Are you being serbed?

I don’t often get to add a whole new country to the rather long list of countries from which I have sampled one or more beers, and it’s a similar story when it comes to countries I have visited. Therefore, you can imagine my excitement when last week I got to add a country to each list – and not just any old country, but a relatively new one, namely Serbia.

Serbia, with its capital Belgrade, is one of the many countries in Europe with a rather unfortunate history. Dominated by either the Turks or the Austrians for centuries, the country was attacked, sacked, burnt down, rebuilt, reburnt and otherwise molested dozens of times all the way up until 1999, when (hopefully) the last bombs finally fell. Belgrade, meanwhile, went from being a Roman settlement through a fortified town and then on to become the capital of the rather substantial country I was used to seeing on the European maps of my childhood – Yugoslavia. Then bit after bit fell off, until today we’re left with a smallish landlocked country that roughly half the world think is about the size of Kosovo smaller than roughly the other half of the world.

Belgrade itself is a very interesting city, though you do get the feeling that it’s past its heyday – lots of buildings are crumbling and the pavement is anything but even. However, there’s also a vibe and a big bridge in the city that suggests it may be heading back towards former greatness, and what better place to start than to be the main topic of a blog post by the famous beer blogger? Which, incidentally, reminds me nicely that I need to move on to the main topic of this blog: beer.

Belgrade: interesting city, but more gritty than pretty.

I had, of course, done some homework on Belgrade before leaving, so I knew that it would be unwise to expect a huge variety of fantastic beers. However, being both an optimist and a strong believer that I am almost always lucky meant that I attacked the task of drinking my way through the Serbian beer selection with no small amount of enthusiasm. The first problem I encountered was actually buying the stuff – when I got to the supermarket, the selection was remarkably biased towards the big European brands you can buy almost everywhere – Staropramen, Carlsberg, Amstel and all the others you should always try to avoid. However, I managed to find a handful of beers that I thought looked sufficiently local, not least due to the label having cyrillic letters, and put them in the fridge in the small apartment we had rented.

The first two beers I tried were the “Niksicko Pivo” and the “Niksicko Tamno”, a pils and a dark beer, which I subsequently discovered were actually brewed in the Trebjesa brewery in…. Montenegro. Oh well, the beers weren’t that good and the brewery is, unsurprisingly, owned by one of the big bad guys, namely Molson Coors. So on went the quest for my first Serbian beer.

My first ever Serbian beer. It was crap.

Next up was a beer called “Lav”, which is a light industrial lager that made the unfortunate, but not uncommon mistake of insulting the beer blogger by tasting of next to nothing, though when I tried really hard I thought I detected a slightly unpleasant hint of metal. A quick look on the bottle confirmed my suspicion that the brand is owned by Carlsberg, but since it’s brewed in Serbia it was, and remains, the first beer I have ever tried from this country – sadly, it was rubbish.

Much better head and much more taste.

The next two beers were from a brewery in a small town called Valjevo. First down my throat was the “Bajbebcko Tufo”, which turned out to be the most interesting beer of the session – first and foremost it poured with a good head, and then it actually tasted of something. In fact, I thought I detected a hint of smoke on the palate, but it could just have been the cigarette smoke that was present all over Belgrade – not a city for people who can’t stand smokers, by the way. The second beer, called “Atlas Pils”, was therefore a huge disappointment – it tasted as if it was brewed with stuff that shouldn’t go into beer such as maize, rice or armchairs, though to be fair it was slightly better than Lav.

Could be worse - see above.

I didn’t find the final Serbian beer of the holiday until the next day – we had been walking around the very picturesque castle area, and stopped for refreshments at a café when I saw the brand “Jelen”. I wasted an infinitesimal amount of time before ordering a half litre, which duly arrived after a considerably longer waiting period. This draught beer was actually very pleasant - nice hops and a medium body complemented the sunshine and the rising temperatures perfectly. I later tried it in a bottle, where it wasn’t quite the same, and I also discovered that the brewery, called “Apatinska” and founded in 1756, is nowadays owned by – you guessed it – Molson Coors.

Sunshine and draft beer is seldom a bad combination.

Serbian beer was, in conclusion, a lot less interesting than the country itself. My advice is certainly to visit Belgrade some time, and if you fancy a half litre of your favourite tipple, then there are hundreds, if not thousands of bars that will happily take your order and charge you a remarkably small percentage of your holiday budget for the pleasure – roughly €1.50 seemed to be the going rate. So what Belgrade lacks in beer quality you could certainly make up for in quantity without necessarily breaking the bank, which incidentally was exactly what the river was doing as we visited, apparently due to four months’ worth of rain falling in two days just prior to our arrival.

So, go ahead and book your plane, train or bus ticket to Belgrade unless you happen to live there already, and spend a few days checking out this very lively and friendly place where old decommissioned Swiss trams still rumble around on rickety tracks and the floating bars on the river are heaving until the early hours. Most people are happy to speak English, but if you do fancy trying out the local language you could do worse than ordering a beer and shout “живели”, or “Ziveli”, which apparently means “let’s live long”, which surely is something worth drinking a non-fatal amount of beer to.

The bitter taste of..... beer!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the blog! It’s been a memorable winter, mostly because it never arrived, and we now have early summer instead of spring. Summer is definitely one of my top four seasons in which to drink beer, so the arrival of warm days and long evenings has also spurred me into making sure that my fridge is well stocked with bottles of my favourite tipple.

My wife asked me a few weeks ago why I never take her on a guided tour of the different beer styles of the world, and she had a point. We’ve been cycling around Germany several times, visiting dozens of lovely breweries in the process, but there are many beer styles that are hard to come by in Germany which are also worth sampling. Furthermore, by sampling them all as part of one guided tour, perhaps she would learn to appreciate the differences between them, and appreciate the vast variety of styles and tastes a bit more.

As a direct result of this, I wasted no time in waiting a few weeks before finally getting around to inviting a couple of friends over for a big tasting party. I originally had this concept that I’d order in beers from various online beer stores to get a real global selection, but of course the weather was too nice and I left it too late. So, instead, I cycled to the local super-supermarket, the one where they have more beer than you can poke a shaky stick at, whatever that means, and proceeded to buy a decent selection.

I wanted to mix a few typical German beer styles with a couple of typical non-German ones. I quickly chose the former: a Pilsner, a Märzen, a Munich Helles, a Munich Dunkles, a Doppelbock,a Kölsch, a Bock, a Schwarzbier and a Zwickl. That clearly leaves out a dozen or so styles from this country, but I figured there will be other occasions. The international selection wasn’t great, but I was able to find a lambic – an Oude Geuze from Boon no less – as well as an American-style Pale Ale. That meant that we had 11 different ones to drink our way through.

The concept for the evening was straightforward: the participants did not know which beer was served, but they got a list of all the beers with tasting notes from the RateBeer web site. The challenge was then to try and identify the beer on the basis of colour, nose, palate, mouthfeel and luck.

These tasting notes you find online are actually quite interesting. Not seldom do you see people describing beers using phrases like “freshly mown grass”, “old leather”, “not quite ripe raspberries” or “hints of a 15-year old single malt whisky”. Personally, I divide beer tastes into three categories: “malty”, “hoppy” and “yeasty”, which nicely corresponds to three of the four main ingredients in beer (I also use the last ingredient, water, to describe beers sometimes, but usually not in a positive context). Anyway, this didn’t help the participants of the evening very much, so I was forced to elaborate by claiming that malty is a bit like biscuit-y or bready, hoppy a bit like spicy, and yeasty a bit like flowery or fruity. As you can tell, I’m not very good at this myself.

The sheet with tasting notes and a handy pen

Nevertheless, as the evening progressed, it became quite clear that the taste buds had been sharpened, because one beer after another was correctly identified, at least by a majority of the participants. It turns out that individual tastes and colour perceptions vary, so there was considerable discussion and a couple of minor fist fights, but all in all an impressive amount of correct answers were given. Interesting was also the favourite beers of the group – the clear winner was the Belgian Lambic, which considering its sour taste is not one that usually wins out amongst people used to “normal” beer. The clear losers were the bitterest of the beers – the Pilsner and the American Pale Ale in particular.

The winning beer was a bit of a surprise

At the end of the evening, I was challenged to do a blind taste where I was not allowed to even see the beer before drinking it, and although I correctly identified the American Pale Ale, I managed to mistake the Munich Dunkles for a Pilsner. Yes, you read correctly. Even I, the taster of a thousand beers (and some), can make such elementary mistakes. It turns out the science of tasting is heavily influenced by sight, smell, mouthfeel, mood, and, last but not least, how drunk you are. Oh well, better luck next time.

The take-home message from the blog post is: try something new! If you regularly choose to stock up your fridge with the same “safe” selection, you’re missing out on some amazing taste experiences that you probably never knew existed. Even if you think that you don’t like beer very much, perhaps it’s simply because you have never tried the type of beer that suits your particular palate. With online beer shops sprouting up everywhere and beer selection improving in almost every supermarket, you’ll be spoilt for choice unless you live in some beer-forsaken place like Iran. Then, after you’ve stocked up, do a little research on the internet, invite a few friends over and try to taste the beer whilst having fun drinking it. A competitive element like blind tasting adds to the fun, as does having the next day off work.

In conclusion, I've learned a few things about beer. First and foremost, I've reconfirmed that I like pretty much every style of beer on the market. Then, I have observed that people who don't count themselves as particularly into beer can still enjoy drinking it. Finally, I have learned that it's not always easy to know one's arse from one's elbow, even though you perhaps thought you had those body parts figured out years ago. On this happy note I shall say a very merry night to you all - and may your fridges forever be well stocked. Terviseks!

Size matters!

The world had not heard the word “microbrewery” until a couple of dozen years ago. Then, all of a sudden, there were thirteen to the dozen of these things. Nowadays, even obscure villages that nobody’s ever heard of, including the people living there, are sporting microbreweries. What the heck happened?

There was a time when big breweries thought they could rule the world – in particular, there was one very evil, big brewery – let's call it SauronBrew – that kept buying out all the other ones, using the One Recipe (crap lager) to bind them all into the idea that mediocre beers that could be brewed cheaply but sold reassuringly expensively was all you needed in order to be successful.

Then, just as it looked as if SauronBrew would indeed conquer the entire brewing world, one or two enterprising individuals – let’s for simplicity’s sake call them FrodoBeer and SamAle – came along and started to brew on an experimental basis, creating new (or re-creating old) brews that actually tasted like proper beer, or at least tasted like something other than branded industrial crap lager. Scholars disagree exactly where FrodoBeer and SamAle started their fight against SauronBrew, but what is quite clear is that their fight has been crowned by some success, even though the One Recipe has still not been destroyed, but continues to cast its spell over way too many Gollum-ible individuals throughout the drinking world.

OK, enough references to that famous trilogy. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please use either Google or (preferably) your local pub to seek wisdom. An undisputable fact is that during the last 20 or 30 years, several thousand microbreweries have sprung up in most countries in this world, including Iceland, and in the last couple of months I have had the pleasure of tasting the brews from no less than five of these countries: Poland, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Denmark.

It started off with Poland. A country I have written about before, more known for its particularly terrible history than for its brewing heritage, but nevertheless able to brew some decent beers. A good friend of mine, who happens to come from this place, brought back no fewer than four lovely bottles of absolutely superb beer from his latest trip back to his homeland. These were all from breweries I had never heard of or had any chance of pronouncing correctly, yet they had everything a beer lover loves: plenty of taste, a refined balance and a lingering aftertaste – without losing the ability to be refreshing. Poland, be warned: I am coming to visit again – my last visit was almost 10 years ago and I’ve clearly missed some important events in my absence.

Great Polish beer, but try to order it at the bar and see what you get...

Next my lovely wife and I flew to Canada to see the family. Canada is a country more known for its massive size and its abundance of tundra, nothingness and arctic cold than for its brewing heritage. Nevertheless, the revolution that has spawned the creation of several thousand breweries south of the world’s longest unguarded border has also spilled across the very same border, perhaps due to it not being guarded. Microbreweries are popping up everywhere, and nowhere is this more visible than in one of the cutest towns in Canada – Niagara on the Lake – which happens to be my favourite place in Canada because it has no less than 3 breweries and because I got married there (in no particular order).

My mother-in-law does not conform to the stereotypical one that would hate my guts – on the contrary she clearly thinks very highly of my liver since she bought me a brewery tour for Christmas. So we packed into the car (this is, after all, Canada, so there are no buses or trains), and headed off to the Oast Brewery in Niagara-on-the-Lake. This brewery resides in an old barn or something, and despite opening only 18 months ago is astonishingly well run. A knowledgeable and pleasant young lady gave us plenty of samples and showed us the bowels of the brewery where we also got to chat to the Brewmaster, who despite (or perhaps because of) his young age had conjured up a few memorable brews, including a Belgian-inspired Saison and a very nice Pale Ale. Needless to say, we bought both souvebeers and souvenirs.

My Christmas present!

The next brewery was called Silversmith, located in an old church just down the road from Oast. Although the beers were also very drinkable, they lacked some of the subtlety of the Oast ones, and the reception at the brewery was also much less friendly – no brewery tour, only tasting – so it wasn’t quite the same. Still, if you have a few hours to spare in the Niagara region, and you’re not desperate for a wine tour, you could do much worse than coming to Niagara-on-the-Lake to check out its various breweries. There is a third bonus one too.

Later during Christmas I made my way to Norway, a country more known for its fjords, northern lights and astronomical prices than for its brewing heritage. As I have repeatedly commented on this blog, the politicians in this country have done their utmost to eradicate what little brewing heritage there is, but despite this there are a dozen or so microbreweries operating around the country, One of them, Haandbryggeriet, is located in my home town, and I take no small amount of pride in declaring that this is also Norway’s best micro. I had the pleasure of tasting their full range of Christmas beers as well as their “Dark Force”, which is no less than a Russian Imperial Wheat Stout packed with an unbelievable amount of taste, and their “Dobbel Dose”, which is a seriously hoppy beer designed to make you outrageously happy.

The only problem with these lovely beers is that they are very expensive, which means that a lot of bars don’t actually stock them because there are cheaper alternatives from abroad. And so it came to pass that when I went skiing in a fashionable ski resort, I was forced to order brews from Sweden in my own native land. The only alternative was industrial pilsner, and since the actual brews were in fact quite good, I didn’t mind so much – though I forget exactly what I drank. The point is... when a local Norwegian microbrewery is rejected in favour of a Swedish microbrewery situated several hundred kilometres away because the Norwegian one is simply too expensive (this was what the bartender told me), there’s something seriously wrong. I can solve this problem, but I am sadly lacking in dictatorial powers.

Happy blogger with hoppy beer

Finally I was in Denmark, a country known for its brewing heritage, and could once again confirm that the Danes, as with most things, are way ahead of their Scandinavian brethren, both in terms of making their industrial lagers taste of nothing and in terms of making their microbrews taste amazing. I happened to be in Odense, the biggest city on a small island called Fyn, but regardless of where you are in this small, flat country you'll find yourself fairly close to good beers, despite the terrible things the best-known Danish brand has done to the world.

Amazing Danish beer number six-and-half-five-score

In conclusion: I love microbreweries. I love what they’ve done to increase the choices I have, I love the fact that they’re not afraid of experimenting with new recipes, and I love the fact that they're making their brews taste like real beer. Not all of them are equally good, and eventually the lesser ones will disappear, but as long as the good ones keep supplying my fridge and the bars I go to when I travel, I don't mind. So let's all adopt the following new year's resolution in time for the Chinese New Year: next time you're in a fancy restaurant or bar and have the choice of a hundred fantastic wines and one crappy beer, demand justice and a microbrew. On this challenging note I shall say farewell and wish you all a very beery 2014. Sjabbeduings!

Hoppy days are here again

After several excursions to faraway lands I thought the time was ripe to return to matters closer to home, and the topic of this blog post is therefore a lovely plant that to a greater or lesser extent is present in every serious beer in production today. You can’t smoke it, you can’t eat it, you can’t make love to it, but you definitely can drink it. I’m talking about one of the key ingredients in beer, in fact one of the four allowed under the German purity law from 1516. Known as Humulus Lupulus in Latin and as Humle in the other world language (Norwegian), in English it ain’t skips, it ain’t jumps, but it sure is hops.

To most people, the humble hop is something that’s known to be present in beer, but isn’t really a great concern when beer is being purchased. Whereas the sugar or fat content of most foodstuffs is almost always listed in considerable detail on the label, most drinkers don’t know, or don’t care, what particular hops go into their favourite brew, or in what amounts. The fact that the vast majority of breweries can’t be bothered to print this basic information on the label clearly does not help. In fact, quite a few of the world’s biggest brewers would rather keep this information secret, partly to protect their ancient recipes, but mostly to avoid having to reveal how little they actually bother to add. This is just plain wrong, and has to change right now. I suggest that you all write to your local Member of Parliament, Senator, Governor or Dictator and ask him or her to change the consumer laws immediately. Whilst we wait for this long-overdue change, I will supply you with some mildly interesting facts.

Hops are the spices of beer. Whereas malt provides the body, hops add that little extra that makes all the difference. First and foremost, the refreshing bitterness in the beer comes from the hops, and the general rule is that the more the brewer adds, the bitterer the beer will be. Additionally, this wonderful plant increases the beer’s microbiological stability – in other words, acts as a preservative – and stabilizes the foam to boot. However, the story does not end there. There are a huge number of different varieties that impart subtly different spicy flavours in the beer, and many skilful brewers use a combination of hops to arrive at the desired taste profile of the finished product, much in the same way a master chef blends herbs and spices to perfect a recipe.

No prizes for guessing what this plant's called in Norwegian

Hops are grown in many temperate climates around the world, and some of the most famous hop varieties are named after the region from which they originate: Zatec (also known by its German name Saaz), Hallertau and Tettnang are some of the best known. The fact that the biggest hop growing regions are found in the south of Germany is evident whenever you watch a big sporting event, such as downhill skiing, from this region. Whenever the athlete passes by, the audience will start to scream "hop hop hop", which is a direct encouragement for the athlete to go faster since the top prize is typically a half litre of the hoppiest local beer. Well, that's what I like to think, anyway.

In the last few years, decades of research and development has gone into creating new hop varieties, resulting in lots of new ones – many from the New World – where unusual flavour components dominate, resulting in exciting tastes such as pineapple, citrus, black pepper and aniseed, to name but a few. Together, all of these varieties can be used by adventurous brewers to create crazy concoctions that taste very unlike the standard stuff you knew you had to learn to like when you were a spotty teenager.

With such an array of incredible tastes available to the brewers of the world, it may come as a surprise to you that the vast majority of the beer on the shelves in shops and bars contains very little. There is actually a measurement scale for the bitterness of beer, known as the International Bitterness Units (IBUs). A bland, international mass market lager typically has only 5-10 IBUs, whereas a good pilsner from a worthwhile brewery typically has around 30. Pale ales are higher still, and then we have the IPAs and double-IPAs where the IBU scale is being pushed towards the 100 mark. Some of the most extreme variants should be treated with care, as you’re unlikely to taste anything else for the next couple of weeks after finishing the bottle.

Now why am I suddenly writing about this topic? Well, the reason is that my local supermarket has started stocking a new beer, and it may not surprise you to hear that it’s a tasty, bitter one. What may surprise you is that this beer comes from one of the biggest breweries in Germany, and what may actually shock you is that, for once, I am going to write something positive about a big brand. The brewery is Warsteiner, and the beer is simply called “Herb” – which is actually German for bitter, dry or tart. It seems that what’s happened is that someone high up in the brewery’s hierarchy decided that the general public is getting a little bit tired with the same anonymous pilsners all the time. The standard Warsteiner is drinkable enough – if it wasn’t, they’d have to export it all – but tastes more or less the same as the other 6 or 7 major brands in Germany. The solution was astonishingly simple: double the amount of hops, change the colour of the label to green and attach the “Herb” brand, and hey presto – we have hop-off. Having tried not one, but eleven whole bottles of this stuff I can attest to the fact that it’s a vast improvement, and I hope that other brewers will take notice and follow suit.

This turned out to be quite a lecture! You now know more about hops than you ever knew was worth knowing, presumably because you mistakenly believed that beer was a simple drink. Well, we can all be wrong from time to time (though I’m not sure I’m right about that), so you can do a couple of things to make amends. For example, the next time you’re in a bar or a pub, ask the barman where the different beers are on the IBU scale. Then ask him what particular hops go into the different brews. There’s little point asking a third question since you will have been thrown out by now, but you have made a start: slowly but surely the hop-ignorant masses will learn, absorb and start to care, at which point the world will truly be a much hoppier place. Now go and have a beer. Cheers!

Alt for Norge!

Those of you who understand some Norwegian will have no problems deciphering the title of this blog post, whereas those of you who don’t may think I’ve gone mad. What is he on about, this weird blogger from the northern lands who has settled amongst the Germanic peoples in the centre of Europe? Well, dear bleaders (that’s blog readers in one word to save time, but since I have to then spend dozens of words explaining what the heck it means then perhaps it would have been better to write it out properly in two words in the first place), it will all be revealed in due course. Read on, and ye shall learn.

My last blog post was a big rant about the forthcoming Norwegian election. Well, the election came, said “screw you, Norway!”, and left. As predicted, a large number of parties are now represented in the rather modest parliament building in Oslo known as the Storting, and, as also predicted, they all still hate beer. The only interesting thing is that the on-going negotiations to form a government between four parties covering the political spectrum from around the middle to pretty right-wing, involve the party that hates beer the most and the one that hates beer the least. I suggested that they resolve their differences by having a giant beer drinking competition, but apparently they don’t take an emigrated Norwegian who blogs in English from Germany seriously, despite all the dozens of readers of his blog.

Anyway, back to the title. “Alt for Norge” is actually the Norwegian King’s slogan, and most gullible Norwegians (i.e. most Norwegians) are lead to believe that it means something like “Everything for Norway”, seemingly not very contentious for someone who’s the nominal head of state and descends from a long line of Brits, Danes and other non-Norwegians. The problem is that I have, since deciding that beer is the greatest drink on the planet and moving to Germany, discovered the truth about the slogan: it actually translates as “Alt for Norway”. And we’re not talking about any old “alt”, we’re talking about the famous beer from Düsseldorf: Alt, which is short for Altbier. Clearly, what the Norwegian king really wants is for the Düsseldorf breweries to export more of their stuff to Norway. And, to be fair, who can blame him?

I’ve briefly mentioned Altbier before in my now legendary blog post about Cologne. As I mentioned there, a very strong rivalry exists between the people of these neighbouring cities along the Rhine, especially when it comes to beer. Order an Altbier in Cologne and you’ll end up in the Rhine with something heavy tied to your feet. Order a Kölsch in Düsseldorf and you’ll end up on the train to Cologne, and by “on the train” I mean on top of the train with the overhead wire around your neck. It’s not the type of mistake you make twice.

Füchschen - "small fox" - a very nice, tasty Alt.

Personally, I like them both – of course I do. Both are top-fermented, so in English terms that means they’re ales, and both tend to be served in rather small, straight glasses when you order them in the pub. However, that’s where the similarities end, because while Kölsch is light in colour, slightly fruity, hoppy and supremely refreshing, Alt is fairly dark, malty, full-bodied and supremely satisfying. The two beer styles are, in other words, very different indeed, even though they originate only a few dozen miles from each other.

Düsseldorf has, just like Cologne, a bunch of brewery pubs in the city centre where you can try the local specialty, and these tend to be a lot better than the stuff churned out by the big breweries that have been bought out by you-know-who (no, not Voldemort - the other, more evil one). To truly enjoy Altbier, you have to either get a good friend from Düsseldorf to bring a few bottles along, or simply go there yourself. Düsseldorf may have a really funny name, especially since “dorf” means village, but it’s a nice enough city with an old town, a great big river, a dodgy airport and a lot of pubs. When you’re wandering around looking for good beer, you may want to look for “Füchschen”, “Uerige” and “Schumacher”, all of which are very good and currently well represented in my fridge, unlike the political parties of Norway.

Uerige Alt - darker and maltier than Füchschen, and my favourite.

I don’t know which of these pubs is the Norwegian king’s favourite, but I guess it can’t be that hard to figure it out – just look for the old geezer sat in a corner having a great time with a crown on his head and a couple of discreet body guards. Thinking of our dear king, I am certainly of the opinion that Norway should ditch democracy and its overpopulated parliament and reinstate the good old absolute monarchy. Then, instead of the large number of crappy political parties in the Storting, there could just be one hell of a party with loads of beer. The king could then change his slogan every week or so – “Kölsch for Norway”, “Pils for Norway”, “IPA for Norway”, and so on – and I think it’s safe to say that the general population would be a lot hoppier than what’s currently the case. On this hopful note I shall once again bid you farewell and wish you all a fantastic time in Düsseldorf, and please give my beeriest regards to the king when you bump into him. Skål!