Cold and colder

One of life's greatest pleasures is going to exotic beer shops and browsing for strange and intriguing beers. Today's pair came from no further abroad than Melger's of Haarlem where both made me want to know what they tasted like as soon as I saw them. They don't have anything else in common, other than having been brewed in the Netherlands.

Cold Gold is ostensibly from the Habesha brewery in Ethiopia, but that's a subsidiary of Swinkels and this version comes from one of their Dutch facilities. It is indeed gold: perfectly clear and sparkly, though the head doesn't last long. It's a full 5% ABV and nicely weighty with it; a lager of quality, not a cheaply made one, and considerably better than Swinkels's own buttery flagship pils. The malt is very much to the fore, smooth and rich, like a posh treacle-infused brown bread. The hops aren't quite as high-end, just a tangy metallic bitterness, providing sufficient balance but not much more than that. That echoes in the finish and helps make quite a heavy beer remarkably drinkable. I'm guessing this is mostly intended for ethnic-themed restaurants and it does indeed have the chops to match food well. A pleasant surprise all round.

Icebock isn't always a great choice, but I see so few of them that new ones are always of interest, especially when they're not at eye-watering artisanal prices. Gulpener is one of the bigger Dutch breweries and this is the 2023 vintage of Gulpener IJsbock. It seems a little weaker than the norm at 10.3% ABV -- Schneider's is the full 12% for example -- but it looks the part: a deep mahogany brown colour. The aroma is a warming wintery cocoa with hints of cherry liqueur and vanilla pods, which is very enticing. All of that is in the flavour too, though it's rather more severe. The vanilla ramps up to an almost sickly level, backed by gooey milk chocolate and caramel. Huge alcohol vapours accentuate all this even further, adding a hit of marker pen solvent. The gentler fruit I found in the aroma is nowhere to be seen, only brown banana for a different, but no better, type of gooeyness. You would know that this was a strong beer rendered even stronger, and the process seems to have concentrated its bad side while removing the good. Doubtless it's intended to be a slow sipper but they've achieved that by making it difficult to drink. There's no fun to be had here, only sadness and toil.

In conclusion, the exotic beer shelves is a land of contrasts.

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:

Got my goat

I missed January's Session because I was away, but I wouldn't have been able to find any new doppelbocks to try anyway. Recently I encountered Celebrator for the first time, though I'm kinda glad I didn't find it in time, since ten other Session bloggers did this one as well.

Anyway, I was a little bit wary on approach: while I thoroughly enjoyed Salvator, Triumphator and Maximator, they all arrived in half litre bottles. The 33cl of Celebrator put me immediately in mind of Aventinus Eisbock, a beer I didn't particularly enjoy. The pour to a thin, short-lived head had me on even more of a syrup-alert, and the ultra-dark opaque brown-red body didn't help. My fears evaporated on the first sip. Celebrator is actually medium-bodied: full, but with none of the chewy texture of super-strong bocks. The flavour is exceptionally complex and very well balanced, running between savoury smoke, sweet caramel and bitter liquorice, and all the way back again. I think I could quite happily drink a couple of these back-to-back without feeling put-upon. I could definitely handle it by the half litre. Great stuff.

And Celebrator isn't the only Ayinger beer around these days. I've also picked up a bottle of their Jahrhundert-Bier. My German being essentially non-existent, I mistook the warning to store in a cool dark place (kühl und dunkel lagern) for a description of the beer as a dunkel lager. Yes, yes, I know. A moment's holding the bottle up to the light would have shown how pale it is: a limpid straw colour once out of the bottle. The carbonation is quite sharp and goes well with the kölsch-like dry grainy character. There's a bit of astringency about it as well as, conversely, a banana-ish fruitiness. It's only 5.5% ABV, but with its weighty body it could probably pass for a bit more. Well made, but not something I'll be hankering after.

There are a couple of Ayinger weisses around at the moment as well. I'll get to them eventually, but I might have to go back for another couple of Celebrators first.

Sedimental journey

I hadn't intended for my weekend's drinking to have a theme, it just turned out that way.

On the roster were three beers I'd been meaning to try for ages but hadn't got round to, and all with their gritty little secrets.

First up was Hen's Tooth. I'm a big fan of Old Speckled Hen, so I thought it only just to give the reserve beer a go. I wasn't disappointed: it's incredibly smooth and delicately flavoured, very similar to the best pints of draught cask ale I've had in Britain. And it has a hefty 6.5% strength, so much more satisfying than the 3-4.5% that ales tend to hover around. And surprisingly, the sediment didn't get in the way. I did my best to keep it out of the glass, but some of it ended up suspended in my pint. Didn't affect the flavour though, or at least not unpleasantly.

Continuing on the enhanced editions theme, I tried a bottle of Aventinus Eisbock. Schneider Weisse is my favourite German beer, and their Aventinus is great too, so I figured the concentrated Aventinus was definitely worth a go, despite the €5.50 price tag. No strength on the label was the first black mark. I read, however, that it's around 12%. This is the same as Bush, Belgium's strongest beer, and the taste was similar too: ultra-heavy and very cloying. After a few sips I managed to get into it, but it's hard, chewy work. A 330ml bottle and a considerable quantity of sediment meant that at least the experience was curtailed slightly. This stuff is an acquired taste for sure, and given the price I'm not sure it's wholly worth the effort.

Last up was a beer I've seen many times but hadn't considered buying because it looks so unassuming: Cooper's Sparkling Ale. Australian beer for me is limited to Toohey's Extra Dry and Carlton Cold, and even then only when I'm actually in Australia and have limited choice (though I do recall a great Carlton Cold drinks promtion in an Irish bar in Hong Kong some years back). Recently while trawling the Internet for beer suggestions I happened across a review of Cooper's Sparkling that made enormous claims for it -- a true connoisseur's beer, a proper ale from a country where beer terminology is badly abused. However, while it does stand above its compatriots, this stuff just can't cut it in a European context. The taste just isn't bold enough, leaving it watery and having an annoying fine sediment. I can completely understand why one would turn to this if VB or Toohey's New was your only other option, but otherwise I don't get it. One for the ex-pats only, methinks.