Tradition vs. novelty

My second post from Hamburg (first one's here) covers a broad range of the Hanseatic city's beers: industrial to nano; traditional to eclectic.

We'll start with Astra, the brand which tries hardest to make Hamburg its own. The label belongs to local giant Holsten, itself a subsidiary of Carlsberg, and I'm not even sure if it's still brewed in the city: there were certainly plans afoot recently to close down the plant there. When out shopping I had meant to get reacquainted with their core pils but only when I took the bottle out of the hotel fridge a couple of days later did I realise it was actually a concoction called Astra Rakete, a mix of beer and citrus vodka (shudder). How bad could it be? It's actually OK. There's a slightly medicinal Lemsip feel, some spicy wintery cinnamon and clove, and still a crisp lager at its core. A full 5.9% ABV, this is no radler, and it's actually a little too sticky to drink in quantity, but one was fine; a lot better than I deserved for my inattentiveness.

On the very southern edge of the city limits sits Kehrwieder Kreativbrauerei. Their flagship is called Prototyp and is 5.9% ABV but doesn't have a declared style on the label. Let's see what we've got here. The hazy yellow colour suggested it might be some sort of lager, maybe a kellerbier, but the aroma of west coast US hops immediately brought us back to pale ale territory. The flavour starts with this zinginess but fades out very quickly, finishing on a grain crunch, like an aforementioned kellerbier. At this point I went and looked at the brewer's website. Turns out it is a lager after all, heavily dry-hopped and using Simcoe along with Saaz, Perle and Northern Brewer. I fully support their decision to swerve the daft designation "India Pale Lager", but that's what it is. I enjoyed the duality effect, the way it arrives as an American IPA but finishes as a German pils; it's fun. The two aspects don't really blend together but I'm OK with enjoying them separately. My bottle of this on the last night made me wish I'd found more of theirs.

To the breweries next. Blockbräu occupies a majestic old stone building on the harbour front in St. Pauli. Inside it's a grand restaurant and beerhall on two levels, commanding great views of the busy waterway outside. The brewkit sits on a balcony overlooking the diners below, and so did I.

The main stock in trade is Blockbräu Pils. Even for a standard German brewpub lager it's pale: a slightly sad yellow, verging on green. Noble hops, of course, bringing a meadow flower aroma and a flavour mixing spinach and fresh-mown grass before finishing on a dry mineral bite. While it's as lightly textured as it looks, it somehow manages a creaminess as well. The generous 5.2% ABV no doubt helps with that. I was expecting bland but was pleasantly surprised to find this one had plenty of character.

There's a continuous cycle of seasonals at Blockbräu but winter doesn't seem to begin until late January so we got Herbst Pale Ale left over from autumn instead. This is 4.8% ABV and a murky orange colour. Again, expectations were low, and again the reality confounded them. It opens with a sweet citrus flavour, the lemon and grapefruit of hard candy. This is followed by an odd yet tasty spice mix of ginger and nutmeg. On the downside the texture is a little thin, and a bitter edge might have improved it. I still enjoyed the idiosyncrasy of it all, however.

The other brewing beer hall I visited was Gröninger, sited in a long cellar in a grand Altstadt building. I arrived towards the end of what looked to have been a busy evening so maybe the service isn't always as surly as I got, but surly it was. Asking about seasonals was right out of the question and I stuck to the core.

Gröninger Pils arrived a surprisingly deep shade of amber, obviously unfiltered and very rough with it. It tasted extremely dry and acrid, of water biscuits and dry rot. Wholesome, perhaps, but not a drop of cheer in the whole glass.

I followed that with a Hanseaten Weisse, another dark orange one. It's very fizzy, even by weissbier standards -- palate scrubbing from the get-go; crisp, but too crisp, and lacking any wheaty smoothness. The flavour is an extreme mix of hot butane and green banana, so certainly not in danger of blandness. It was all just a bit too much hard work for me. I've encountered this sort of northern weizen before -- Flensburger's, for instance -- but none as extreme. This is a style that should be in some part soft and relaxing, and there was no chance of that here.

Just to complete the set (skipping the radler) there's the delightfully named Hamburger Helles. Oddly, this came in a 33cl bottle, and bore no family resemblance to the other two so I suspect they have it brewed elsewhere. The drinker wins in that arrangement as it's beautiful: rich lemon drizzle cake in the foretaste, finishing on al dente asparagus and set on a luxurious eiderdown pillow of a texture. We're a long way from the wintery North Sea here, skipping gaily through the sunny Bavarian countryside. I needed that, after the previous pair.

Another helles in a different environment, next. ÜberQuell is a brewpub and pizzeria in the old St. Pauli fishmarket area. It's very much in the style of a modern craft beer bar, the arty squat look of bare concrete, stripped wood and spindly steel. The brewing vessels perch on a raised platform at the far end of the long thin building, poised like a band ready to perform.

Original Helles is an outlier on the generically craft menu. The visuals aren't great: no head and a little too much haze. The flavour is spot on, however. There's a champagne-like toast plus a generous pinch of mixed green herbs. The all-important texture is smooth and full without turning heavy. I forgive the looks 100%.

A pale ale next, called Palim Palim. 5.3% ABV and a slightly hazy amber colour. The flavour is a bittersweet mix of peach skin and floral perfume, leading on towards an aspirin bitterness and spiced up with exotic sandalwood. The finish is rather abrupt and the texture a little on the thin side. It's mildly interesting but far from amazing.

Special beer of the moment, to the left of the photo, is QuasiMono, an IPA of 7%. It's hazier than the pale ale and has a pure tropical aroma of mango and pineapple. That gets spoiled from the first taste by a weird plasticky burr which I can't explain. It could be a deliberate attempt at introducing a flavour I don't like, or an infection; either way: bleurgh. I could still detect some pineapple juice in the background but nowhere near enough to save the overall mess.

I picked up one ÜberQuell bottle in a supermarket earlier. Supadupa IPA is 6% ABV and a mid-amber colour. It smells sweet and sickly but the flavour is more polished: a clean mix of lime pith, grapefruit zest and richer malt sweetness. The texture is nicely smooth and the whole Lilty mix just slips back with minimal effort. You don't get many IPAs of this sort, eschewing fashion but in no way harsh. There's no bitter punch, but neither is it a hazy fruitbomb. Big but balanced, and very easy drinking. It's just as well this is the core one, not QuasiMono.

In the north of the city, a drone's throw from the airport, is our final taproom for Hamburg. Circle 8 offers a modest and homely space, just a few benches and bar in the front room of a working microbrewery. All beers sell for an even €3 a glass and there's no pils or helles on the board.

My first mark on the beermat was for Darkness, a black IPA. It's dry and dank, stout-thick with lots of resins, bringing an intensely funky aroma and a flavour of spiced red cabbage. 6.4% ABV allows plenty of room for the big characteristics to stomp about in it, and the customary German cleanness is definitely absent. It's not missed. The dryness intensifies almost to the point of astringency, though the heavy texture and big hops save it. Not an easy beer to drink but the effort is rewarded.

For herself, something called High Rice Maltitude, brewed using rice and ginger. This is a pale yellow colour and has a sunny lemonade aroma. It tastes quite shandy-like, despite a full 4.7% ABV, yet at the same time it's not sweet. Dry ginger ale is probably a better descriptor, and it has a similar high level of fizz. Either way, it's pleasant and thirst-quenching, if not very much like real beer.

I stayed dark on the next round, choosing the Smokey Porter. There was a powerful smell of turf fires from this 6%-er. The flavour was even stronger, turning to that iodine note you get from drying seaweed, with a tang of meaty kippery smoke thrown in too. Overall it was just too intense for my liking. I would have preferred some sort of balancing contribution from the dark malts -- a bit of chocolate or coffee, perhaps. Approach with caution unless you really like your beery phenols.

And beside that is Stone Circle, a nod to prehistoric ale brewing, using heather honey and raspberries. No surprise in the absence, or near-absence, of hops that the raspberries dominate completely. It smells of a fresh punnetful and tastes like raspberry ripple ice cream. I thought it was going to be completely one-dimensional, but there's a bitterness in the finish, herbal perhaps, with flakes of coconut. A rising boozy heat from the 7% ABV gives the whole thing the air of a sherry trifle, and who doesn't love trifle? I could see this working well as a dessert beer.

The visit was rounded out with a five-grain IPA called 5K-IPA. It's a heavy affair, quite dark for an IPA and murky with it. The aroma is heady purée'd strawberries and there's lots of ripe sticky strawberries in the flavour as well. Balance? You get a harsh hop burn to counter that, violently. This is tough drinking. I found the intense sweetness harder to handle than the rough and acrid hops, though neither is at all kind. A helles would have been appreciated at this point.

Still, some very interesting beers on the go at Circle 8, and very different from the mainstream. I recommend making the journey if you're in Hamburg.

For the final post we stay in Hamburg but drink beers from further afield.