Beer And Beer Drinking

The best beers are German, oder?

Nice ones include Krombacher (think someone already mentioned this one), Berliner Kindl and weissbiers like Erdinger and Schöfferhofer (v nice with banana syrup). You can also get a wonderful beer in Berlin called Berliner Weisse which is served in a kind of dessert glass with either red (raspberry) or green (??) syrup. The best one by far, however, is Rothaus Tannenzäpfle - brewed in Bavaria by a state-owned brewery, or so someone told me. Outside Germany, Lapin Kulta (from Finland) is excellent but it's really all about those purity laws. Even Beck's tastes good in Germany.
www.bier.de

just spotted on bier.de

Ein Mann ohne Bier ist wie ein Rasenmäher ohne Gras.
(A man without beer is like a lawnmower without grass)
And with mottos like that, it's no wonder the stuff is so bloody good.

mmm beer!

for me its got to be either Erdinger or Schneider Weisse at the moment.

Monteiths!

i was in Antwerp last summer, that was quality.

Munich next month, any recommendations?

incidentally, turtles - who may not post on Dissensus anymore, i fear - but i wanted to second something they said, having in the meantime (this thread is, what, four years old?) now tasted the Granville Island wares at their brewpub in Vancouver, good stuff.

not a bad scoop



i got much love for Schneider Weisse and Saison Dupont as mentioned below.

love a good gueuze

Scott, recommend me a few classy beers, preferrably not too hard to get hold of in the UK, so that I can choose one to treat myself with at the weekend. Pwease and fank you.

Of the few 'new world beers' I have tasted most have been very mainstream. I really dislike Budweiser, Miller, Red Stripe (Jamaican budweiser), some of the big Canadian ones- they all have a sickening taste to me. And they taste distinctively 'american'. Do you reckon there is a reason for this. Could it be the indiginous barley & hops that are very different from the ones in Europe?

i love orval and boon gueuze more than most things. coopers sparkling ale is a really nice aussie beer, and from the english, i really like exmoor beast - although this is fairly mentalizing.

In a half-assed attempt to rep my ends, I feel obliged to mention



which is both tasty, local, and available at the totally ludicrous price of 99p a pint in the big Edinburgh Wetherspoons. Not a fan of the chain by any means, but god damn that is a good deal.

I went to a beer festival a few months back in an attempt to broaden my British Ale horizons, but by the time we arrived on the second day they only had 4 beers left. Bit of a blunder that.

Yes yes yes, you can't go wrong with the Deuchars! Spoons have it on the 99p over here as well.

4linehaiku said:

In a half-assed attempt to rep my ends,

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Scottish beer seems to have been getting good lately - among others Black Isle and Brewdog are both doing great things. The latter particularly deserve respect for being a bit energetic and modern in their approach in a scene where the house design style is either nonspecific nostalgia or jokey innuendo.

Caledonian Brewery has some decent beers.

That Caledonian brewery is the reason why Edinburgh smells like it does. Is it the only city that owes it's odour to beer brewing. Does Northampton reek of Carlsberg?

I prefer this one to Deuchars.



Unfortunately it's shit in bottles, so you'll have to get it in a pub. But that represents a widely availiable beer that a city can be proud of. Ditto Young's London Ale. It's not amazing but it does the job nicely. Again though its terrible in bottles.

This is the beer that represents Belfast, and it is indistinguishable from Tennnts, Carlsberg, etc. How I wish real ale existed in Ireland to even a fraction of what it does in England

Tentative Andy said:

Caledonian Brewery has some decent beers.

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yeah i quite like XPA and seems like we all agree on Deuchars.

incidentally, both the gueuzes that Luka mentioned up-thread, the Girardin, and the Cantillon, are top-notch.
i like Drie Fonteinen's Oude Gueuze and a Beersel one (but there again i grew up about a mile from these two places, which are pretty good for sampling things.)

and a big up to Immryr for all they mention, in particular top boy Orval. if Luka comes back, he will definitely rep for Coopers!

Slothrop's tips are choice, nice one

as for Owen's question, i don't know, but i suspect it's nothing to do with certain regional ingredients. all big name lager producers are fairly skilled at turning out a similar product, no, the same arid stuff?
i mean Bud has a lot of rice put in it (hence why Tsingtao tastes similar, as that has quite a lot of rice too), think it's just more a lowest common denominator thing.

that Roosters picture i put up is a north Yorkshire micro-brewery and like a lot of British craft brewers often use north american hops etc, and you get whole worlds of different flavours off them.

Andy, given you're in Glasgow, and given Slothrop sounds like the go-to for Scots ale, those caveats notwithstanding, if you can get any Isle of Skye bottles in your local supermarket, try for some of them.

otherwise, say, six bottled beers that are far from obscure

- Titanic Stout, nice example of the stout style from central England

- De Koninck, classic biscuity Belgian pale ale, seasonally appropriate

- Duvel, very strong Belgian pale ale, bound to be in most national supermarket beer aisles

- Joseph Holt of Manchester do some good bottles

- Coniston Bluebird is a fine Cumbrian bitter

- if you can get hold of this German smoked beer



as a caveat i should say there are an awful lot of great bottles being turned out by independent breweries in southern England (eg Immryr on the Exmoor tip), but, just thought it would be an idea to mention, re the British ones, about a few nearer where you live


a fun thing to do - and there's hardly any difference i think but my taste buds are going, i guess - is which of the classic Czech pils you prefer, eg the original Urquell, Budvar, Staropramen and so on, all those three certainly in many shops.

Awesome, thanks for that. There's a off-licence called The Cave by Kelvinbridge that is quite good for stocking those rare-ish Euro import beers as well as British microbrewed ones, so will have a look there.
Yeah the Skye brewery beers are pretty great, quite possibly our best export . The pub where I had my first job had them all on tap rotationally; Hebridean Gold is prob my favourite, though I also have to give a big up to Cuillin Beast -7%!

cities exemplified by the one jar

Brains is very much the cask scoop of choice in Cardiff.

that said, a good mate of mine lived in Cardiff for a year or so, big ale man, and he doesn't really rate them at all, apart from one of their specials.

i love Rev James and Bread of Heaven myself.

7% wowee

oh and having got back from Munich where the beer of choice was indeed Schneider Weisse, pretty prevalent.

the Scottish shilling beers are fascinating.

Ooh, I'd forgotten all about this thread!

owengriffiths said:

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'Snice, for sure, but the sweetness would put me off having a session on the stuff.

owengriffiths said:

How I wish real ale existed in Ireland to even a fraction of what it does in England

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I have actually seen a (few) Irish real ales in pubs in England, as it happens - Dwan, whose Black Pearl stout is a proper beauty, Carlow which I think does an excellent wheat beer and also Biddy Early. I remember red ale featuring strongly. Mmm, good stuff. Though having said that those three could be all the real ale breweries in the Republic for all I know. There's a couple in NI as well though, isn't there?

Scott is OTM about Rauchbier...bizarrely I found that they sell the stuff at Bloomsbury bowling alley in London, and got the people I was with suitably intrigued by it when I was there at a rockabilly night a few months back.

Urquell is great in bottles, but if you can find it on tap (which is rare) it's sublime. And it's not often I say that about a lager.

they have Urquell on tap in the crown and greyhound in Dulwich. I've seen it somewhere in the north as well. If only I could recall where...

edit: i mean north london... they probably have it in The Albany opposite great portland street station.