The story behind our Honey Soy Sauce

Honey Soy Sauce, it's back. But not quite the same.

 Four years ago, we launched our first Honey Soy Sauce. A seasonal release, made with locally harvested honey. Piet is, as you might know, our brewer. But next to that, he is also a beekeeper. Together with his brother-in-law and sister he looks after two large bee hives. Quite a busy bee, you might say.  It made perfect sense to position the hives on and around one of the farms we work with.

The honey those bees produce is a direct reflection of that area, of what's blooming, what's growing nearby. Honey might be the most direct expression of local flavor you can find. Sounds a bit dramatic maybe, but that's what the Internet told us. So, it must be true.

That first edition was seasonal, limited, and gone before we knew it. Yet in the years that followed it became, by quite some distance, the product we were asked about the most. Emails, conversations, people visiting the brewery, asking the same question: will you ever make the Honey Soy again? Whether it was the balance of sweet and salty, the idea behind it, or maybe even the illustration on the label, we’re not entirely sure. What we do know is that it clearly caught the attention.

So yes, four years later. A new version. Honey is seasonal. You can't rush it, plan it and you definitely need a bit of luck. So, we can’t promise it will come back next year. So first this year’s version. We didn't want to simply repeat ourselves. This combined with the fact that we are very proud that we successfully are growing our own Madame Jeanette peppers (more info on that will follow soon). Now resulted in the Smoked Honey Spicy Soy Sauce.

The result is a soy sauce with a lot going on, but hopefully in a way that feels subtle. Sweet from honey. Heat from pepper. Depth from smoke. The Madame Jeanette peppers and sesame seeds used in this infusion didn’t go to waste either, they formed the base of our Smoked Honey Sambal, where those same flavors develop further into something bolder. All built on our signature soy sauce which, by herself, is the reason we still do what we do.

We've made this before, but this version is different. More of our own. More layers. We're curious what you think.

Enjoy!