Viennagain

It felt like I had only just left Vienna, having last been a little over a year ago. The spring meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union had me back in early March, and it's just as well it's a city that keeps on giving, beerwise. I'll get to the new bars and breweries anon, but there was time at the beginning of the trip for a leisurely return to some old haunts.

Ubiquitous brewkit manufacturer Salm's city brewpub had been explored in 2011, when I found it no great shakes in the beer stakes. It was the first port of call, and it was interesting to see how little the beer menu has changed. Experimentation does not seem to be valued by the Good Bürghers of Salm. There was a seasonal, though: Osterbock, what with Easter only around the corner. Though a sizeable 6.5% ABV, it's as mediocre as most of their other beers. It's a pale and murky brown shade and for all that it's meant to be celebratory, tastes rather austere, of brown bread, black tea, and similar institutional flavours. There are noble hops, but they're twangy and acidic, not grassy or green. There aren't any off flavours or problems from the haze, though I count the rapid finish as a bit of a flaw. As it was my first beer I was looking for some welcoming complexity. Salm isn't the place to seek that.

The evening closed out at my Vienna regular, and a candidate venue for sprinkling my ashes in the drip trays: 7 Stern. Here, the beer list also changes little, yet amazingly there are regulars I haven't yet reviewed. 7 Stern Märzen is one of them. It's interesting in a nerdy way because the menu says it's a Dreher-inspired Vienna lager, and all good students of the infallible Beer Judge Certification Programme know that a beer cannot be both a Märzen and a Vienna lager. You would think the owners would know the basics after 30 years of brewing in central Vienna. It's Märzen strength at 5.1% ABV, but dark too, resembling the smoky Bamberg ones in appearance. To taste, though, it's definitely a Vienna lager, packed with crunchy bourbon biscuit made up of cocoa powder and brown sugar, then adding in the fresh and leafy effects of the hops, all raw spinach and lamb's lettuce. Frankly, whichever of the two styles you're after, it meets the requirements of both, and is just very good, thoroughly unfussy, high quality drinking. This was a proper welcome to the city.

With time for another, I was back on bock. I don't think I realised that 7 Stern Bock was a pale one when I ordered it, but I was concerned when that's what arrived. These are generally too hot and harsh for me. Thankfully, this one wasn't like that. Golden and hazy, the flavour centres on a fluffy, super-fresh baguette breadiness, leaving the hops to a mere seasoning of background lawn clippings. That escalates in the finish, becoming a hint of tin, but at no point did any aspect become problematic for my bock-sceptic palate. It's simple, but packed with class, covering a lot of the ground one might expect from a Helles. Bock purists may complain about its understatedness; it suited me down to the cellar, however.

My new brewpub for the weekend -- throw a stone in Vienna and you'll hit one -- was Beaver Brewing, a small and pleasant little L-shaped bar at a busy traffic intersection. It offered a solid cross-section of craftonian styles, meaning I began with...

... black IPA, of course. I'm guessing they're hinting at Irishness with the name, Wandering Aengus, and a high proportion of the flavour was given over to stout-like roast. But it was also hopped with Citra, Mosaic, Sabro and Simcoe, and those Americans weren't here to play. Simcoe in particular brought its dankly resinous charms to the affair, resulting in a very powerful hop bitterness, which was needed to balance the dark grain. I use the word "balance" loosely here: there was nothing subtle or nuanced about it, just big roast and loud hops roaring along together. I loved it.

As a comedown I went for the 3.7% ABV gose next, called Passion. You won't be surprised to learn it contains passionfruit, as everything must now, even in Austria. The most interesting thing about this one was the deep amber colour. Beyond that it's very basic, with a simple syrupy sweetness and loaded with the taste of passionfruit concentrate. Nether the sourness nor the briney salt of proper gose feature at all. It's not even particularly refreshing, though is drinkable and inoffensive. I'm sure there's a fanbase for beers like this. What else explains how many of them there are around?

We get some quality punnage with Ides of Märzen, and it's a quality beer. I think I detected an certain American influence here: it's dark-coloured and heavy, in the way that American breweries tend to think Oktoberfestbier ought to be. Thankfully it lacks the cloying sweetness of those ones and instead is quite dry and woody in the aroma, leading on to lots of out-of-character roast and a strong bitterness from the Germanic hops. By way of complexity, there's a soft and fun strawberry element as well. All of it blends together well, creating a very süffig lager, chewy and satisfying, punching above its weight at only 5.5% ABV.

I'm not sure if having west coast IPA on the menu should be considered retro or cutting edge, but they had one, and it was delicious. This is Sunny Day, which is a light and frothy name for a seriously dense and funky hop bomb. The hop roll call includes Centennial, Citra, Idaho 7, Mosaic and Sabro. The subtler tropical ones get completely drowned out leaving us with bags of damp pine and dank nuggs. The only thing I can ding it on is the strength, and it's not really a criticism to say that something which tastes like 7% ABV or more is a mere 5.8%. I guess that gives it a certain lightness of touch and makes it easier drinking than it would otherwise be. Whatever the details, this is west coast as it should be.

My one for the road here, perhaps appropriately, was Loneliest Monk. This is a tripel, 8.4% ABV and clear and amber, making it darker than I thought tripel should be. The sweet candy aroma is all that really tells you how strong it is; I didn't get any alcoholic burn on tasting. Instead it's clean and dry, and frankly a bit boring, in the way a powerhouse Belgian-style ale shouldn't be. Maybe this is what happens when central European precision gets its hands on the spec. There's a touch of clove but that's about as complex as it gets. It's good that they have a nightcap-appropriate strong beer on the menu, but I would have preferred a more interesting one.

In general, Beaver Brewing has some lovely stuff on offer and is well worth a visit if you're in the area.

From the small breweries to the very big one. Heineken owns the Schwechater brewery out near the airport. A foundation date of 1632 is one of its claims to fame (you can do your own research on that one), the other being that this was the workplace of Anton Dreher, the inventor of Vienna lager. They've even pasted his face on a grain silo -- quite the honour. Today it's spread across quite a low-density set of non-descript buildings, where there once stood maltings, a cooperage and all the other fun old-timey brewery stuff. There's a small public restaurant and beer garden on site too.

So proud of Dreher's achievements were his heirs that they ceased brewing Vienna lager for decades, only bringing it back in 2016 when they noticed that beer nerds were paying attention to the history and had money to spend. It was accordingly revived, and packaged in an admittedly beautiful long-neck green glass bottle.

For all that it's a meaningful beer, Schwechater Wiener Lager is still a Heineken beer, and as such doesn't taste of a whole lot. It's a lovely chestnut red colour, mind, yet not heavy or strongly malt sweet. Instead it's dry and very clean, with only a hint of roast and tangy metal in the finish. While I had a lot of time for its honest unfussiness, and would be perfectly happy to chomp through a few of those bottles of an evening, there are much better Vienna lagers even in Vienna. Heineken's belated attempt to reclaim the style as their own is a bit cheeky, and not terribly well served by the product.

Not all the green bottles are used for that beer. There's also a similarly anachronistic-looking Schwechater Zwickl. This is an especially hazy example, a foggy yellow shade, conjuring unpleasant dreggy images. Thankfully it tastes much cleaner than it looks, though also has lots of rough and rustic character: crisp grain husk and dry sackcloth. A rich golden syrup element makes me think of decoction-mashed Czech lager, and there's an understated but nonetheless present tang of noble hops. Obviously they're trying to conjure an old fashioned vibe with this one, and I think it's more successful, the beer tasting less processed and sterile.

Over at the restaurant, my lunch began with Hopfenperle, the brewery's draught-only flagship pils. It's no lightweight at 5% ABV, and uses that to show off a beautiful creamy texture of the sort I associate most with the sublime Herren Pils from Bamberg's Keesmann. The flavour broadly hits all the style points of pilsner, with a bit of grassy hop and lots of dry crispness. It does so without any real enthusiasm, however, being another beer where the result is doubtless precision engineered, but not to be interesting or exciting. I would describe it as "vanilla" if brewers who ought to know better weren't putting actual vanilla in their beers.

Heineken's Austrian footprint includes several other large breweries which they inexplicably haven't closed yet, grouped together under the Brau Union brand. One is Wieselburg, in the town of the same name. As well as Wieselburger beer, it also has several under the Kaiser brand, including the interesting looking Kaiser Doppelmalz. A tablemate helpfully explained how malzbier is the region's dark and alcohol-free unfermented "beer", so doppelmalz means you get a modest amount of alcohol -- 4.7% ABV -- even though two times zero is zero. This is indeed a dark red-brown and smells of both sweetness and roast, like molasses or treacle. While it's sweet to taste, it is a proper beer, and doesn't taste saturated in unfermented sugar. The burnt edge helps dry it out, and gives it a certain bitterness. This isn't too far away from the Munich Dunkel style, though it's missing that one's hop character. On a menu of bland industrial lagers, this stood out as the most characterful option available. I could drink several.

Another brewery in the chain is Puntigamer, and from the discarded cans in the bins on the packing line at Schwechater, they had recently finished canning a batch of it. I liked the stately blue branding and ordered a pint of it when I saw it on draught in Café Bendl, a gorgeously unspoiled brown basement bar where it looks like the last smoker only just left and there's a clear and present danger of one of the customers striking up an accordian. The beer is rather less charming. Almost a week later I don't really remember how it tasted, but my notebook claims it's "like vomiting candyfloss". So, sweet and acidic, then. I have also deemed it clean and inoffensive, so make of that what you will. I drank two of them so it couldn't have been that bad.

That's a cheery note to wrap things up on for today. We'll go back to the independent brewers next, with another ragtag assortment of solidly traditional lagers and the sort of pseudo-American craft beer you get everywhere. And most of that will come from the same enormous Vienna brewery.