Dzin’, a Russian word pronounced with a soft “N”, is the sound of clinking glasses and basically has a meaning of “Cheers” but with more depth and meaning to all those who were among the “enlightened” bunch who later became the founding core of the Dzin’ Club.

Since the birth of our group, every single “dzin’” has brought us closer and closer to the “enlightenment,” which at the end, took the form of a new “philosophical” concept.

Later on, this concept received its current name “Dzin’ Buddhism” (by the analogy with a Zen Buddhism) but with no actual connection to Buddha, we just liked how it sounded. The Dzin’ Buddhism has evolved into the name “Dzin’ Club,” which consists of three friends — Dmitry Grabak, Vladimir Gershanov and Stas Pruchansky — and those who helped us with our quest of finding different quality beer, and those who helped us later when we started brewing our own beer and supported us throughout the journey.

In one word, we can say that Dzin’ Buddhism is sort of our beer “religion”. The hierarchy of Dzin’ Buddhists in the Dzin’ Club is somewhat similar to a spiritual hierarchy in a religion of Buddha and other religions — there’s a Guru, a Prophet, a Patriarch, an Apostle, a Missioner and a whole bunch of other “enlightened” people represented.

Dzin’ Buddhizm has been a good kick start for a lot of ideas, lots of fun, beer discovery and, of course, beer drinking.

We started brewing beer in February 2005 — a few years after founding the Dzin’ Club. The idea of brewing our own beer was floating around for a while but it came to life when we got a newsletter from a new pub we had recently discovered in our quest for new beers — the Norma Jean in Tel Aviv, Israel. The newsletter introduced us to a new homebrewing course at the pub and we jumped at the idea. The rest, as they say, is history.

When we decided to start brewing our own beer, the “Dzin’ Buddhism” concept already existed, which was a problem when we were trying to think of a name that everyone would understand. Since Dzin’ is more understandable to the Russian population among us, we decided that Laughing Buddha was the best choice because it suited our concept, and the image of that funny, tubby Buddha comes to mind immediately. After much discussion, we unanimously agreed on it.

Later on, we also decided to use the tubby, laughing Buddha image as the main image for our beer label so that everyone can share in the fun.

Our eternal quest for new and special beers, tastes and flavors also transfers to the beers we brew. We like to make our beers with a twist or with some special herbs, fruits, and other ingredients that would sound strange for some of the common folk in Israel (and probably even in many other countries).

We have faithfully followed the “craziness” and boldness of the Belgian brewers and of some of the best American craft breweries like the Dogfish Head Brewing Company, Stone Brewing Company, and Samuel Adams. We’ve been compared to the Delirium brewery (in Belgium) due to our crazy ideas we implement into our beers (for example we once brewed a beer with a cactus fruit).

We are now looking into and planning to open a very small micro brewery (more of a nano brewery) to start, so that we can bring our product — Laughing Buddha Beer — to the Israeli beer-drinking folk that is interested in more than just a plain lager, but is also looking for a gourmet character in the beer.

We have come to understand that any dream can come to life if you want it hard enough and work on making that dream real.

So to our friends — Dzin’! And we hope we’ll all have a lot of good beer to drink and choose from.