Greetings. Welcome to our web-page. I hope that you have the opportunity to try our SZOT craft beers made in Santiago, Chile.

SZOT means "Scot" (i.e. someone from Scotland) in Polish. It's not an invention of our marketing department. It's my last name.

I am a native Californian, having originally arrived in Chile for a work assignment about 20-years ago. At that time Chileans were patriotically proud of their local beer "CRISTAL" (done in the industrial lager pilsen style), and they disparaged the US/American beers as "piss". The economy was relatively closed during that period, and most Chilean's patriotism wouldn't accept my argument that their industrial lager tasted pretty much the same as the American mass beers, or worse. About this time the microbrew revival began in the USA.

I eventually married a "chilena", Astrid Karin, who is now co-owner of the brewery, but then work took us out of Chile for an extended period of almost nine years.

While on yearly visits back to Chile, I expected to find that someone had finally introduced the traditional beers we love so much in the rest of the world. However, I was always disappointed to see only the same old industrial lagers produced locally (Cristal, Escudo, etc.), or, if you wanted something "really exotic", imports of other countries' industrial lagers...

During the period we lived out of Chile, the Chilean economy opened to the world. It is now one of the most open and dynamic in Latin America. Many Chileans began to live, study and work overseas. The insular nature of Chile began to change, plus a gourmet culture began to take hold. Upon their return to Chile, many of these Chileans, who had been exposed to great food and beverage diversity offshore, found the beer industry still dominated by one industrial brewery (CCU - now owned by a local family, Heineken, and ADR's in the NYSE). However, the Chileans had "seen the light", they had tasted Fullers, Sierra Nevada, Samuel Adams, etc. They joined the "expats" here in Chile in saying, "Chile, nice place to live, but the beer sucks!

CCU did not remain passive, they have also watched the microbrewery trend in the USA, thus in the last 5-years they have added two "craft" breweries to their line-up, with 51% controlling interest in Kuntsmann and 50% in Austral, plus distributing both brands. CCU has also been under attack from Inbev/Ambev (Cervecerias Chile), which in the last 10-years has reduced CCU market share from 99% to about 85%. Inbev, which has a huge worldwide brewing portfolio and many beers to choose from, has now introduced BRAHMA (Brazil) to compete with CRISTAL, and in 2007 added STELLA ARTOIS to go against HEINEKEN and PAULANER in the "premium" segment. In fact, since Szot entered the market, Kuntsmann has brought out a "Grand Torobayo" of 7.5% alc. and has just introduced an unfiltered bottle conditioned lager similar to ours!

Market practices of the large breweries in Chile were under review during 2008 by the Chilean Economic authorities. Although this is an "open" market (literally anyone can open a brewery, really, I did!), a large portion of the market has been excluded due to "exclusivity" contracts, specifically by CCU. (Note to US readers: Chile does not have a 3-tier distribution system. While distributors exist, we can also sell direct to consumers, restaurants, bars, liquor stores, etc.). We estimate that much of our relevant market can not resell our beer due to these contracts. So, we are essentially looking to open niche markets in a brewing duopoly. This seems similar to the USA in the 70's and 80's, but CCU has the advantage of seeing what happened in that market and has positioned itself accordingly beforehand.

As of August 2008, the economic authorities ruled that CCU's practices were not proper and that the exclusivity contracts were not valid, and that these must be rescinded. However, they also ruled that CCU could indeed do exclusive publicity or image contracts. In other words, while they may not exclude the sale of other beers from restaurants or clubs, etc., they can purchase, for a considerable sum, a renewable right to be the only beers that are allowed to show their brand name in each location. Of course there is no definition as to what constitutes "publicity" or "image", so in our humble opinion, nothing has changed.

That's the oversimplified background of the brewing industry in Chile. We are not alone in this initiative, there are more than 10 decent sized microbreweries in Chile, plus about 40 even smaller ones, all trying to make a go at this business. In fact, we are a charter member of the Chilean Microbrewery Association.

We started Phase 1 of our brewery in Dec. 2006 by replicating the most successful styles of U.S. West Coast microbrewed beers.

The Pale Ale, Amber Ale and Stout are all ales similar to what you will find in most US and European brewpubs and microbreweries. The Rubia al Vapor ("Steamed Blond") is sort-of done in the San Francisco-style.

We have found that many Chileans also enjoy the stronger flavored full-bodied beers once they try them. Like the other microbrewers, we're still playing with the recipes a bit - Chileans like their beers with a sweet touch, and at least at this point, most do not like the excessive hopping you now find in the US. One thing that is hard to change, though: Chileans have been subjected to extensive marketing that promotes drinking beer exceedingly cold (28 def F or -5 deg. C), since that makes the industrial lagers drinkable. Our artisan beer/ales does not need to be so cold, since the low temperatures tend to hide the flavors. Ambient temperature up to about 15°C (or lightly refrigerated 10-12°C) is fine.

Our beers have been well-received. One of the gourmet magazines Vinos&Más held a blind-tasting in late 2006, giving our Pale Ale the highest score of the tasting. Our Negra Stout was also highly ranked. Our Strong Ale (7.5% abv) has done extremely well. It is currently the only local strong ale / barley wine in the market. Our NEGRA STOUT was selected by LA CAV wine club as the highest ranked beer in Chile, with 90-points, placing higher even than the Belgian and English imports. Our beers have also been well-received by the www.ratebeer.com group.

Most of our beers are 5.5 - 6% alcohol by volume, a bit stronger than the average artisan beers in the Chilean market.

Our beers also undergo a second fermentation in the bottle or bottle conditioning. While this does leave a small layer of yeast sediment at the bottom of the bottle, the taste is far superior to the filtered and artificially-gased beers. Just don't shake up the bottles too much, and give them some time to decant once you get them home.

yeast sediment from bottle conditioning

We meet the requirements for the British REAL BEER (beers naturally fermented in their dispensing container). The ingredients are only water, hops, barley malt and yeast, so this also complies with the original German purity law. We don't filter nor pasteurize our beer. In fact, we don't even add Irish Moss (a sea-weed commonly used as a clarifier) after the boil.

Our Pale Ale emphasizes a moderate hop bitterness and a fruity aroma. It is in the bitterness that you notice the difference versus our Amber Ale. The Pale Ale is "drier" (less sweet) and perhaps more malt-forward. This beer has a blend of bittering and aroma hop varieties. The Szot Pale Ale arouses the appetite, accompanies almost everything, including spicy foods, appetizers and salads.

The Amber Ale has triple the amount of caramel malt compared to the Pale Ale, lending it a nice degree of residual sweetness that is great with barbecued foods and everything that has tomato (pizza!). However it still fits into the broad Pale Ale style classification

The Stout, also using an ale yeast, has a barley malt mix similar to the Amber Ale (with the same slight residual sweetness), but has about 10% toasted barley in the mash. This gives it a nice, dark black color, plus burnt coffee-like taste and aromas. It is very good alone or with most foods. This is a slightly sweet beer (due to it's Amber Ale parentage),but done in the dry Stout-style, if such a thing can exist... The dark roasted barley provides an agreeable contrast to Seafood and spicy sauces, yet harmonizes with grilled meats and chocolate!

There is nothing currently in the Chilean market similar to our Rubia Al Vapor, a flavorful lager brewed with a unique blend of hops, then matured in-tank at cold temperatures before bottle conditioning. This has an interesting bitterness, that can accompany most seafood, grilled meats, strong cheeses and salads. This is great alone or with foods, with a nice long hop aftertaste that lingers on the tongue.

We are ramping up the production of our 7.5% alc. Strong Ale. This is now currently available through our resellers or direct from the brewery in 330 ml bottles. Compared to our other brews, the Strong Ale has higher alcohol level, 2-3 times the hops, 3 times the fermentation period, etc. We have also recently introduced an Imperial Stout which uses non-traditional Saaz hops, and for the Spring 2008 we are rolling out our version of the Pilsner.

In Phase 2 of this brewing project we look to create our own unique beers based on Chilean ingredients. We already have some ideas which we rolled out in early 2008 (our Imperial Stout with uses "chancaca" sugar), and we hope to play more with this in the future.

For now we are concentrating on taking advantage of our new national distribution agreement with Concha y Toro (Comercial Peumo). Our beers are available in restaurants, pubs and supermarkets nationally, including Jumbo, Líder, Tottus, San Francisco, Santa Isabel, and some of the regional markets as well (Costasol and La Mejor Solucion).

Please feel free to contact us. We can make arrangements to show the brewery for groups or beer fanatics.