What are you Drinking?

[derspiess]

Brewed the Pliny clone last night.  I had so much hop aroma wafting through the air that my senses were completely overloaded.  I opened a Zombie Dust last night to drink while I was brewing and tasted almost no hops in it.  That was really weird.

[MadImmortalMan]

Glad you enjoyed your visit there.

You might also be interested in: http://www.1516brewingcompany.com/cms/

http://www.1516brewingcompany.com/cms/beers/

I went there on the way to the airport. 

Not kidding. Long story. And Mrs. MIM left her new dirndl in the apartment! The lady is going to mail it to us.

Unlike 7Stern, these guys were perfectly happy to sell me every beer on the roster in a batch for tasting. (Most US breweries do this now. I asked each time.) It was a small glass of each, like .25 L per.

Anyway, the highlights: the Rye IPA done in partnership with a brewery in Athens, GA called Terrapin Brewery. If you're gonna have a brewery in Athens, it probably should be called bulldog brewery or something but what the hell. This beer was good. Not hops in your face good or alcohol cooking your guts good or even chocolate puckering your face up good. It was just beer good. If primitive man were inventing beer and finally got it down to a satisfying mean, this is what it would be. It's not anything in particular. But it's also everything at the same time. I liked that a lot. This is stranded on a desert island beer.


Mrs. MIM really likes the German weiss beers, and it doesn't seem to matter if they are dark or light. These guys had (a darkish) one she really liked a lot, even compared to the ones she generally picks out (Pyramid Hefe, etc.).

The IPA was good too and said "from PA to Vienna" in the description. I don't know if that's another collaboration, but it sounds like it. Hoppy in the extreme. Bitter. I thought it was ok, the wife didn;t like it. She stull does not go for it if it's just over the top silly hops. Strangely, she didn't have a problem with the Kramah (I keep bringing that up...). They had the obligatory pils and a dunkles, which was good. There was lots of American-style shit on the menu like "hot" wings (nothing "hot" in Austria is more than marginally tasteful. If Austrians go to Thailand, they will spontaneously combust.) These were habanero and the staff were astonished that I ate them at all, but I got a wienerschnitzel (pork) and a batch of spicy (lol) sausages with sauerkraut too. Paprika counts as spicy, kids. 

Oh, again maibock. I wish I knew the Bavarian beer calendar. There must be one. Theirs was good also. They had a blend of dark lager and maibock which they called black and tan. This tasted remarkably like Guinness.

[Syt]

Yeah, spicy food here isn't very spicy. Except for a few Indian places (one place served "medium" in a way that I lost speech for a few minutes - and I've been known to cook my chili so that it can bring tears to your eyes).

My English colleague who spent quite some time in Thailand laments it, too.

Maibock is actually of North German origin - see Einbeck.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maibock#Maibock_or_helles_bock

I'm partial to Weizen beer myself, esp. the dark ones. Austrian Edelweiß is pretty good in that regard. But then again, I'm not a connaisseur commes vous.

Shame about the Dirndl!

[derspiess]

So do the beers taste fresh at European breweries?  Sounds like a silly question, but I've been to a few breweries where some of the beers did not taste particularly fresh.  The one European microbrewery I visited (in Brussels, no less) was a huge disappointment.  They only made three beers to begin with, and of those they only had one available.  It was an unremarkable American-style blonde or amber and tasted like it was a little past its prime.

Speaking of Maibocks (btw Mai- = May), I had an excellent one a few weeks ago at our local Hofbrauhaus.  I'm not sure if it was 100% true to style since a Maibock is supposed to be based on Helles and this was a deep amber color.  But it had a wonderful sweet malty aroma and taste-- reminded me of a stronger Oktoberfest/Maerzen.

[MadImmortalMan]

Just from my experience, I'd say you got a bad deal. One I tasted had the been-in-the-tap tubes-too-long distinctiveness but that's all.

They seem to have high quality standards even when they are serving up pilsner junk. It may be bleh, but at least it's not skunky.

Also, a couple of the pils I had were remarkably not awful--as you may have noted, I'm pretty biased against them. It was more of a bees and flowers thing than anything else. Bees and flowers make good pilsner.

[Barrister]

Just from my experience, I'd say you got a bad deal. One I tasted had the been-in-the-tap tubes-too-long distinctiveness but that's all.

They seem to have high quality standards even when they are serving up pilsner junk. It may be bleh, but at least it's not skunky.

Also, a couple of the pils I had were remarkably not awful--as you may have noted, I'm pretty biased against them. It was more of a bees and flowers thing than anything else. Bees and flowers make good pilsner.

Why the pilsner-hate anyways?

I'm not the beer-geek that you or derspeiss are, but the eye-opening thing for me in Europe was how good the czech pilsners were.  I buy them sometimes in Canada, but it's hit or miss whether they'll be skunky.  But more-or-less fresh in Prague they were wonderful.

[derspiess]

Why the pilsner-hate anyways?

I'm not the beer-geek that you or derspeiss are, but the eye-opening thing for me in Europe was how good the czech pilsners were.  I buy them sometimes in Canada, but it's hit or miss whether they'll be skunky.  But more-or-less fresh in Prague they were wonderful.

I enjoy a good, fresh all-malt pilsner.  They're great in hot weather or for a change of pace.  Sucks that some truly good ones come in green bottles & get skunked.  But the knock on them is that they're just not as flavorful as ales or darker lagers.

[Syt]

My supermarket is selling beer 25% off for the long weekend. I picked up a couple of bottles of Leffe Brune.

[derspiess]

Their Brune is good.  Last time I got a 6-pack of their Blonde it took me a while to get through it.

[Syt]

I think Leffe Brune would have qualified as the official drink of the 2008 Brussels Languish Meet(TM).

[derspiess]

I had a Lithuanian triple bock. It was drinkable but an ominous 12% abv. Holy crap.

[MadImmortalMan]

I had a Lithuanian triple bock. It was drinkable but an ominous 12% abv. Holy crap.

You don't seem to see the high abv beers outside of the Anglosphere yet. There may be laws (the Vienna strong IPAs I had were still in the 5-6% range), but it will happen.


I should mention that the Bevog brewery I liked so much was actually in Austria, not Slovenia. It's in Bad Radkersburg, near the borders of Austria, Hungary and Slovenia.

So maybe it's not a law. The Vienna breweries I liked rarely went over 6%, which is unusual for an American brewery now.

[Syt]

Yeah, the regular Austrian brews will generally be around 5%. There's a few special brews like Samichlaus which go into the double digits.

And some breweries do christmas bock, which obviously is higher, too. Though I guess my favorite bock remains Kloster Andechs Doppelbock (bit hard to get here).

[Caliga]

A Blue Hawaiian.  Third one of the afternoon.

[Norgy]

Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine studied in the Netherlands, and brought back a few grams of good weed and a sixpack of 12.5 % Grolsch "Het Kanoon". The beer was good, but it hit like liquor.

I'm no expert of beers anymore, but dissing a good pilsner smacks of snobbery.
Most European countries make pilsners, bocks and bayer. I liked them all. The only beer I've disliked was a German supermarket chain one. There was a distinct dishwasher flavour to it.