The Baltic to Bavaria

Even though there was plenty of representation from the big international German beer brands at the Berlin Beer Festival, one of the headline sponsors was Störtebeker, a regional brand from Straslund on the Baltic coast due north of the capital. Having never heard of them I made a point of visiting their stand where two very jolly barmen were dishing out a pils and a schwarz.  

Störtebeker Pils is magnificent: a sharp bitter kick gets it going and the middle is smooth and creamy. It's almost in the same league as Keesmann Herren Pils, a beer which I searched vainly for during my festival visits but which didn't seem to be on sale anywhere.

It was a tough act to follow and Störtebeker Schwarz didn't quite manage it. This is a nasty-looking murky brown with big loud chocolate flavours followed quickly by dry roast. As good as many a schwarzbier on sale at the festival, but by no means a stand-out.

Always a sucker for novelty I couldn't pass by the Köstritzer bar without having a go of their helles. I mean, pale Köstritzer? Kerr-azy! The name is Köstritzer Edel and it's a very pale yellow indeed. In an otherwise non-descript lager I swear I was able to detect some of the back-of-the-throat crisp dryness that is the hallmark of normal dark Köstritzer, but I'm well aware of how powerful suggestion can be when tasting beer and I wasn't going to stop to carry out a blind taste.

Of course there was a big showing by Schneider, who had a couple bars on the go. We made a few return visits there: Aventinus Eisbock at €1.50 a glass will do that. But in the calmer hours I took the time to try Schneider Weisse Blonde, simply because it's a beer from one of my favourite breweries which I've never tasted. It presents like weissbier from a normal brewery: pale orange-yellow and hazy. There's the classic clove flavour you get with good weissbier and only the lack of any dark malt complexity marks it out as different from Schneider's flagship product. Not something I'd go rushing back to (unlike the Eisbock) but I'm glad I tried it.

While we're in Bavaria we may as well pay a visit to Andechs. The cheeky monks were ignoring the festival pricing so it was a whole €2 for a sample of their beer. Andechs Hell is a textbook Bavarian Helles: purest pale gold, silkily smooth and just lightly bitter. Andechs Dunkel is less well put together, blaring coffee and slightly sickly toffee but with just enough dryness on the finish to make it work.

A doppelbock was of course necessary at some point and Riegele Doppelbock was the first I spotted and was just what I was after: a clear mahogany, it's properly filling and the flavour dashes between liquorice, caramel, lavender and rosewater. There's almost a barley wine heat and complexity to it.

So we come to the last beer of the post and you'll doubtless all be shocked by the complete lack of rauchbier in my German trip notes. As it happens I only met the one, from a brewery in Franconia which claims to be the smallest brewer of smoked beer in the region.

Fischer Rauchbier is a clear brown colour and exudes massive smoked salmon and bacon flavours which I loved. Backbone is provided by a certain amount of caramel, but it's mostly light and quaffable all the way through.

And that's it from Berlin. It's a city that makes you work hard to find anything different from the orthodox beer styles, even when it's running a huge international beer festival. But what's there, by and large, is pretty good.

Play us out, Hans:

Control Alt Delish

There are few things that make me happier than the arrival of a new Irish beer on the market. While it would be fantastic if more of these were permanent, I'm happy to settle for seasonals and special editions when they come my way. So I was delighted to see that the Porterhouse have eschewed the Kölsch which they normally bring out this time of year (though there's not a thing wrong with it) in favour of a new Porterhouse Alt. I was even more delighted when they invited me along to the press launch last week.

I'm not exactly an old hand at this top-fermented German style which is particularly associated with Düsseldorf -- I've had the Frankenheim version and found it well-made but quite serious in its dark bitterness. The Irish take on it won't leave you rolling in the aisles either, but it's still a damn fine beer. Sourness is its first characteristic, but this is followed quickly by a long dryness, redolent of crunchy grain husks. The whole thing is lip-smacking and satisfying, and incredibly drinkable. I wish the brewery well with it and hope to see it again. And if you have a Porterhouse near you, I'd strongly advise giving it a go before the festival ends on Sunday week.

As usual, Porterhouse Oktoberfest comes with a range of subsidiary German beers, and they've done particularly well this year in my estimation (though a return of Andechs Dunkel wouldn't have gone amiss), including three on draught from Weihenstephan. I used to enjoy pints of Weihenstephaner Hefe in Dublin's Long Stone pub back in the early days of my beer obsession. It has only recently come back to the Irish market in bottles, so it's wonderful to see it on tap as well. I find it a difficult weissbier to describe since it balances all of its fruity-hoppy-grainy characteristics so wonderfully. Yes there's bananas and cloves and candy floss, but none really dominates the palate. The texture is a marvellously smooth and fluffy one, causing the beer to slip down with the greatest of ease. I'm really not doing it justice with this review, but take my word that it's streets ahead of the more common Bavarian weissbiers we see on draught in Ireland.

Vitus is the second of the family now available in the Porterhouse -- a beer I really enjoyed back here, and a perfect warming brew for the season that's in it. The last newbie is Weihenstephaner Festbier, a clear golden number I'd never heard of before. It's very much in the Oktoberfestbier style, being heavy and sticky with only faint bubbles working their way through the viscous body. Bizarrely, I got a major hit of sweetcorn from the aroma, but the flavour is definitely properly grainy. The malty Märzen alcohol is present in a big way, but it doesn't cloy or get overpowering as the beer is sunk -- another technical exercise in balance by the brewmen of Weihenstephan which has produced a superlatively drinkable beer.

Oktoberfest at all (I assume) Porterhouse branches kicks off today and runs to the 19th. There's much more to be had among the specials, including Aventinus and that fantastic Schneider/Brooklyn hoppy weissbier collaboration. But go for the Irish Altbier first. You'll be glad you did.

Another season[al], another Wies'n...

The Porterhouse in Dublin are staging their annual Oktoberfest at the moment, with a variety of bottled and draught German beers, and one seasonal German-style lager. They call it Kölsch, being in the style of Cologne. It is a phenomenally dry blonde with the crisp grainy character that infuses all of the Porterhouse lagers. But mostly it's dry. Beer that makes you thirsty: it's a wonder there isn't more of it.

Also on tap they have Andechs Dunkel, which tastes like no dunkel I've ever had before. Rather than the usual smooth caramel flavour, this has a rough smoky taste, like drinking cheap Turkish cigarettes. An odd one, for sure.