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March 29, 2024, 08:32:19 AM

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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

Beerdome.cz have had word from their couriers they will no long ship beer or any booze to the UK from August 15th.

The site have a deadline of August 4th for final shipments.

They have a good range featuring some of the best Czech beer in 1 and 1.5l PET bottles, unfiltered and unpateurised with hand drawn drink by dates on.

There are also some traditional classics and oddities hiding away on there.

I can vouch for the owner Rene who I have met in person in Berlin.

shoulders

First English beer back from Belgium and it's Adnam's Southwold. Morgue runoff. I needed a separate glass of tap water to have a hope of making it drinkable.

A half of Cwtch has reset things though, that was tasty.

amateur

Quote from: Crenners on July 30, 2022, 06:43:25 PM

Pretty decent Swiss lager. They also do a really nice Helles.

Fuck! I'd drink the shit out of that!

Psybro

Anyone ever found a Schlenkerla on tap in the UK?  Just having a 2022 Fastenbier and really enjoying it but buying bottles of the same beer in bulk makes me feel like an addict.

shoulders

Yes, in fact even the delicious Fastenbier has made an appearance. Blake Hotel in Sheffield seem to get a keg or three of that every Spring and occasionally other Schlenkerla beers on tap other times of year.

I don't think the standard Marzen is easy to find on tap in the UK but it is out there.


Psybro

I could bike up to the Blake if I can get over the prospect of sitting in a pub soaked in my own stale sweat.

shoulders

Quote from: Psybro on August 03, 2022, 10:29:04 AMI could bike up to the Blake if I can get over the prospect of sitting in a pub soaked in my own stale sweat.

You could chance it at the Sheaf View or the Wellington, I think the Blake tends to get the best of the European export stuff, but I have found interesting unusual stuff in all 3 of Birkett's pubs in the past.

shoulders

They're stocking Schlenkerla Krausen, from Bamberg at Brownhill & Co in Leeds.

So good.  Pale lager refermented/krausened with rauchbier. The end effect? Amber lager, crisp aftertaste but with a full body and sticky mouthful generated from the light caramel, woody flavour and sparkly hops. The smoke hangs with it in the finish like whisky, creating an incredible lingering aftertaste of both refreshment and complexity. A superb, astounding beer.

Not my first, hopefully not the last.

shoulders

Snared the final bottle of Schlenkerla Unfiltered Helles at Raynville, this is a dream. Smoke beer meets keller beer with almost a pale ale element. Bizarre that I'm getting mango and papaya from this.

Fucking awesome.

Crenners

Both of those sound insane. I'll do my best to track them down.

shoulders

https://www.beervanablog.com/beervana/2022/8/4/no-one-knows-what-session-means

Some industry insider commentary on how useful beer style terminology is to the average consumer (from a US perspective).

Thinking about England a lot of craft beer venues, particularly taprooms, behave in a way that suggests they're more interested in showing off to their peers than helping out casual drinkers. Meanwhile a lot of regular pubs serve traditional bitter and pales that their staff can't properly describe and know next to nothing about. We have a weird cultural disinclination to helping people discover or learn about new things which pervades even when there's a financial incentive to do so.

It's rare that you get countries with people widely knowledgeable about more than 2 or 3 beer styles and maybe the flavour of a few outlying brand names, as the article says.

Most places in German just know pils, helles, weizen and dunkel. Others like Kolsch, Alt, Export, Rot, Gose, Kellerbier, Bock, Festbier are very regional/seasonal. You nearly never see them mentioned outside their relative regions or times of year.

Most Czechs only know beer as pale lager that is either 10, 11 or 12° plato in strength (they don't do %ABV but they are driven by it) and that dark lagers are available too. Krausened, Kvasnicovy, even Polotmavy/Jantar/Vienna, not uncommon styles, are regarded as specialist, likewise wheatbeers which are less common. Plzensky Prazdroj's Volba Sladku 'Selection' range reaches a mass audience each month and this may be slowly changing things. But it is a conservative beer culture where attitudes are driven by class, people want to face their peers with dignity and superficially at least, as equals. Having this system allows someone who can only afford a 10° to sit with someone drinking a 12° and feel the same. This creates a collegiate atmosphere in Czech pubs. We shouldn't pretend there isn't a huge incentive for brewers to take advantage of this narrow preference either.

In England, most people know standard lager, premium lager, English cask pale ale, bitter and Guinness. IPA may have percolated down to mass consciousness but not with any real understanding of what it means or what it tastes like.

An exception would be Belgium, where everyone knows pils, blonde, blanche/wit, dubbel, tripel, quadrupel, saison, various fruit beer and lambic (even if perhaps not all the variations of lambic) not least because all of these are available in nearly every pub. Even an old fart swigging Jupiler can tell you about them as they are unavoidable and available in supermarkets everywhere for extremely low prices.

king_tubby

https://beertoday.co.uk/2022/08/08/magic-rock-fourpure-0822/

Is this good? I don't know Utopian. I've always been a fan of Magic Rock, less so Fourpure.

Crenners

I think Utopian are pretty good, not amazing but good attempts at a diverse range of lagers, black, keller, Czech pilsner, etc. I'm sure they do plenty more but that's what I've tried.

shoulders

I think this co-founder does the business acumen side of Utopian.

I believe Odyssey Inns have connections with Craft Beer Co chain pubs in London (possibly elsewhere, dunno).

Weird that Magic Rock would find their way to such ownership. Fourpure I already assumed were owned by Ab Inbev.

Magic Rock competent and not got that much worse since the takeover, perhaps a little old hat but fine if you like those styles. Fourpure just bottom rung craft imitating crap.

Utopian's standard and unfiltered lagers are okayish, disappointingly unambitious, but it gets much better when the Vienna, Kellerbier, Czech 10° and the Czech Dark are concerned. Haven't tried the Doppelbock yet.

Not as good as Braybrooke, Newbarns or Donzoko for lagers but still one of the best in the country hands down.


chutnut

Had an order delivered a couple of weeks ago cause I got some vouchers for my birthday, got a bit carried away tbh

Including the unfiltered Schlenkerla mentioned above which was lovely. Only a few others that I hadn't tried before, the Zotler and Faust were pretty average, I'd only had the Giesinger pils before which is OK, but the hell and kellerbiers were great, will definitely be keeping a look out for them in the future

shoulders

Unusual to see Gieisinger over here, I picked up some last month. Happy memories of Munich (and Giesing, their brewpub has a big sandpit!)

Auerbrau and Rauschof I've never had or seen before.

My faves of those outside the special edition are Goller Kellerbier and Nikl Michaela.


chutnut

An offy round the corner from me always as the Giesinger pils in, but at £3.50 for 330ml I've only ever bought it once.
I'd never heard of Auerbrau either, it was pretty good but nothing special. The Raschof is nice I get that pretty often, Austrian I think.
Yeah the Goller and Nikls are definitely some of my favourites too, I think I prefer the lagerbier to the michala lager though

shoulders

#2327
Picked up a new one, Leikem Sommer Seidla.



Was expecting a light unfiltered helles, turns out this is a wheat lager, relatively unusual.

At 3.8% any relative weakness in body is propped up by the wheat content which adds thickness and fullness of texture and body. Unfiltered with a light almost lemony colour, typically spicy aroma almost leaning towards Witbier with elements of clove, orange and coriander.

Balance is so crucial with these light ones. It is balanced, fresh, and does what it sets out to - slake thirst.

There are subtle hints of its class that you pick up on over time. The head for example has a lovely meringuey quality with a lasting froth that gets mottled as you go through the drink. Sort of like how remaining bubble bath foam huddles together in clumps as the bath swallows it all up. In beer, bottled beer particularly, that's a good sign of appropriate carbonation and freshness.

This beer won't set the world on fire but if the earth's burning anyway, crack open a cold one.

Crenners

Wheewwww. That sounds beautiful. Great description.

phes

Quote from: shoulders on August 10, 2022, 01:14:44 PMI think this co-founder does the business acumen side of Utopian.
Weird that Magic Rock would find their way to such ownership. Fourpure I already assumed were owned by Ab Inbev.

Magic Rock competent and not got that much worse since the takeover, perhaps a little old hat but fine if you like those styles. Fourpure just bottom rung craft imitating crap

iirc fourpure were about relatively early in the big wave of craft, but they were always very middle of the road. So probably less a case of craft imitating, more that they were not interesting or exceptional and got even more mediocre when they grew. Magic Rock has undoubtedly lost their, well, Magic? Gone are the days that Cannonball, Human Cannonball, Unhuman Cannonball and Highwire were available on both keg and cask would blow you away. But they have a good range of consistently decent beer (for supermarkets). I'm very sympathetic to how the growth of job opportunities in their hometown of Huddersfield became a key goal as they developed, so to achieve that and maintain solid beer is very cool   

shoulders

That's fair, I suppose I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope at Fourpure.

Have had their beers in the usual craft beer box sets and christ, if anyone remembers them specifically, please do tell.

amateur

Quote from: shoulders on August 10, 2022, 07:28:21 PMThat's fair, I suppose I was looking through the wrong end of the telescope at Fourpure.

Have had their beers in the usual craft beer box sets and christ, if anyone remembers them specifically, please do tell.

They've really lost something with each subsequent rebrand - giving all their beers names like "Session IPA" and "Hazy Pale Ale" and going with a gimmick of beer being simple. It hasn't helped that the beer is definitely less interesting than it was say, ten years ago. All in the name of supermarket ubiquity once they started getting stocked in Tesco.

Their Shapeshifter "West Coast IPA" at 5.9% was probably their last decent beer but any joy from that has been sucked out in the rebrand.

Paul Calf

Last time I was at the supermarket looking for lager, I could only find one that wasn't brewed under licence (Estrella Damm). I was horrified to see that Budvar is now BUL. It used to be my go-to brand lager.

When did that happen?

phes

Quote from: amateur on August 11, 2022, 08:00:43 AMTheir Shapeshifter "West Coast IPA" at 5.9% was probably their last decent beer but any joy from that has been sucked out in the rebrand.

The ultimate joyless rebrand to represent corporate expansion was Beavertown's Bloody 'ell IPA. It was a seasonal ~7.2% IPA made with fresh blood oranges. By its nature it was seasonally inconsistent and not for the feint hearted, but it was bursting with flavor and felt alive. A high risk high reward beer. That's become an inert imitation of itself 

king_tubby

Yeah, I remember when Beavertown was bought out and they said 'nothing will change' and immediately changed that one.

Jerzy Bondov

Down the craft pub on Wednesday night, had a grisette from a local brewery, Stannary, who usually do your 'juicy' IPAs and that. Not a style I've seen much before so I was excited to have a go! Anyway I didn't like it and it gave me the shits.

shoulders

I know Rothaus Tannezapfle pils is fashionable,  or at least went through a period last 5 or 6 years of being the cool lager for craft beer fans to like. The craze seems to have started,  as ever,  in the US which is also how Helles started becoming fashionable again.

Most of the time Rothaus pils will be among the better lagers available in the UK, sure.

But their whole range just doesn't stand up to mild scrutiny,  in my opinion. When placed in context of German brewing Rothaus is middle of the road,  not just generally middle of the road but middle of the mediocre too. The Pils doesn't do it for me,  their Kellerbier and Weizen are really unremarkable. Having the Marzen now which is refreshing but again nothing really standing out about it. The whole lot is between 3 and 3 and a half stars.


shoulders

https://appellationbeer.com/blog/beer-predictions-from-1998-that-are-not-embarrassing/

Some 1990s predictions on the future of craft beer. Some came true faster than others....

shoulders

https://www.pelliclemag.com/home/2022/8/1/the-essential-guide-to-ipa

An exhaustive (and eventually exhausting) informal guide to IPA sub-genres that may help casual drinkers when they next approach craft bars.

shoulders

Ganstaller Zoigl. 5.6% abv.
Bought  at Raynville Superstore in Leeds.



Zoiglbier, not so much a style as a culture, originates just North East of Franconia in the Oberpfalz neighbouring the Czech border. Families share  a communal brewery and take it in turns to brew their beer and invite people around to their house. Due to some of the old fashioned brewing methods and the organic ingredients involved there are varied, distinctive, unusual beers to try.

Commercial Zoiglbier is an attempt to capture an essence of the rawness and freshness of unfiltered small batch Landbier/Kellerbier and there are some excellent examples, even if many Germans object to the appropration.

Ganstaller is an excellent brewery and it is no surprise their Zoigl is faithful and on its own merits a delicious beer, both modern and traditional, in a way I will endeavour to describe.

Naturally hazy and golden with a degree of sweetness and juice to the body, backed up with a superb bitterness that is almost wild in its lingering nature, redolent of the best 12° Svetly lezaky in Czechia, and comparatively unusual by German standards, where many Zwicklbiers will be lighter in body and far less bitter.

It is a courageous move to position what is a historic and sadly waning culture of brewing in the present, with modern branding and flavour that senses its moment has come. It will capture the imagination of good lager drinkers everywhere. In a just world this would be lining every supermarket shelf and be pouring out of every pub tap. Difficult to rate this less than 5 stars. 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐