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BEERS #2 - Beyond the Pale

Started by Shoulders?-Stomach!, March 30, 2020, 03:56:03 PM

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Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on February 18, 2021, 02:23:18 PM
that Vinohradsky Pivovar is back at tremblingmadness think I'll get some to atone for my transgressions.

You won't regret it, lovely stuff.

Let's get to the exciting stuff and talk glasses.

Do you have one you use for everything regardless of style or are you committed enough to have a collection that enables you to pair each type of beer with the glass that best brings out and preserves it's qualities?

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I used a wheatbeer glass for wheatbeer. I'm not that precious but I happen to own one so it gets used.

(Top tip: Don't use wheatbeer in a lager glass with those autofizz things on the base, the head will go everywhere)

Belgian beers feel appropriate drank from a glass goblet or chalice. I've got a Chimay, Rochefort and St Feuillien one. Again, all gifted rather than ones I bought. May as well use them

I believe most standard IPAs recommend a tulip glass. Not a fan of the beakers and angular wine glass style ones they've tried to introduce. I especially didn't take to drinking beer out of a beaker.

The one I could do with getting is a glass mug with a handle for German and Czech lagers.



I would also like a 500ml stone mug/steinkrug but despite dropping hints haven't been gifted that, yet. I have a litre one that gets more use as a temporary vase than a drinking vessel.

Kwak highwayman glass with the standard? Impractical. Fairly harmless but a bit shit for cunts.

Chedney Honks

Got a steinkrug for Keller and that kind of shit.

Also got a few wheatbeer glasses for all the Weisse I force through my system.

Belge, got a range of goblets and shit.

Got a few cunty German pint glasses with gold rim for Pils and Helles and Marzen.

Absolutely love it. My wife has thousands of mugs so I feel I have to fight back.

Glencairn for whisky.

JaDanketies

I used to be really invested in making sure I used a glass with a nucleation site at the bottom to make it abap (as bubbly as possible). I need to get back into it, that was annoying

Shoulders?-Stomach!

It's annoying to discover later down the line that the English obsession with getting money's worth has transmuted into a widespread aversion to having head on a beer full stop. I thought it was just my Dad being a bit weird when he'd order a 'soixante quatre, sans mousse' on holiday*, but it's across the country.

Lack of head and oxidisation is drastically bad news for lager. Compared to Czechia where they count three fingers of foam as being correct and you have to dive into the glass nose first on the first couple of gulps. You still get a half litre, the line is just two inches below the rim rather than being the rim itself.

A portion of people still can't comprehend the notion of oversized glasses and ask for their beer to be 'filled up' when it's already been.

But yeah, head protects the beer, so the best way, never mind those autofizz glasses, is to practise with the pouring.



*we always went to Wales...
Spoiler alert
This is a joke
[close]
[/sub]

JaDanketies

No way do you get the same volume of liquid in countries like Holland and Belgium as you do in the UK. The Czechs aren't anywhere near as bad.

Chedney Honks

Give me une demi pression now of anything and I will be instantly happy. Love boggo draught piss abroad in a little tulip or even tumbler.

Ferris

Quote from: thelittlemango on February 18, 2021, 05:57:37 PM
Let's get to the exciting stuff and talk glasses.

Do you have one you use for everything regardless of style or are you committed enough to have a collection that enables you to pair each type of beer with the glass that best brings out and preserves it's qualities?

This is Big Boy shit.


Ferris

It looks massive in these photos, fuckers only 400ml or so



Like Shoulders I've a litre stein (gifted from the chap at hofbraühaus in Munich) which also only sees service as a  vase. It's the fate of them outside of beerhalls I reckon.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Can recommend Unity Dark Lager as one of the best German style beers (in this case a Munich Dunkel), that the UK has ever produced. Absolutely convincing and in a blind test at no point would I have said it wasn't German. Partly brewed with English ingredients which makes it extra impressive. The level of finesse to get it to be completely convincing while also interesting and distinctive in its own right and not just a clone.

Their unfiltered pale lager isn't as good, but it comes close to an OK helles beer.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Weltenburger Asam Bock


Brilliant beer

TrenterPercenter

I tried the Pivovar and 24 hrs later I'm being carted off to an emergency dentist with a silent but serious infection in my jaw.  For those interested; a previous root canal of a molar so no nerve endings to pick up the massive infections under the root tips....well until it started pushing on all the other nerves as it had nowhere to go.  So indescribable pain, leg spasms and the loss of feeling in both my bottom lip and right side of my chin, an emergency extraction was performed where they had to give me a total of 12 local injections as the swelling was so bad.  Then they ripped out the roots.  Bliss.

Currently nursing a giant face with a golf ball sized lump on my jaw where they cracked the roots out of it.  Looks like I'm going to be left with some nerve damage which they said should hopefully return to normal in the next 6 months.


The beer was great though; really liked the 12 will definitely try and get some more.


I'm wondering whether this was punishment from the beer gods for buying the Doom Bar.  I'm going to order some Bathams is this ok? Or should I get some better life insurance sorted?

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Batham's was and perhaps still is really good. Rarely available my part of the world but meant to be one of the original real ale classics. Can't say what the bottled version is like as a point of reference as bottled bitter is so different to hand pulled. Some really work, some are shells of their true selves.

Really glad you liked the Vinohradsky. One of the few venues I haven't yet been to in Prague is their brewery tap as it is so in demand. They run a fine line between classic, retro and modern, branding wise. I have a lot of time for them.


TrenterPercenter

Yeah Bathams is brewed in my neck of the woods and it is still ridiculously hard to get your hands on unless you go to the pubs over by the brewery.


I have feeling it isn't as great in bottles but I'm going in anyway.


Ferris

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on February 26, 2021, 01:33:34 PM
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/anger-stella-brewers-cut-alcohol-23531732

Anger at 0.2% change

Tremendous article. Genuine quote from a punter:

Quote"A once great beer of the geezers. Now watered down to 4.6 per cent."

Cuellar

First MISTER Potato Head and now this

Ferris

To be fair, they'd have to be cicerones to determine a reduction of *back of envelope calculation* 6oz of base malt in the grain bill per 40 pints (let alone find it so obvious as to be offputting), so we should take the opinions of these people seriously.

Though it'll be brewed with LME and hop extracts, so colour me even more impressed that they can tell the difference. Kudos!

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I do wonder if people who are so used to the same beer may be more finely tuned to any changes. I have drunk Pilsner Urquell and Landlord so frequently that slight changes to the poor or condition become noticeable.

There's an obsession in Madrid with the quality of the tapping of Mahou in different bars, presumably because there is so little interesting to say about it that the only real difference in enjoyment is down to those fine margins.

But in the UK Carling got away with brewing beer that was 1.5-2% below what it was advertising without anyone noticing. Or being arsed. Gotta chug through those tinnies.

Ferris

Yeah I could definitely believe that, I've had noticeably better (or post covid, worse) batches of Toronto beers but only because I knew them quite well[nb]Amsterdam Brewery have real form for this - on a good day, their beer is excellent, but sometimes it is notably mediocre[/nb]. But I've gone off and had a google and found certain raw ingredients have spiked in price or the batch date on the bottom of the can is older so I'm hardly Poirot - I wouldn't have a clue in Nova Scotia because I've not been boozing here long enough.

I doubt I'd notice a change in Stella, particularly with the insipid and inoffensive base malt they use (vs your examples where I expect the grain bill would be more lively) but side by side new Stella old Stella right away one after the other? I still doubt I'd notice (without the Mirror telling me it was different) but who knows.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

After the free 4 pack arrived from Brewdog there was a 20% off so I got a load of Zwickl Helles from Brewdog Berlin and Rustic Lager from their Overworks branch.

Both are ok, the Zwickl is pretty legit, but leans a bit too hard on bitter and citric. Still a solid 7/10.

The Rustic Lager isn't really like Franconian beer or indeed most lager people will be familiar with.

It's thick, light brown, slightly woody but with a kind of gummy aftertaste.

Thornbridge Heartland is kind of similar, perhaps a bit piney too. These really are unlike other lagers.

It worked out at 52 quid for 32 330ml beers and free delivery, which is ok.

phes

Odd that Lost Lager seems to have quietly changed the actual beer and kept the name. It was a half decent hoppy pilsner about a year ago. The Lost Lager I was sent is an acceptable but generic Lager beer.   

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Yep, it's not great is it?

I think this new Lost Lager still has American hops and tastes fresh, which saves it, but the more bitter profile is both a help and a hindrance. It's crisp and there is some faint dying twinkle of flavour straining to escape its stifling mediocrity, but the IBU and absence of malt base ends up giving it a slightly harsh metallic quality which you usually associate with stack-em-high sell-em-cheap German macro lagers. It's like someone has deliberately closely engineered a lager they thought could get as close as possible to being crap without actually being crap.

I think I'd actually rather have a Krombacher as far as mass produced macro-brewed lagers go. At least there's that recognisable German flavour without the Becks horridness. Lost Lager is aptly named. It isn't really clear what it's trying to be.

TrenterPercenter

I like beer.


Every Thursday I go for a long walk with a friend of mine that has gone a bit loopy since going through a divorce; we've created what we term the mobile pub; so we walk several miles to a quite cool off-licence we know that has craft on draft, buy a couple of cartoons of whatever the've got on and make our way through the park and up into the next district to another offy (less fancy) and grab a can of something for the last leg (it's about 7 miles in all).

Anyway; last night they had this stuff from a Brewery called Verdant; it was very nice. anyone got any feelings about them?

https://verdantbrewing.co/

Very pricey online.

phes

#1255
Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on March 05, 2021, 06:08:13 PM
Yep, it's not great is it?

I think this new Lost Lager still has American hops and tastes fresh, which saves it, but the more bitter profile is both a help and a hindrance. It's crisp and there is some faint dying twinkle of flavour straining to escape its stifling mediocrity, but the IBU and absence of malt base ends up giving it a slightly harsh metallic quality which you usually associate with stack-em-high sell-em-cheap German macro lagers. It's like someone has deliberately closely engineered a lager they thought could get as close as possible to being crap without actually being crap.

I think I'd actually rather have a Krombacher as far as mass produced macro-brewed lagers go. At least there's that recognisable German flavour without the Becks horridness. Lost Lager is aptly named. It isn't really clear what it's trying to be.

Totally agree about it walking a line with the crap metallic lagers, although from memory the impression that I got was that the original pils had a drier, more bitter profile. Perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyway, it went down easily enough because as you say, it's just an inoffensive nothing beer.

Quote from: TrenterPercenter on March 05, 2021, 06:35:45 PM
I like beer.


Every Thursday I go for a long walk with a friend of mine that has gone a bit loopy since going through a divorce; we've created what we term the mobile pub; so we walk several miles to a quite cool off-licence we know that has craft on draft, buy a couple of cartoons of whatever the've got on and make our way through the park and up into the next district to another offy (less fancy) and grab a can of something for the last leg (it's about 7 miles in all).

Anyway; last night they had this stuff from a Brewery called Verdant; it was very nice. anyone got any feelings about them?

https://verdantbrewing.co/

Very pricey online.

Opinion on these probably depends on how much you favour the kind of beers they make. They're highly regarded and I think were at the forefront of the UK east coast/neipa invasion. I get why they're at the upper end of price scale as I've tried a lot of their beer and they are consistently very good at what they do. Whether it's a reasonable price to expect for a can of beer or not I couldn't say. Those types of beer use a huge amount of hops, don't they? As far as I understand they (low bitterness juice bombs) hop following the boil and in huge quantity. And that's apparently one reason the style is at the upper end of craft prices.
f you enjoy those then Deya are a safe bet also. I used to live nearby and had many excellent beers by them.   

I had quite a lot of west coast style beers delivered a few weeks ago from beer Republic EU. Hands-down my favourite was a beer that I first had in about 2012, called Hercules by Great Divide Brewery. it was exactly as remembered - the only difference being that then it came in a bottle and now it comes in a can. It's an IPA and at 10% it's veering close to a barley wine. An absolute malt bomb - deep amber, caramelly, biscuity, laced with a thick off-white head,  extremely bitter but balanced by the depth and sweetness of the malt. Not a citric or sharp ipa at all. All winter-warmer. It's not subtle, but it is distinctive and feels like a drink that has a place, unlike a lot of double ipas that are just pushing their lighter brothers further. This feels entirely like an intentional and fully realised 10% ale. Fucking fantastic it was. I'm so glad it's a core beer almost 15 years after it was first brewed. Only problem is there's only one place in Europe I can buy the bastard!

Chedney Honks

Verdant are excellent, pretty much the only IPA that I really enjoy. Had a number of theirs, really enjoyed Headband. Great stuff.

Jerzy Bondov

Yeah another vote for Headband here as well. Lovely

phes

Yep absolutely - really walking the line of where that style goes wrong for me. Must be in about the mid 5%, booze barely rearing its head and all the delicious flavours. Top stuff.
   

TrenterPercenter

Nice one I've often looked at the DEYA and wondered so I'd be inclined to give them a go.  There is a beer that one of the local brewers does which I would say is very similar to a the Verdant I had

https://atticbrewco.com/collections/beer/products/copy-of-opaque-state-vermont-ipa-5-3

Only cheaper really as its free local delivery.