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Dark beer in Dortmund

Dortmund is one of those places whose name is famous amongst beer geeks, but  where it’s hard to find any very exciting beer.

We did track down Hoevel’s Original, though, which we found interesting. It’s another one of those German local brands which has its own town sewn up but which you don’t see anywhere else. Every building, bus stop and billboard in town has one of their glossy adverts featuring a seductive nymph.

Their brewery tap (see Ron’s pub guide for details) dishes up the beer in perfect nick. It’s served in a custom glass (we love custom glasses) which they call a ‘Victoria’ — tall, and the shape of a trumpet bell. To all intents and purposes, it’s an alt bier, being brown, nutty, fruity and altogether very like a smooth, tasty best bitter. Not really worth going out of your way for — the alts in Duesseldorf are better — but, as they say in German adverts, “Mmmmmm…. lecker.” That is, tasty.  There’s also a cloudy ‘zwickl’, which was a bit home-brewy.

In contrast, we also tried one of the local ‘premium pilsners’ which, in the case of most German brands, is a euphemism for ‘very bland lager’. Brinkhoff’s No 1 is probably the most boring beer we’ve ever had. It had less flavour and body than tap water. Worse than Cruzcampo. Sheesh.

Our holiday arrangements were pretty chaotic this time so we stupidly failed to pick up on Bergmann as recommended by Adeptus. If you are going to Dortmund/Muenster or anywhere in that region, make sure you check his blog before you go!

5 replies on “Dark beer in Dortmund”

Perhaps I am being overly cycnical, but when a company puts out a product with the moniker “premium” or “excellent” then I am instantly dubious as to their claims.

Beer Nut – spooky! I like your review, and agree about the Irish red.

VA – that premium thing has put us off trying quite a few german beers in the last couple of days. On the last trip we would have probably tried any new beer, but this time round we’ve spotted a new beer, thought “shall we?”, seen the spiel about how premium it claims to be and then gone off to the Christmas market to drink gluehwein instead.

Brinkhoff’s is muck. You’ll notice I haven’t bothered writing about most of the northern pils, but maybe I should as a public health service (although there are some that can be tasty, but I haven’t correlated that against the “premium” strapline :)).

Hövels, on the other hand, became a favourite of mine in the first few months living in Muenster after my office buddy introduced me to it. Love the small glass too. I must get crate in before Christmas…

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