Those Crazy Monks

A year ago I remarked on La Trappe's fondness for breaking the mould, so I was only momentarily surprised to find they've come out with a very un-trappist witbier, called De Witte Trappist. For all the novelty it's a bit of a bland affair, lacking the fruit and spice of other witbiers. And who ever heard of a bottle-fermented beer weighing in at 5.5% ABV? I suspect its formulation may have had more to do with the marketing monks than the brewers...

An Enigmatic Teuton

It's an odd one, is Radeberger. On the surface this Saxon lager appears to be as good as any other German beer: clear, fizzy, unchallenging but totally delicious. The foretaste has a prodigious smoothness, reminiscent of some very fine German lagers, but after that there's a weird musty bitterness that spoils the experience. The date on the bottle suggests that this isn't a freshness issue, and I've encountered it more than once. What I suspect is that this beer is not meant to be bottled. It is such a delicate flower that anything stronger than the caress of a bar tap upsets the flavour. Strange, then, that the manufacturers flag themselves as an exportbierbrauerei.

Is that the time?

The third in Guinness's Brewhouse stout series has arrived, called North Star. Once again the marketing blurb is, to my mind, totally off the money. It says this variation on Guinness stout is "light, silky and well-rounded". Maybe it was because my pint was first out of the keg but I found it quite coarse and bitter, in a very pleasant way - almost like real stout. It definitely has the characteristic bland smoothness of Guinness underneath, but on top it nearly tastes like a handcrafted porter. I'll be trying this one again.