History

Sharing wort is nothing new. This has been done for a long time and some communities still do it, i.e. one brewery produces the wort and people from the community take their share home to ferment the beer. Sharing wort is also something homebrew clubs are likely to do.

Marcel Alber of bierversuche.ch and Sebastian Imhof of then BrauBar remembered this custom and decided to initiate it in Switzerland. The organizational lead was taken up by the two bierversuche.ch guys (i.e. Marcel and Christian Jauslin). The first Wortspiele took place on 28 August 2015 in the Biercafé Au Trappiste in Berne, Switzerland. As Au Trappiste has six taps, four more brewers were invited for a total of six.

This custom of sharing wort is at times referred to as “parti-gyle”. That name does not work in German, however, as gyle sounds like “geil”, which means horny. Therefore a new name was needed. And eventually „Wortspiele“ was chosen.

Since its humble beginnings, the event has grown and spread: Information on all the various editions can be found in the section past events.