We’ve noticed this week that a couple of bottled German beers on sale in the UK — including Franziskaner wheat beer — list only malt, yeast and hop extract in their ingredients lists.
It’s quite common for even decent beers to contain hop extract as well as hops to add a bit of pep, but is it going too far to use nothing but?
It makes us feel a bit uneasy.
A hop flower (from Wikimedia Commons, photographed by LuckyStar).
York Brewery occasionally produce beers using only a single varieties of hop. Their latest effort, Perle (4%), uses only that famous German ‘noble’ hop. The pump clip is adorned with German flags, and it’s hard not to suspect that the beer was inspired by a trip to Duesseldorf.
The fact that only one type of hop is used meant that we were able to focus on and appreciate its coppery, dry flavour and retrospectively recognise it as one we’d come across in various German beers. We’re learning, one hop at a time.
York are to be applauded for this kind of thought-provoking experiment. But don’t get the idea it was a purely intellectual exercise: hops aside, it’s a really tasty beer.
Our empty polypins, looking almost as rough as we did after the party
We’ve been experimenting with serving our homebrew from polypins for a while now. After some initial confusion, we’ve nailed the process and can now turn out pretty convincing “cask conditioned” beer at our parties.
At this weekend’s bash, we were able to go one step further and offer two variations on the same beer — one straight, and one with extra hops in the cask.
The result was remarkable, with the beers scarcely resembling each other. It helped that we added a good few handfuls of unsubtle cascade hops, which always have a pretty intense effect on the aroma and flavour of a beer.
Do any commercial breweries flog almost the same beer under two names using a neat trick along these lines, we wonder?
Polypins are easy once you know to (a) leave them be, even when they’re swelling up in a disturbing fashion; (b) put them somewhere cold for a bit so the gas gets absorbed into the beer and (c) tilt them so you don’t have to tip them at the end to get the last of the beer out. Thanks to everyone who gave us advice on this in the past few months.
Both variants of the Brooklyn/Schneider Hopfen Weisse in their beautifully designed bottles
We’ve been wanting to try this ever since we first read about it. We’ve often wondered what a hoppier Weizen would be like, and we were also intrigued by the collaboration idea. Brooklyn and Schneider worked together to produce “a blend of Bavarian craftmanship and American ingenuity”. We managed to get our paws on both the Brooklyn variant and the Schneider version, and thought it would be fun to compare the two.
Unfortunately, the Brooklyn version exploded all over our carpet. What we managed to catch looked pretty odd. It was extremely yeasty, and an odd green-yellow colour, possibly from the dry hopping. It tasted… well, pretty foul, actually. Like hop tea. We’re assuming that we got an off bottle. It was all hefe, with maybe a bit of hop dust floating around in it for good measure.
We turned back to better-behaved Schneider variant, hoping it would taste as good as it looked. It didn’t really work either, sadly. The hop flavours clash with the banana-yeast and make it quite difficult to drink — we found it rather soapy and harsh.
Nonetheless, we’d encourage people who haven’t tried it to give it a go, especially if you’ve a high tolerance for bitterness. It’s the kind of beer people will either love or hate.
Update: Boak has decided it ‘tastes like rhubarb — it makes your teeth go funny’. Make of that what you will.
A hop flower (from Wikimedia Commons, photographed by LuckyStar).
Can you drink a beer and guess which hops are in it?
We are the first to admit that we are still learning our way around beer. One thing we’ve been working on is our ability to spot varieties of hops in beer — useful when you want to brew your own version of a particular beer, or borrow some element of its flavour or aroma. Or when you want to show off to other beer geeks.
So far, we’ve got the basic stuff sorted.
But that’s about it as far as our own senses go. We usually have to resort tog to scouring the internet for expert analysis and comments from loose-lipped brewers.
If you’ve got super tastebuds and or a super nose, were you born that way? Or did you train yourself? Any tips would be much appreciated…
The back of a 53 bus, featuring the hoppy Selkent logo
Selkent is a bus company that operates routes in South London and Kent.
Sat in a traffic jam on the top deck of a bus last week, I noticed for the first time that their logo includes some lovely Kentish hops.
More evidence of beer obsession.
Bailey
The cap from a bottle of Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle beer
This month’s Session has been set by Lootcorp 3.0 and is on the subject of German beer.
…the goal is to dig a little deeper and write about how German beers and beer culture have worked their way into your life (and hearts)…
We’ve already blogged about this — our conversion to good beer took place in Germany, so it’s a pretty key part of our beer-drinking lives. We try to go there at least once a year, and I’ve even started learning German so I can have all those fascinating conversations with Franconian brewers about their mashing schedules.
It’s a bit easier to get a regular dose of German beer culture in London, now that Zeitgeist has opened up. So to celebrate this month’s session, so we popped along there.
Zeitgeist is aimed at homesick Germans, so the beer list reflects what Germans actually drink. Therefore most of what’s on offer is the usual mass-produced, nationally available lagers — Bitburger, Warsteiner, Koenig Pils etc. In a shrewd move, reflecting the tendency of Germans to boast about their local beer, they also offer a number of big “regionals” – eg Gaffel Koelsch (on tap), Schloesser Alt and Tannen-Zaepfle, by the Baden-Wuerttenberg state-owned brewery.
Last night, we had a little virtual tour round Germany. We started in the former DDR, with Wernesgruener, before moving to the far north-east west for some Jever (seriously cheesy website, BTW). I don’t think we’ve actually blogged about this before, which is surprising, given how much we drink it. There’s just something about its bitter kick that makes us come back for more. Tastes a bit like hay, in a good way.
Gaffel Koelsch went down well. While it’s not our favourite koelsch, we prefer drinking this one fresh out of the barrel than drinking a tired bottle of a better one. It’s always refreshing, and drinking it next to Wernesgruener and Jever brings out the malty, fruity flavours.
Then down to Baden-Wuerttenburg, where we sampled Eichbaum and Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle. The Eichbaum was pretty dull (too much hopfenekstrakt and no hops?) and the TZ was OK. When we were on holiday in Heidelberg, we drank it there and noted that it’s a lot fruitier than other pils. It’s drinkable enough, but really not terribly exciting, unless you’re from the area and feeling homesick.
Finally, into Bavaria for Schlenkerla Maerzen. Mmmmm. Frazzles and fruit. Does it for me every time.
Boak
Wired magazine has several full page advertisements for upmarket beer in its current issue, including Michelob’s range of fancy beers (maerzen, wheat, pale ale and porter).
This, coupled with their recent coverage of the hop shortage, suggests that the marketing men, at least, perceive a link between geekiness and the appreciation of beers other than American light lagers.
The Michelob ad is interesting. It talks about the particular malts used (with pictures) and explains how they’re responsible for the colour and flavour of the beer. In other words, they announce that beer, just like computers, music, TV, film and collecting plastic action figures, is something you can be geeky about.
They’re not advertising to beer geeks — they’re trying to create new ones loyal to their brand.
This post over at Appellation Beer made us think again about beer’s status in the world.
A lot of people see it as a basic right in life. They get annoyed when it’s taxed and/or the price goes up.
Unfortunately, it’s a heavily processed product. Yes, beer is a processed food. And like all processed food, it is very energy intensive. Think about the energy used in growing barley; malting the barley; mashing the barley; throwing most of it away and boiling the remaining liquid; chilling the remaining liquid; moving, storing and distributing the the finished product, sometimes to the opposite side of the world.
And then, nature takes a funny turn for a year or two, malt and hops go up in price, and we suddenly find that what once we drank as a cheap alternative to clean water has become an expensive luxury.
So, beer really ought to be expensive, and we probably ought to consume it more thoughtfully.
What options do the brewers and distributors have for keeping the price down? Reducing the quality, for one. Or squeezing the people in the supply chain, as in this depressing tale from Tyson.
Personally, we’d rather pay a fiver for our pint than damage the planet, or people’s livelihoods. Is that what it’s going to come to?
For a lot more on related topics, from a more learned writer than us, see Chris O’Brien’s Beer Activist blog.
Bailey
Wouldn’t you be excited if you were on holiday in a country not renowned for its beer, and you came across this sign?
We're a pair of beer geeks who live in London in the UK. Bailey is a man, Boak is a lady. We've been writing this beer blog since April 2007 and it's taken us all over Britain and Europe in pursuit of the perfect pint.
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