Categories
homebrewing

Walk, Don't Run

Fermentation Tank

This week, we were asked (not for the first time) if we had any plans to open a brewery.

Who doesn’t have plans? Plans are exciting. When we’re wandering the clifftops, we spend hours talking about possible brewpubs, breweries and business models.

Will any of them ever be realised? Probably not.

We’ve tasted too many beers brewed by people running before they can walk — sour, chalky, nasty-smelling concoctions that we’d have poured down the drain if they’d come out of our plastic homebrew fermenting bucket, but which people have had the nerve to bottle and sell. For real money.

Either they know it’s crap and they’re selling it anyway (cynical) or, worse, they really can’t tell how bad it is. No-one who’s not fussy about beer ought to be brewing.

When we brew at home, although our beer is increasingly drinkable, it’s rarely the strength or colour we were expecting, and we’ve never successfully replicated a recipe. In the unlikely event that we suddenly find ourselves in possession of the kind of capital necessary to start even a modest-sized brewery, we wouldn’t want to. Not yet.

Two of our best idle dreams c.2007: getting the then disused brewery at the back of the William IV in Leyton going again, and buying the rights to the Truman name to take advantage of the free advertising all over London. Heh.

Categories
Germany

Frankfurt, Passau and Cologne (again)

We’ve been on our travels! We’d normally announce an upcoming holiday here and ask for tips but, on this occasion, we spent a hectic, disorganised week before we went away in our new favourite German city of the mind: Bad Planning.

So, just to whet your appetite for what we’re afraid to say is going to be a long series of posts recounting every detail of our jaunt, here’s what we made of Frankfurt, where we stopped over for a few hours on the way out.

Zu den 12 Apostel, at Rosenburger Strasse, just north of the centre, like most German brewpubs, offers a cloudy helles and a dunkles. The helles had slightly more perceptible hops than others we’ve had, and was refreshing enough, but we’d be lying if we said it was anything special. We were pleased to find the dunkles didn’t taste sugary and unfermented as so many do, but it certainly would have benefited from more hops. Or any hops.

Any glamour these beers had was entirely because they were the first of the holiday, and those always taste good.

The food was perhaps the most interesting thing: lots of the menu was southern slavonic. We were also impressed that they’d created a pretty convincing beer garden in what was, in effect, an alleyway round the back of an office block.

Tandleman’s also been in Frankfurt recently, we note.

Nächste halt: Passau.

Categories
Germany

That's never pils!

groninger

Groeninger Brauhaus is Hamburg’s other brewpub. It offers a Bavarian-style wheat beer (surprise, surprise) and a pils, which at least makes a change from a zwickl.

The weird thing is that, without getting too into style guide territory, the pils simply isn’t one. It’s brown, sweet and has very low carbonation. It’s ok, a bit like a bland alt bier. If we were to try to describe the flavour we’d say it had some soft caramel, but that’s about it — there’s certainly no hop character.

These brewpubs are often are huge but this one really takes the biscuit. It was a cross-country hike to get to the loo and there were room after room with tables reseved for 35 or more. Some tables were in huge old barrels, which was cool. And, of course, several roast pigs on the counter.

Categories
Germany

We've had blander beer

albrechthamburg

The Brauhaus Joh. Albrecht is just behind the Rathaus in Hamburg. It’s in an extremely modern building which looks like the head office of an insurance company from outside. Inside, though, it’s actually very cosy with low lighting and thousands of Christmas baubles hanging from the ceiling in garlands.

The other thing that put a smile on our faces when we entered was an overwhelming and delicious aroma of mashing malt. It’s one of those smells, like fresh coffee or baking bread, that makes you feel contented. More brewpubs should pump it out.

The beers themselves were just about OK. Messing is a pale, cloudy lager, described as hoppy on the menu. It really isn’t. Like the Brauberger beer in Luebeck, it was yeasty in a good way, but without a huge amount else going on.

The Christmas beer, Nickel, was a dark brown, sweet malty brew with a full body and a thick tan head. It reminded us of a slightly fizzier, less fruity, less bitter Old Peculier. In other words, interesting, but not one for the ages.

Kupfer, a dunkel, was the blandest of all — a sweeter version of the Messing tasting mostly of caramel.

Finally, their weizen was a big, cartoon-like Bavarian wheat beer with a huge bubblegum flavour which, to our mind, made it the best of a medicore bunch.

Nonetheless, all were way better than Brinkhoff’s No 1, our benchmark for blandness in German beer.

Categories
Germany

At least one decent beer in Luebeck

braubergerluebeck

Brauberger in Luebeck is a brewpub in a lovely old building in a quaint part of the old town. There are various implications that the brewery and the pub are pretty ancient although, when you get down to it, the beermats suggest it was founded in 2006.

Nonetheless, the keller is very cosy and their one beer, a hazy yellow zwickl served in tall  straight glasses with handles, is actually pretty good. It’s definitely a step up from the standard modern German brewpub fare. It has a distinctly yeasty flavour but in a good way — refreshing and slightly fruity rather than overpowering and dusty. A mild bitterness at the end makes it a lively accompaniment to the hearty food.

In short, don’t go out of your way to try it, but if you’re in Luebeck, Brauberger is definitely worth a visit.

Luebeck itself is a fascinating and sometimes beautiful place, if a little quiet after the Danish coach parties have departed. If, like us, you sometimes visit places for reasons other than beer, we’d recommend a night or two.