Take me up to Pinkus

Last Saturday I took a morning train out of Cologne northwards to the medieval university town of Münster which, for the last two years has been home to my former neighbour and fellow blogger Barry.

Yeah, Münster has, like, history and stuff, and Barry showed us some churches and a town hall famous for its signed peas or something, but then it was time for the main dish: Pinkus Müller. The last brewery making Münster's distinctive style of blonde altbier -- and indeed the last brewery in the city -- Pinkus Müller is conveniently situated near the centre of town on a large street-corner plot. The room we settled in was a very cosy and poky one, with wooden beams, delft tiles in the fireplace, lots of kitcheny nick-nacks and the watchful eye of our matronly hostess.

I started with the Jubilate, a light-bodied and only slightly sweet winter beer which manages to balance warmth and drinkability rather well. I followed this with the enigmatic Classic made, apparently, from "historical barley" -- what that means is anyone's guess. The beer is a very light and thin cloudy affair with a bit of orange flavour to it, but otherwise not terribly interesting. Last of the new ones was Müller's Lagerbier, which manages to break all the rules of what one might expect from such a label. It's cloudy, for one thing with a candy-apple nose and lots of fruity flavours, finishing with just a touch of honey. Very unusual and rather tasty. Naturally, I couldn't leave without a token Pinkus Original Münstersch Alt -- full of sour bitter spiky complexity yet super-quaffable. My full review is here, and I think half-litres are definitely the way to go with this, rather than messing about with 25cl glasses as we were.

Next stop was a couple of doors up to a fun little pub called Das Blaue Haus where there was Berliner Kindl Weisse on the menu. Having loved the green one, I went red this time. Berliner Kindl Weisse Rot is nowhere near as good: there's no space for the sourness to shine through and it just ends up tasting of raspberry syrup and nothing else. Lesson learned.

Dinner was out in the harbour area. Münster has taken an odd approach to its docklands redevelopment scheme, lining one side of the Dortmund-Ems canal with swish apartments and fancy bars, while presenting them with a view of unreconstructed industrialism on the other side, where a power station belches smoke and barges ply their trade. Strange. Anyway, we ate in Wolters where the food was good and hearty, and the beer was draught Duckstein. Plain old standard Duckstein is a lot more interesting than I'd expected, a dark beer with a delicate complex flavour including floral perfume, burnt caramel and a sweet rum-soaked raisin warmth.

And if that wasn't surprising enough, there's also a Duckstein Weizen: also on the browner end of the spectrum and with that caramel and rasins thing going on too. The banana flavours are relatively muted, and the finish is just a little too sudden. But it's definitely different and worth a go if you see it. To Barry's knowledge it's only sold at Wolter's.

Having found Münster's jolly English theme pub The James closed (sure who wants a drink on a Saturday night?) there was just time for a swift Frankenheim Alt before the train back south to Cologne. Thanks for a fun day out, Bar.

Kraut and about

I held off mentioning a couple of German beers I had in Zürich, aware that I had some German stuff at home to write about in the near future and I may as well lump them in together. As it turned out, the common ground is merely geographical as each of the following beers are very different from each other, which is refreshingly odd for a nation which seems to delight in brewing an awful lot of very samey beers.

We'll start in the south with a bottle of Hofbräu Schwarz Weisse, consumed in Zeughauskeller. I liked this "black white" beer, which is actually a gorgeous shade of chestnut brown. The banana and clove flavours are laid on thick and accentuated by a heavy, chewy, caramel sweetness. It's streets ahead of most any dark weissbier I know.

I mentioned the interesting Swiss beer I had in Bar Andorra here. We were there for a while, idly picking through the menu. I had a bottle of Jever Pils, a beer I've not tasted in donkeys' years. It's not as pungently bitter as I remember it, being remarkably smooth up front and saving the bitterness for just a pleasant gentle kick at the end. I'd be up for more but it seems to have disappeared from the Irish market. Still in Bar Andorra, I'll stray briefly from the Fatherland to mention Staropramen Dark, in its decidedly funky glass. I loved the smoky caramel character of this lager from one of the Czech giants. It's flavoursome but with a light enough touch to slip down easily. Just a shame I was paying nearly €5 for 330mls of it.

Back home again, then, and a couple of beers brought to me by Adeptus from his corner of north-west Germany. First up is Boltens Ur-Alt -- that's like "Old²", isn't it? It pours a cloudy brown from the swingtop with a stiff head reminding me a lot of a dunkel weiss. There's no aroma to speak of and I started getting a little worried about the fact that its drink-by date had passed a month or so previously. But it tasted fine and is unquestionably an alt: very dry, to the point of being almost sulphurous. This is followed by a powerful dose of that alt sourness, big enough to remind me of a Flemish red. And then, strangest of all, there's a final subtle aftertaste of roasted coffee, putting me in mind of nothing so much as an English mild. None of these complex flavours are particularly bold, and it makes you work to pick them out, but that's part of the fun of drinking it.

The other alt he gave me was from his local brewery in Münster: Pinkus Müller. All-organic Pinkus Original, says the label, is a (or "the"?) Münstersch Alt. Stand by for regional variation. The first surprise was the colour: it is remarkably pale, the hazy yellow of a witbier. The aroma has all the grassiness of a pils. The taste is mostly sour -- the mouth-watering lambic variety, though a little less intense. At the end I get the rounded fruity bitterness of a blonde ale. For all that going on, it's extremely easy to drink and moreish. Personally I'd love to have this as my local speciality. And the lesson is that if it looks like a wit, smells like a pils and tastes somewhere between a lambic and a blonde ale, then it's probably an alt. Simple.