berlin | A microbrewery in eastern Germany has found success with a niche product: officially certified kosher beer.
The first 30,000 bottles of Simcha pilsner — a name that means “joy” in Hebrew — have sold out since being put on the market at the end of April, said Wilfried Gotter, a spokesman for the new product.
Almost all German beer, which is brewed under the strict Bavarian purity laws with only water, hops, grain and yeast, is technically kosher. But Simcha goes one step further, having Berlin Orthodox Rabbi Yitshak Ehrenberg oversee the brewing and bottling process and give it official kosher certification.
The Christian organization Saxonian Friends of Israel and SCHALOM, a Jewish restaurant in Chemnitz, came up with the idea of producing a certified kosher beer and approached the brewer at the Brauerei Hartmannsdorf in Saxony for help.
Berlin kosher grocery store owner Ore Plaezl said that, with the advent of Simcha, he has stopped stocking imported Israeli beers Maccabee and Goldstar because they are too expensive