More than 30 years ago, a few spirited beer drinkers in America had had enough of the "one-size-fits-all" lagers that all tasted the same and boring with minimal brewing ingredients. They wanted better beer, with more flavor.

So these craft brew pioneers north of San Francisco went back to the original way of making beer: with good ingredients and a lot of manual labor. Breweries such as Anchor Steam, Sierra Nevada, Anderson Valley Brewing and Nectar Ales became role models and inspired us too.

The SUDWERK brewery brewed its first batch on Valentine's Day 2011 in the Zurich Oberland. For a large brew of 2000 liters, mashing and boiling was done by hand (and without computer control) from the very beginning.

Sudwerk ... the Sud and the Handwerk!