BEERS #2 - Beyond the Pale

[thugler]

Picked up a few of these during the warm weather. I don't really like lager but I enjoyed them a lot. I am actually looking forward to the sunshine coming back and getting a case of these in. Actually has a tasty finish rather than the puke tier acrid anus dirt I normally associate with lager.

Got a big case of these from web-bier.de a little while ago.

Just a delicious, light drop. Perfect example of the style. Made another order and ended up trying a bunch of other helles lager and nothing touches it.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

It is a style defining beer, really. I have had a few better Helles style, Sonne Urtyp Hell, Andechser Vollbier are the ones that immediately spring to mind. Some Franconian ones you can't get over here so would be pointless recommending.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

Nothin beats a wife beater let's face it

[ImmaculateClump]

The lagerbier hell subgenre. The lad on that black label looks like he's giving a wink mid-scoop surrounded by all those lovely medals. Waifu for laifu!

[Sheffield Wednesday]

There's probably a 99.9% that there exists a bullet hell-themed IPA in a garish can covered the in pink dots.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Schubel Nordeck-Trunk (4.9% Kellerbier) - ****

Another several boxes of Franconian beers from Hier Gibts Bier arrived last night and this means more reviews! This kellerbier has a traditional colour for its style - golden, straw like hues and unfiltered. The first sip is quite zingy and familiar to any lager drinkers, but the flavour balance emerges when the carbonation settles down. It's pale, super-fresh (especially if you get your nose in there and take in the aroma) with an almost herb-like element in the aftertaste. On a hot day served in a steinkrug on the patio of some Franconian .com/glossary/#B]bierstube this would be manna from heaven.

The beer really shows the wide range that comes under the umbrella of 'kellerbier'. Much as casual English bitter drinkers would regard cask pale and cask best bitter as being part of the same thing, I guess. Some are brown and caramelly nutty, this is pale lightly zingy and herby with faint lime notes. There is a distinctive tang to unfiltered lager and this brewery has played with it with a dab of bitter citric hops to produce a beer that balances deftly on a tightrope between the two rather different flavours. The subtle evolution from first drop to last makes it a more interesting beer than first appears.

If you slapped the right looking label on this, called it a pale and supposed that it came from a fashionable enough brewery, people would rave about it (thinking about the good on its day but nowt special Taras Boulba from Brasserie De La Senne which annoyingly is many craft fans favourite Belgian beer - seriously).

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Brauerei Gradl - Leupser Dunkel (4.9% Munich Dunkel) - *** and a half

Leups, a hamlet south east of Pegnitz is about the heart of the heart of the heart of German brewing, in what's sometimes called 'Frankish Switzerland'. I picked up their Dunkel, though looking at Untappd and Google maps, they appear to have a great reputation in general.

As you can see from the picture the colour is more dark brown with a few reddish ruby tints. Munich Dunkel can be nearly black and the style is often mild and smooth. The warm chocolatey aroma here suggests so too, but nein - flavours are the other end of the spectrum. It's tastes roasted, but the coffee flavours you think ought to be there aren't. Nuts, wholemeal bread perhaps. There's a stiff malt backing and dry bitterness.  This is a beer you'd want on a dreak autumnal evening in a cosy pub. The flavour lingers on your tongue a while before it slides away. In some respects it is similar to English bitter yet in just as many other ways not. For 4.9% you get powerful and reasonably complex flavour for your buck here.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Weiherer Bio Zwickerla Dunkel (5.4% Dunkel Zwickl??) - *****

A new one on me. A zwickl (ie. kellerbier) with Dunkel characteristics sounds fantastic and this is.

If anyone has tried Rochefort 6 this has the same reddish brown look to it. More red and more brown than the above picture. The flavour is of course a tad milder than a 7% trappist ale, but you can pick up similar notes. It's cloudy and thick, the foam remains in place which is quite impressive for a bottled lager.

There is a mild refreshing hop hit, while the aftertaste delivers all those beautiful kellerbier flavours, herbal, earthy yet fresh and light. But the additional malt and extra 0.5% strength gives this something extra. There are almost red berry elements at work inside the rich wheaty unfilteredness, which is fucking mad. Small batch, farmhouse type brewing delivers on weirdness without needing any gimmicks.

I've done a poor job attempting to describe this, it's beyond my abilities to describe. It's absolutely wonderful. Up there with the Aufsesser Zwickl in the last batch. Despite the bottle format you could easily imagine beer this thick and fresh coming straight vom fass.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

https://www.ft.com/content/2f8dea6c-256d-11e9-b329-c7e6ceb5ffdf

Worth thinking about macro brewing in Africa and other developing regions while Black Lives Matters are at the forefront.

Large corporations exploiting easily corrupted and poorly regulated nations? Nah would they do such a thing? Apparently.

Where possible try and drink from independents. Heineken, SABMiller AbInBev etc may have a few subsidiaries that brew beers I like but these can largely be avoided.

And if that doesn't put you off, Trump himself has commercial interests in macros.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heineken_brands#Subsidiaries'_brands

[phes]

Schubel Nordeck-Trunk (4.9% Kellerbier) - ****

Another several boxes of Franconian beers from Hier Gibts Bier arrived last night and this means more reviews! This kellerbier has a traditional colour for its style - golden, straw like hues and unfiltered. The first sip is quite zingy and familiar to any lager drinkers, but the flavour balance emerges when the carbonation settles down. It's pale, super-fresh (especially if you get your nose in there and take in the aroma) with an almost herb-like element in the aftertaste. On a hot day served in a steinkrug on the patio of some Franconian .com/glossary/#B]bierstube this would be manna from heaven.

The beer really shows the wide range that comes under the umbrella of 'kellerbier'. Much as casual English bitter drinkers would regard cask pale and cask best bitter as being part of the same thing, I guess. Some are brown and caramelly nutty, this is pale lightly zingy and herby with faint lime notes. There is a distinctive tang to unfiltered lager and this brewery has played with it with a dab of bitter citric hops to produce a beer that balances deftly on a tightrope between the two rather different flavours. The subtle evolution from first drop to last makes it a more interesting beer than first appears.

If you slapped the right looking label on this, called it a pale and supposed that it came from a fashionable enough brewery, people would rave about it (thinking about the good on its day but nowt special Taras Boulba from Brasserie De La Senne which annoyingly is many craft fans favourite Belgian beer - seriously).

This looks delicious. I've been keeping an eye on this thread and have a lot of catching up to do on all this great stuff. New job stymieying time and energy to do the lot right now, so if you could recommend names of a few of the more summery beers you've had recently to get me started that would be great. Anything that drinks well enough at a cool temperature and isn't wasted on the quaffer. Is Hier Gibts Bier the place if I'm ordering a couple of boxes? Not too concerned by value.

I'll come back and read posts in full for my second order. How long do deliveries take at the moment?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Both shipments from Hier Gibt Bier arrived within a week of order. They used 2 different couriers each time, GLS and Hermes but both arrived in good condition.

Value averages out between £3.25-£3.40 a bottle which I have deemed in my own head to be reasonable. By comparison I was directed to a Dutch site and they were selling craft at mainly £6+ a bottle from an actual online bottleshop. The stuff was incomparable of course but it did make me feel better.

Several of the kellerbiers are brown lagers really so they have autumnal type flavours. I wouldn't rule out trying them, some are utterly fabulous like that Weiherer above. The lighter ones I have tried - in order of quality - were: the above, Aufsesser Zwickl, Kaiser Heinrich Urstoff, Goller Kellerbier, Krug Brau Urstoff, Hubner Vollbier. My latest batch has a wider range so I have dunkels, rauchs, bocks, wheat beer etc.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

(Paul) Puttner Zoigl (5.2%, Zoiglbier) *** and a half

Zoiglbier - in case you fell asleep at the back, Zoigl is not traditionally a commercial brew bottled and sold to the masses. It's a highly localised traditional way of brewing and enjoying beer. Zoigl refers to the cultural tradition rather than any rigidly defined style (though there are parameters obviously). In short, in small towns families use municipal breweries on a rotational basis. When the beer is ready they open their own houses to invite the village round for dinner and beers. They hang the zoigl star (identical to the star of David, as it happens). The antithesis of commercialism. Of course they are paid for this, though the beers are generally sold at a fraction of normal costs.

(One of the historical quirks is that even during the Nazi era the use of the star of David by brewing families is still visible on photographs around Franconia, some of which are the same areas which were deeply attracted by the arch-regressive ruritanial idyll presented by the Nazi party. They probably avoided inadvertent trouble simply by already being known across the town).

In recent years the remaining dozen or so Zoigl towns in the Oberpfalz region have become somewhat of a tourist destination which both ensures their survival and expands people's knowledge of the tradition. Some breweries have piggybacked on this by brewing zoigl, which in effect is them pretending to brew what they would brew if they were involved in stuff like that.

Puttner is a brewery in a village only a little westwards of Neustadt, one of the Zoiglburgs.

The beer: This Zoigl is copper coloured and fairly clear. The sort of colour you'd expect from an English bitter. They have gone for a kind of mid-range moreishness. This isn't a beer with a lot of complexity but it has a repeatedly nice flavour which is delivered over and over without getting boring.

There's a hint of sweetness, mild honey and toffee which is rendered bittersweet by a lovely crisp and persistent enough hoppy finish. The hops are a little aromatic so there are distinct kellerbier flavours in the aftertaste. And so it goes each time.

[phes]

Both shipments from Hier Gibt Bier arrived within a week of order. They used 2 different couriers each time, GLS and Hermes but both arrived in good condition.

Value averages out between £3.25-£3.40 a bottle which I have deemed in my own head to be reasonable. By comparison I was directed to a Dutch site and they were selling craft at mainly £6+ a bottle from an actual online bottleshop. The stuff was incomparable of course but it did make me feel better.

Several of the kellerbiers are brown lagers really so they have autumnal type flavours. I wouldn't rule out trying them, some are utterly fabulous like that Weiherer above. The lighter ones I have tried - in order of quality - were: the above, Aufsesser Zwickl, Kaiser Heinrich Urstoff, Goller Kellerbier, Krug Brau Urstoff, Hubner Vollbier. My latest batch has a wider range so I have dunkels, rauchs, bocks, wheat beer etc.

Cheers, ordered a dozen selection of:

Aufsesser Brauerei Aufsesser Zwickl
Brauerei Göller Göller - Kaiser Heinrich Urstoff
Brauerei Göller Göller Kellerbier
Schübel Bräu Schübel Nordeck-Trunk
Brauerei Hütten Hütten Zoigl
Brauerei Penning-Zeissler Hetzelsdorfer Vollbier
Krug Bräu Krug Ur-Stoff

Hoping it makes it by weekend after this! £3.50/bottle. Bargain.
   

[Jerzy Bondov]

Ordered my friend a box of beer for his birthday so I got a few for myself as well:

Andechs Vollbier Hell
Hacker Pschorr Anno 1417 Munich Keller Bier
Westmalle Dubbel

woooooo *insanely revolting belch*

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Buchenbacher Beck'n Bier - (4.6% Vollbier) *** and a half
Gasthof Herold brewery

Untappd has this down as a Munich Dunkel, though it has the same brown/ruby tint as some of the recent kellerbiers I've had. 4.6% is light for the style and so it will be interesting to see how flavour compensates for the slight lack of body.

Apparently Beck'n bier is 400 years old with malts roasted over a wood fire. The roasty malts are one of the first things you can pick up both in the aroma and in the mouth, along with bread and yeast. Pretzels!- Yes. If only I hadn't had lunch and bought a fuckoff salty pretzel to have with this beer. There's a pleasant ruby-ish sweetness which accompanies tingling bitter hops. There is a vague oaky dryness to the aftertaste and yes, it is more like a Munich Dunkel because there is a lack of herby/floral notes you get with a kellerbier. You can tell the brewer is striving to reach a balance of competing flavours and put the emphasis on drinkability - they succeed.

I'm not knowledgeable about brewing but there seem to be two distinct camps on brewing a beer with high drinkability - making a simpler balanced recipe with milder flavours or brewing a complex one so well all the flavours which could cause it to lean overly one way or another instead dance on a tightrope. The latter is where nice beer becomes really nice beer.

The beer has more than a hint of what you can expect from Czech polotmavy (semi-dark) lager (except for perhaps the wonderful vycepni pour from the keg). The lands in Franconia, Oberpfalz and Bohemia are where these amber lagers come alive (despite both formally recognised amber styles traditionally being assigned to Munich and Vienna).

It's very nice and I'd be really happy if I could mosey along to their Gasthof every week for a couple of these.

[Ferris]

Ordered my friend a box of beer for his birthday so I got a few for myself as well:

Andechs Vollbier Hell
Hacker Pschorr Anno 1417 Munich Keller Bier
Westmalle Dubbel

woooooo *insanely revolting belch*

Part of my (very relaxed) stag do involved an afternoon at Andechs playing cards on the terrace with friends. I'm very fond of the beer, and remember it being excellent.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

Love that Shouldsy is legless round the clock on these cellar beauties

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

https://www.goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2020/6/9/embracing-tradition-to-create-a-style-for-the-future-south-african-brewers-look-to-the-past

This article is interesting. 99.999% of us haven't tried every style of beer out there (even if we exclude subsubsubgenres). The assembled judges had no frame of reference to score this beer style.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

That's how I feel about Labatts 😢

[Ferris]

That's how I feel about Labatts 😢

Good god they don't export that stuff do they?

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Ellertaler Zwick'l (4.9% Kellerbier) - *** and a half
Privatbrauerei Reh, Lohndorf/Bamberg

I picked up a a few of these as it looked like the type of Kellerbier I was most familiar with before starting this all. To my genuine surprise most of the last batch were brown beers (which is fine but wasn't the point of the order). I had previously tried a beer by Reh while in Nuremberg (their Altfrankisch Dunkel) which was extraordinarily nice, so thought I had better give this one a go. It's pale, with an unfiltered haze and a very faint aroma of straw and citrus fruit.

The flavour continues in that vein with a agricultural element (think harvested fields etc) in the very background balanced by what is quite a bitter lime kind of aftertaste. I am sure phes probably would have bought this if I'd have reviewed it sooner.

Enjoyment of a beer is so much dependent on the setting. This one is designed for hot summer days with the sun's warmth on your face reclining in the biergartens. It would be my go to over something like a helles or pilsner because it offers all they do and yet more.

As an evening drink on a day which is getting bleaker by the hour it's perhaps not the appropriate choice for the setting (my fault as I just wanted to see what it was like) but it's good nevertheless. As it goes along you are pulled back in by the enjoyable balance between the unfiltered keller tang and the citric hops.

In an ideal world some important people on the craft circuit would pick this one up. I'm pretty sure the assertive bitter flavour would pick up some craft fans.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

(Click to enlarge)

Wurth Zoigl-Dunkel - (5.3% Zoiglbier) - ****
Privatbrauerei Wurth, Windischeschenbach

Well, it only took 33 years but I have finally tasted a legitimate zoiglbier from Windischeschenbach, the centre of Zoigl brewing in the known universe (as the picture above states 'aus der Hauptstadt des Zoiglbiers'). This is the beer I should have chosen to drink first. Rather than repeat the tale I have told about this tradition I will stick with a description of the beer.

Most Zoigl I have had has been brown, malty but well balanced and fairly accessible lager. This one doesn't change the recipe too much, it is perhaps two steps further into being a Dunkel. Probably still dark brown rather than near black.

This one has a distinct aroma coming off it, almost like brewing wort itself. When you dive in to it the beer is quickly + obviously a display of what can be done with malt flavourings. It's difficult to describe but a chalky yet sweet balance pinches into a brief and very black finish on the tongue. I guess how porter does sometimes.

If you let the beer linger in your mouth you've got brown ale and porter qualities but all here in a German lager, pretty extraordinary. As you might imagine from that, this is a full flavoured beer. To get twatty about it you've got flavours like damson, molasses, roast chestnut, even tree bark messing about in the mix.

Part of the reason I am making the effort with this stuff is that it seems like these type of beers are being forgotten in a rush to absolutely fine tune the next stonefruit sour Antiguan IPA or whatever. These ones are evidence of brewing passed down through generations. In the hermetically sealed community of Zoigl brewing these beers don't wax and wane with fashions. The King stay the King.

[phes]

The Ellertaler does sound up my street at this time of year. I'll take more time to read the reviews and browse the shop for a wider range of beers for my second order. On the subject of craft brewers ignoring these many styles of beer, one brewer that I've had a couple of great beers by is Jack's Abbey. This was probably 6 or 7 years back now, and the beers I had definitely had stronger hop characteristics than might be found in traditional examples of the style. Their Cascadian Schwarzbier (long gone) was hands down my favorite beer of the night at a beer tasting that I went to

https://jacksabby.com/beer/

[Sheffield Wednesday]

Shoulders, really enjoying these write-ups. I've cut down on drinking of late because I'm working too much to get away with it but enjoying vicariously.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Main Seidla Keller (4.9%, Kellerbier) - *** and a half
Brauhaus Binkert, Breitengussbach

This one features in 111 Franconian Beers You Must Try, which was a reason I picked it up. Brauhaus Binkert's branding is modern, a little sterile for my tastes, but I think they are involved in brewing non-traditional craft styles and have picked up a very good reputation for that (albeit with not oodles of competition in such a traditional region). It's a professional, well-financed operation considering its location and market. The brewery and taproom is 2 stops on the S-Bahn from Bamberg, that is if you can prise yourself away from Bamberg itself, with its 9 city breweries to contend with.

The bottle advertises the beer as naturally cloudy, as a Kellerbier should be, so I was surprised that it poured fairly clear. There is a light haze to it, but definitely a pale gold colour that wouldn't look out of place emerging from a Carlsberg can. So that's a little surprising.

There's a fresh harvest aroma, possibly wild flowers too. The flavour here leans more towards a style of kellerbier I would have been confident 6 months ago in stating was the norm (not sure about that now). Lightly malty with a spicy (maybe cloves) citrusy element that marries well with the unfiltered lager tang. Hoppier than some. Not harsh but a prolonged tingle after swallowing. I'm not a hophead but were I to guess, I think they used Hallertau in here.

Like a lot of good kellerbiers each mouthful produces a very slightly different effect, and the drink evolves as it progresses. In this case I enjoyed it a lot more as it went on. As the carbonation mellows a light honeysuckle flavour develops. As there's still plenty of hops to keep it zingy til the end and plenty of moreish unfiltered texture to tie it altogether, I'd say it was a pretty successful one, despite my early ambivalence.

[thelittlemango]

Shoulders, really enjoying these write-ups. I've cut down on drinking of late because I'm working too much to get away with it but enjoying vicariously.

Also really enjoying these, this thread used to irritate me because it seemed like there was a bit of disdain for craft beer hipsters while the people talking about all of these German, Belgian etc. beers were not much different, except replace a world where something being hoppy is the defining characteristic with one where every drink is praised for being "malty" "chocolatey" or something similarly rich. Both seemed quite myopic to me and I couldn't understand why one was seen as a bit common and the other was for the connoisseur other than the relative scarcity of the latter (back to my hipster point).

However, digging in to these reviews and the descriptions of idyllic places to drink them and the subtle flavour differences and brewing cultures etc. made me feel a bit dismissive and also really desperate to try a bunch of them.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Most of my testiness about craft beer relates to its marketing; the myopia of the scene and some of the prospects of its direction rather than the beer itself.

While pale ale will never be my favourite style (and I reserve the right to use the phrase tangerine gloop at times) I enjoy lots of craft beer, particularly stouts, porters, sours, some Goses and some one offs that have been restored to prominence by craft breweries.

I'm contrarian by nature and attracted to underdogs and dying traditions (valuable seeming ones at least) but it so happens that these Franconia brewers brew some good beers and of a kind you can't readily find in the UK, even many parts of Germany.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I've been enjoying Shoulders' kellerbier odyssey so I got some Hacker Pschorr kellerbier and have just started knocking it back. Absolutely lovely stuff, cloudy and thick and (yes you guessed it lads) malty. Love malty. Sitting quite heavily on my stomach though so god knows what kind of shit I will be forcing out tomorrow.

[Sheffield Wednesday]

I just can't justify paying £75 for beer and £75 for shipping, really. I'd rather pay £150 for top tier Trappist stuff and try a few different things I can find in this country. I'd be well up for visiting some of these places though down the line. I don't know why, I probably waste a hundred quid a month on games I don't play for more than an hour but I dunno...shipping...it feels like money down the bog.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Yeah I agree the shipping costs look stark separated like that. I backed out of ordering several times before eventually going for it.

You're still paying £3.25-£3.50 a 500ml bottle, same as you would pay from a bottleshop, and not that much more than you'd pay for a 440ml craft can at Morrisons (which are £3). And less than at the pub. All beer cost includes shipping.