ROMANIA: A new craft beer, produced locally by former Carrefour executive | Progresiv
A year and a half after his departure from Carrefour Romania, Arnaud Dussaix launched a business from scratch with two friends: a micro-brewery in Bucharest, where Sikaru craft beer is brewed in four varieties - Wit (white), Stout (black), Golden ale (blonde) and IPA (red). 
Sikaru is a live real ale beer, unpasteurized and unfiltered, naturally carbonated and matured in bottles. The manufacturing process is traditional, the beer being produced in small quantities after their own recipes developed over time by trials and tastings.
The micro-brewery, called Ninkasi, is located in the west of Bucharest and currently has a bottling capacity of 750 hectoliters (75,000 liters).
“Sikaru is a natural product containing yeast for secondary fermentation in the bottle that gives the beer more complex flavors and tastes as well as a pleasant natural effervescence. We use raw materials of the highest quality, we ensure that malt is not genetically modified, we don’t added sugar, preservatives, artificial ingredients or additives, we don’t replace barley with corn, rice or other adjuvants. We use 9 different types of malt and 7 types of hops”, said Arnaud Dussaix shareholder of Ninkasi.
Regarding the distribution of these new products, he said that all relevant sales channels for beer category are targeted, like specialty stores, hypermarkets and HoReCa.
All four beer varieties are fermented for 15 days in vats and then aged in bottles, then refermented and matured in bottles for another 21-35 days, depending on the type of beer. The products are semi-automatic bottled in bottles of 0.33 liters.
Arnaud Dussaix is the French who founded the procurement department of the local Carrefour chain in 2000, being one of the first employees of the retailer and the longest among top managers of the company. He left Carrefour Romania in September 2013, at that moment holding the position of Development Director of the hypermarket chain.
