At the Daruvar Brewery, their new beer Desetka was presented yesterday, which has a lower percentage of alcohol and extract.
After emerging from bankruptcy three years ago under new ownership, Daruvar Brewery is slowly recovering. After production fell to just 11 thousand hectoliters, this year, director Tomislav Horvat expects around 80 thousand hectoliters of beer to be produced. The factory employs 44 people, and during the season, additional freelance collaborators are hired.
– Our goal is to restore the brewery to be the leading one within a 70-kilometer radius around Daruvar, and I believe we can achieve that. We want to be recognized as a leader in our region so that we can compete nationally. We are now focused not only on the region but also on Zagreb, as well as Split and Rijeka and their surroundings through our distributors – said Horvat.
Currently, there are four beers in the Staročeško offer – lager, red, radler, and Desetka, and during winter, they are joined by the winter Staročeško. Although the trend in Europe is to favor draft beers, in Croatia, the opposite is true, with more beer being consumed from bottles. An initiative has emerged from Daruvar Brewery for the introduction of differentiated excise duties for beer producers.
– This is in line with the European Union directive that allows smaller brewers producing up to 200 thousand hectoliters of beer to have reduced excise duties, thus enabling them to operate more easily and simply. We advocate for this in Croatia, and similar models exist in Germany, the Czech Republic, and another 17 countries – said Horvat.
Journalists who visited had the opportunity to taste the beer and walked through the factory where the process of reaching the final product was explained.
