungry and thirsty.
We grab a table at Choperia Bier Vila, where we order a Frida Blond Ale by Cerveja Blumenau and a wonderfully refreshing Witbier from Cervejaria Alles Blau, along with a plate of currywurst. A musician in the courtyard plays samba and chart-toppers by Pearl Jam on his guitar. A young couple walks by in full lederhosen and dirndl. It’s easy to imagine this place during the height of Oktoberfest, when Blumenau turns into one of the biggest parties in Southern Brazil.
CHASING THE WILD YEASTS OF SANTA CATARINA
On Sunday, we pack up and drive to nearby Florianópolis, the island capital of the state of Santa Catarina, which is connected to the mainland by two bridges.
At 3 p.m. we arrive at Levteck, the producer of liquid yeast for Omas Haus, on the north side of the island, where we are met by owner Dr. Gabriela Muller. After chatting in her office, we put on a pair of shoe covers and bonnets, disinfect our hands, and enter the lab.
Her team rushes in and out, between lab stations and centrifuges. Levteck produces everything from standard Lager and Ale yeasts to blends of microorganisms for Flanders Red Ale. “We sell to about 400 breweries in all the country. We’re the only liquid yeast lab in Santa Catarina, and just one of two in all of Brazil that can sell liquid yeast,” Muller says.
Levteck competes with dry-yeast companies in Brazil, who largely control the market. Next to winning over brewers, its biggest challenge is to ship its products to end users within the liquid yeast’s 48-hour expiration window, across a country plagued by speed bumps, traffic, and natural barriers.
During a walkthrough, we meet her team, including Carlos Brigido, a former brewer at Cerveja Blumenau who isolated local yeasts for his university thesis. Dr. Muller grabs glasses and invites us to sample some beers, some of which are in label-less containers reminiscent of something from one of my high-school lab projects.
We open a Tripel, fermented with two Brazilian strains of Saccharomyces that were isolated from local lime trees. The beer is warm and fruity, with hints of spice and toasted bitterness; it quickly becomes one of my favorite South American beers. “This smells like Bubbaloo,” Muller says in Portuguese. The team’s faces light up at the idea of a famous Brazilian chewing gum as a tasting note.
Brigido explains that many of the yeasts came from fruit trees growing right in front of the lab, including the fast-acting lime yeast. “I picked the fruit and put it right on pure wort and watched it ferment,” he says. Those isolation experiments resulted in some 28 new strains.
We’re the only liquid yeast lab in Santa Catarina, and just one of two in all of Brazil that can sell liquid yeast.
I ask if they think there are more yeasts somewhere in the surrounding forest. The team pauses and agrees that no, most likely there’s nothing of use. “The lime yeasts were right next to a brewery and lab. If we find some yeasts in the forest and go back the next day, they’ll likely be gone.”
As I finish the last sip of the delicious Tripel, another sample pops open. “This one’s a Moscato wort fermented with Lactobacillus buchneri and Brazilian Brettanomyces,” says Dr. Muller. We savor the aroma and flavor. It’s unlike any beer I’ve ever tried: a fruit-forward nose brimming with tropical floral notes, a full body, and a finish that reminds me of homemade mochi straight from the steamer.
Then another is cracked open, a collaboration between Levteck, Donner Craft Brew, and Cervejaria Cozalinda called Coza Bella: a Saison base re-fermented in French Oak with Chardonnay wort and Brazilian Brettanomyces. A pleasant fruity aroma hits my nose and shifts to warm, sourdough toast in the mouth. Then my tastebuds are filled with bright acidity followed by a long-lasting, buttery finish. We end with a Christmas beer from Cozalinda, fermented with wild local microorganisms in sassafras wood.
After our tastings in the lab, we go to Ratones Craft Beer, a nearby brewpub that produces its beer using Levteck’s yeast. We grab a table and more friends of the Levteck team join us, including Ratones’ co-founder Vitor Capella.
At the table, I ask about the state of Santa Catarina, Brazilian craft beer, and Blumenau. “What is the difference between Florianópolis and Blumenau? Blumenau is very conservative,” says Muller. While Florianópolis breweries dive into their weird side, she says, most of Blumenau’s breweries stick to tradition in order to satisfy their consumers.
It seems that Brazil is entering a beer renaissance. The country’s brewers are competing internationally, and that competitive spirit and demand for excellence is spreading throughout the country. It has a mixture of traditional, old-world focused brewers and those who are hyper-focused on creating new styles from the local wild yeasts, hardwoods, fruits, and herbs that exist nowhere else on earth. Brazilians brew and drink what they want, allowing the old and the new to coincide and setting up the country to become an open frontier for good beer.
I raise my glass, offering a toast to Brazilian terroir.
The group lifts their glasses. “To Brazil!”
Words by Matthew Dursum
Photos by Samantha Demangate