A while ago we talked about combining Westmalle double and triple. Combining these beers is very tasty and is also known as the Trip Trap. We got a lot of response on that article, apparently there are loads of well-known beer blends that were send to us by other beerlovers. We would like to take a closer look at one of these reactions with you today and that is the “Sjoes”.
The recipe
The Sjoes recipe is very simple. Open a bottle of Oud Bruin (Old Brown), fill your glass for 25% with ‘Oud Bruin’, walk to the tap and then add 75% lager. There you go, the Sjoes is ready!
Oud Bruin?
You don’t see that on the menu very often and not all liquor stores will have it in-house. Oud Bruin belongs to the realm of disappeared beers that Roel Mulder writes about in his book ‘Vanished Beers of the Netherlands’. The sweet, brown beer is no longer popular.
Oud Bruin has its origins in Limburg, where Maastricht’s most successful breweries were located around 1850. Later, other large breweries also started making the sweetened lager. It is therefore not surprising that you can order a Sjoes in a good bar in Limburg, but probably not in the North.
This well-known blend is also sold by Limburger brewery Gulpener, in bottle form.
Do you want to visit an authentic café in the south of the Netherlands and feel like a sweet thirst quencher? Look no further than the Sjoes. You can even tell you grandchildren that you drank a Sjoes before it went extinct.
p.s. in Roosendaal you can go to café de Sjoes. The owner? You guessed it, his roots are in Limburg. Cheers!
