Berlin Food Week Highlights 2015

Crazy Bastard Sauce is a brand of small batch hot sauces that bring flavor to the boil. Created by Jonathan O Reilly, an Irishman who has made Berlin his home, the sauces are made with all natural ingredients and contain no sugar. Although some of the sauces are hot, hot, hot, they are not designed to deliver pain without any pleasure. The brand’s motto is taste comes first, and the sauces have a complex and unique blend of different flavors. The white, yellow, and green label sauces come in varying heat levels and with seasonal flavors like Pumpkin & Garlic. If you like a nice level of heat from your hot sauce but don’t want to compromise on flavor, then crack open a bottle of their Habenero & Tomatillo.

Marmelo Manufaktur Brandenburg is a one-woman slow food brand created by Katrin Wagner in Rheinsberg. The philosophy behind the brand is to create hand-made sweet and savory fruit spreads that are healthy yet focus on flavor. Instead of artificial colors, flavoring and preservatives, Katrin uses freshly squeezed citrus juice, organic quality cane sugar and 100% apple pectin as a gelling agent. Many of the fruits used come from abandoned orchards or forests around the district of Ostprignitz-Ruppin. Caramel spreads are a new product that have recently been added to the line. The salted caramel spread has such an intensely delicious flavor that just the smallest amount is sure to send any caramel lover straight to seventh heaven.

Try Foods makes is possible to hold a tasting within the comfort of your own home. They package five high quality samples in a white box complete with a booklet so you learn about the history and story behind the different samples, brands, and the product itself. Coffee, chocolate, olive oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper sets are all available to try. The company also now sells a TRY Berlin box with samples to help you get to know Berlin’s food scene. If you fall in love with one of the individual products in the set you can also order one in its non-sample size in their online shop.

Fräulein Brösels Schnaperwachen is a small schnapps and brandy label designed by the Austrian Stefanie Drobits who works together with distilleries in Austria and the Franconian region to create spirits with a lower alcohol content. A few sips will be enough to put a smile on your face, though fortunately the flavors aren’t overpowered by the liquor. Available in apricot, rowan berry, hazelnut and blackcurrant.

Well-known to health nuts, kombucha is a drink made by fermenting sweetened black or green tea with a ‘symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast’ (SCOBY), which looks like a large, slimy pancake half-submerged in brown liquid. Although this might not sound particularly appetizing, the drink tastes much better than it looks. It has a fizzy, fermented flavor with an after taste of tea which adds some buoyancy into being-good-for-you. The ladies at the Berlin Kombucha Society have taken the drink one step further by adding cold press juice to the brew in a variety of tasty flavors such as SeCheng & Lemongrass, Mango & Mint and Cherry & Chia.