Fancy meeting you here

Finishing up my blogging about Trieste today with the very non-local beers I found. There's something of a Germanic theme running through the set.

Up at the castle, for instance, the handy little portable bar in the courtyard was serving Zwickel 1409 from Privatbrauerei Schweiger, near Munich. I was expecting pale and cloudy so was surprised to get something quite amber-coloured and perfectly clear. It appears to be a riff on the Munich Helles style because it's big and soft, heavily textured with a bready, cakey sweetness. A mild plastic bitterness appears behind this briefly, but doesn't interrupt the wholesome malt weight. This didn't really fit the context of a sunny afternoon refresher, suited better to dark beerhalls with roaring fires.

Below in the city there is an actual German beerhall of sorts, themed around the Mönchshof beers brewed by Kulmbacher. Again it was too sunny to explore inside so we took a table on the small terrace.

Mönchshof Pils is another thick and heavy lager, though this one goes bigger on the hops, with a weedpatch greenness and peppery rocket spices. The malt flavours take a while to emerge from that, bringing in a balancing note of honey as it warms. I wanted to like it, I really did, but again I had been in the mood for something crisp and refreshing and, again, this didn't deliver.

Herself had better luck with Klosterbok, which I think is the beer normally sold as Mönchshof Bock. It's a gorgeous chestnut red colour with an intense cooked-veg aroma: cabbage, shading to rotten timber. It's much more balanced on tasting, with a delicious caramel smokiness complementing the hops. The texture is smooth without being heavy, making for a very drinkable yet complex medium-dark lager. Just the sort of thing you want when drinking Bavarian.

Forst, in the South Tyrol, is one of the local brands. There's even a Forst beerhall in Trieste, though we didn't visit. It's a bit odd seeing an Italian beer all branded in German, but then this is a complicated part of the world. I acquired Sixtus, the doppelbock, cheaply in a supermarket. I thought it was going to be a bit of a weakling at just 6.5% ABV, but it's very nicely weighty. The hop side is quite understated, showing a very faintly green nobility. The main component is a thick wodge of toffee infused with coffee and liquorice, both in quantity also. It's still properly lager-clean, though at the same time creamy, with a warming cakey quality which I think would make it an ideal dessert beer. An everyday budget alternative to those dark Belgians or rare barley wines you have to justify to yourself, perhaps.

Immediately on entering my first Italian supermarket of the trip, I discovered that not only is Tennent's Super still on the go here (brewed by AB InBev in Bremen), it's thriving, with multiple point-of-sale materials in this shop and others. For the uninitiated, it's a 9% ABV lager, beloved of generations of Scottish heavy drinkers. I'm not sure if it was around in my youth -- it must have been -- but I had never tried it. Here it is supplied in 33cl green glass bottles rather than the classic purple tin. "Central heating for tramps" goes the old unofficial strapline, and I can see why. There's a definite warming richness to it. Unsurprisingly, that gets quite sickly before long. It's like a Belgian strong ale but minus the spices and fruits which make those sorts of beers palatable. A musty noble hop greenness represents the lager side of the equation, adding no crispness nor any serious balancing bitterness. I'd love to say this is an overlooked delight, but much like its brother-in-arms, Carlsberg Special Brew, it's a bit of a hot mess and I can see why the alcohol content is the only feature for which it's known.

To Sicily for something cleaner: Birra Messina, one of Heineken's Italian brands. Cristalli Di Sale is the one in the range which isn't a plain lager. Instead it's a lager with added Sicilian salt. It looks like a witbier, or even a gose -- that hazy shade of yellow. It smells a bit like both too: slightly briney with a squeeze of citrus. The flavour, also, is light and lemony, along the lines of an unfussy kellerbier. I couldn't detect the salt, but did get some kind of seasoning; a gentle white pepper effect. Finally, here's the clean and refreshing lager I had been looking for, perfect after a long day's touristing before going out in search of dinner. Well played, Heineken Italy.

In Trieste station, rushing for a train beer before rushing for a train, I picked Nektar lager because it was cold, cheap and unfamiliar -- my three favourite things in beer. I had thought it was another local macro but it's actually from Bosnia. It turned out to be a very pale clear gold, though the ABV is a substantial 5%. From the first sip I got a heavy sweetness, unlagerlike notes of beeswax and honey. Is the name somehow connected? I dunno. The ingredients are helpfully listed but honey isn't among them. There's not much else going on: everything just tails off after the initial hit. A minuscule basic hop tang -- tinny and faint -- is perceptible in the aftertaste if you look for it, but there's little else to say. It's not actively unpleasant, which probably puts it ahead in the league of €1 Bosnian lagers. That's about all I can write in its favour, however.

Off we went again, hugging the north Adriatic coast and heading for our exit point: Venice.