Archive for the ‘breweries’ Category

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Now we’re getting somewhere: Peschl

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Thank you, Peschl or Passau. We hadn’t dared let ourselves hope that all that folksy branding and ‘family brewery’ rhetoric might actually mean interesting beer but were over the moon to be proved wrong.

The benefit to all the local breweries offering similar ranges is the ease with which they can be compared. Straight off, we could tell that Peschl’s helles and pils had more zing than the respective offerings from Hacklberg and Lowenbrau. They weren’t transcendent, but we certainly found them interesting and agreed that, if we could never drink anything but these again, we’d probably be happy.

Even the hefe-weizens were interesting, being perhaps a little more grainy-tasting (more wheat in the mix?) and a touch sour.

So, we thought we’d found the best beer in Passau, and began to feel a little more cheerful.

Nächste halt: Innstadt.

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Posted in Germany, beer reviews, breweries | 4 Comments »

The breweries of Passau: Löwenbrau

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

It seems every German city has a Löwenbrauerei or two. Your Germans are nuts about lions, especially medieval stone ones that look like dogs with perms.

Passau’s Löwenbrau is another big local brand. We saw their trucks, adverts and parasols all over town and the surrounding countryside — and, as we’ve come to expect from big regional Bavarian breweries, they’re not exactly risk-takers.

In fact, we could more-or-less repeat our review of Hacklberg. A cold helles on a terrace on the river Inn at sunset, after a hike in the sun, is always going to taste good but, really, we were beginning to think that we might have to give up on the beer in Passau…

Nächste halt: Brauerei Peschl.

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Posted in Germany, beer reviews, breweries | No Comments »

The breweries of Passau: Hacklberg

Monday, June 14th, 2010

There are five breweries in Passau.

Based on the number of times we saw their logo (including on a hot air balloon over the old town) Hacklberg seem to be the biggest. Their beers were also the first we tried, on a lovely terrace overlooking the Danube (at Am Paulusbogen).

Short review: these are average, Munich-style Bavarian beers — pale, clean and somewhat fizzy.

The helles went down very well after several hours on a hot train, but we’d struggle to describe it in a meaningful, beer-writery way. It tasted a bit of malt, a bit of hops, and mostly like, well, any other decent lager. The pils was similar but a little paler and with perhaps a hint of sulphur. The hefe-weizen was absolutely by the book and would have been hard to distinguish from Erdinger or Weihenstephan in a taste test, we suspect.

The darker beers were more interesting. The dunkles-weizen had more character than the light version — about as much as colour and flavour as Schneider Weisse, in fact. The non-wheaty dunkel had some roastiness and we disagreed over whether it was actually any good or not: Boak thought it tasted sugary, plasticky and rough-edged (in a bad way), whereas Bailey found it just on the right side of characterful, and found a few spicy flavours (caraway?).

Nächste halt: Löwenbrau Passau.

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Posted in Germany, breweries | 5 Comments »

We take it all back

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

villageipa

No sooner do we have a go at their selection of beer than the owners reinvent Eat17 in Walthamstow as a sort of lounge/bar/cafe/restaurant kind of thing, with its own locally brewed house beer.

Eat17 IPA is made by Brodie’s of Leyton, a brewery we want desperately to succeed, although the beers aren’t always to our taste. With this beer, they’ve really struck gold — it’s very pale, spritzy and floral and really very much like a cask ale.

We’ll stop going on about Walthamstow now.

Posted in beer reviews, breweries, london | 3 Comments »

Brodie’s Beers

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

The Sweet William Brewery in Leyton

A while back, we were excited to discover that the Sweet William brewery in Leyton/Walthamstow had reopened. Last night, in search of a dartboard for Bailey’s Mum and Dad, we ended up back at the William IV (the brewery tap) and took the opportunity to try a few more “Brodie’s Beers” while they chucked some arrers.

The range of beers on offer is expanding. In fact, it’s getting silly. We’re full of admiration for their adventurousness (Jamaican stout! 7.2% porter!) although, like a lot of smaller breweries operating without state-of-the-art, robotically controlled, artificially intelligent equipment from Munich, they have the odd quality control issue.

In the case of their bottled London Lager, poor quality control created a happy accident — a sour, cloudy beer that should have been called London Geuze. Delicious.

The bottled wheat beer (called simply Wit) was the star of the night, though. It poured with a huge ice-cream-like head that lasted, and lasted, and lasted. We didn’t pick up particularly on Cascade aromas, but they perhaps created some of the authentically continental fruity aromas? It’s a real beer geek’s product — one for everyone who’s ever said: “I love German wheat beer, but I wish it was a bit more bitter.” We got through quite a few.

The photo above is from Brodie’s Beers’ website, which is another thing they’ve done a good job putting together.

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Posted in breweries, london | 8 Comments »

How we research pubs

Monday, May 11th, 2009

We like to get out and about looking for new pubs (although the evil of work has prevented this a bit recently).

Sometimes, we just chance our luck and hope that we’ll stumble on somewhere good. We’ve got quite good at peering through pub windows to see what’s on offer and have become pretty adept at turning on our heels and walking out of pubs that turn out to be rotten once we”re inside.

More often, though, we do a bit of research beforehand, using various resources.

We do have a copy of the Good Beer Guide (2007 edition) which we refer to, but as we’ve mentioned before, its focus on consistently good cask ale, rather than on interesting beers across the board, sometimes leaves us uninspired.  Also, it could be better at clearly flagging pubs in a given area which stock locally brewed beers.

We like Beer in the Evening, but a number of our regular haunts don’t  score above average (usually because a few Internet trolls have dragged the rating down).  But the comments often give us a good idea of whether we’d enjoy the pub or not, regardless of overall rating.

These days, though, we’re most likely to survey our favourite blogs before visiting a new area.  If several bloggers like the same pub, it’s probably worth a look. Over time, we’ve also developed a sense of which bloggers like the same kinds of pubs we do, so we rate their opinions more highly. It’s the next best thing to a personal recommendation.

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Posted in Blogging and writing, breweries, pubs | 6 Comments »

Why so few bottled dark beers?

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

It’s always interesting to see the old adverts that pubs sometimes use to decorate their walls. A poster for Bateman’s Salem Porter from the early 90s caught our eye this week.

We assumed this beer had been discontinued because we’ve never seen it for sale anywhere, unlike their ubiquitous XXXB and Rosey Nosey Christmas beer. But, no, they still make this multiple award winning cask only beer.

Keen as we are to find it on cask one day, it would also be nice if their bottled range (which we can get very easily in corner shops in our bit of London) included this apparently brilliant beer. Perhaps they could drop one of the three very similar golden ales to make room?

Maybe they feel there’s no market? If so, that’s a shame, because we really believe dark beers (milds, porters, stouts, lagers, whatever) are going to be the next big thing. After all, what’s a cooler looking pint than one that’s pitch black?

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Posted in Generalisations about beer culture, bottled beer, breweries, buying beer | 14 Comments »

Table Turning in pubs

Monday, April 20th, 2009

unioncaskipa

We had a nice afternoon in one of our favourite London pubs soured on Saturday when we were more-or-less asked to leave to free up the table for a reservation. When we queried whether it had to be our table, given that there were lots of others without reservation signs on, we got a very stroppy response from the bar manager.

The practice of moving people or hurrying them along to squeeze in a second sitting is annoying even in real restaurants, however sensible it might be from a business perspective. But the questions of whether you should be able to reserve tables in pubs at all is a sensitive debate for many British people — it’s a level of formality that seems somehow to undermine the very idea of what the pub is about.

People in Germany seem to cope with it, but maybe that’s because there the reserved signs appear (often with profuse apologies) four hours in advance of the booking, so you’ve got plenty of time to finish up, or just choose another table. In the Greenwich Union, we were given an hour — hardly enough time to eat desert and have another drink.

In the couple of hours we were there, we enjoyed cask conditioned Meantime IPA (7.5%, and not as good as from a bottle) and gained a new appreciation for the fruity, sherbety draught Meantime Helles (4.1%).

So, the Union continues to be both brilliant and annoying. God knows we love the beer, but it might be a while before we go back.

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Posted in breweries, london, marketing, pubs | 20 Comments »

Cornwall in conclusion

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

castleinn

These are our final words on Cornwal, which we’re sure is becoming a boring topic.

Ten great Cornish beers

  1. St Austell Tribute (cask conditioned).
  2. Marks and Spencer’s Cornish IPA (bottle conditioned).
  3. St Austell Proper Job (bottle conditioned).
  4. St Austell Admiral’s Ale (bottle conditioned).
  5. Sharp’s Chalky’s Bite (bottle conditioned).
  6. Skinner’s Ginger Tosser (cask conditioned; excellent despite the terrible name).
  7. Carn Brea One and All (bottled; not brewed in Cornwall).
  8. St Austell Clouded Yellow (bottle conditioned; a fake Bavarian wheat beer).
  9. Lizard Ales’ An Gof (bottle conditioned; strong dark ale with salt and smoked malt).

Five disappointing Cornish beers

  1. St Austell HSD (cask conditioned and bottled).
  2. St Austell IPA (a Greene King IPA beater — bland and weak).
  3. Sharp’s Doom Bar (didn’t find a good bottle or pint of this anywhere; maybe we should have gone closer to the source and made it to Rock?)
  4. Skinner’s Betty Stoggs (cask conditioned; too much crystal malt and some cardboard).
  5. St Austell Tribute (bottled; dead and flavourless compared to the cask version).

Two decent Cornish pubs

1. The Castle Inn, St Ives — looks a bit rough around the edges (those “drugs will not be tolerated” signs send all the wrong signals) but was full of old men and guest ales when we went on a weekday lunchtime.

2. The Ship Inn, Mousehole — probably cheerier in season, but has a very friendly and efficient — he earwigged when we were deciding what to have and the drinks were lined up on the bar before we got there. Our mates’ kids tell us the Ribena Fruit Shoots were well kept, too.

Next time, we’ll check out the Blue Anchor and the Tinner’s Arms at Zennor.

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Posted in bottled beer, breweries | 1 Comment »

St Austell: Kings of Cornwall

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

staustelllogo

Cornwall is a rotten place if you want to try new beers. In short, if you don’t like St Austell, Sharps or Skinner’s, you’ll have to work hard to find a pint to your taste.

St Austell in particular seem to have the county in a Darth Vader-like grip. Their golden castle logo is on every second pub frontage, and their bottled beers are in every gift shop, off licence and convenience store.

In some ways, it’s not such a bad thing. Tribute is becoming one of our all time favourites and is reliably good in St Austell pubs in Cornwall. Proper Job IPA and Admiral’s Ale are two of Britain’s best bottle-conditioned beers, in our humble opinions.

Sparkler spotters may be interested to know that St Austell beers were served by default with a sparkler in all the St Austell pubs we visited.  So it’s not just a northern thing, then?

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Posted in breweries | 8 Comments »

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