Can I plead a dog lapped up my beer homework?
I just plain missed The Session #21 and the obviously provocative topic: Name you favorite beer.
I was prepared to pick that magic, but now I don’t have to because Friday came and went while I was tracking down still more Italian small-batch beers in Venice.
See what everybody was writing — sometimes picking a favorite, often times not — in Matt’s roundup.
Ray and Mel at the Bathtub Brewery have the roundup for The Session #20: Beer Memories. Lots of, no surprise, memories (old and new).
Meanwhile, Matt has laid down a challenge for The Session #21 on Nov. 7. He wants you to pick your favorite beer, and expects more than just a name. He wants a solid review.
Before you say I don’t have a favorite beer or how do I pick just one. I say BS everyone has a favorite. There will always be a beer that you would grab above all others, your go to beer per say. The one beer you will almost always choose over the others. When I get asked that question I almost always say I don’t have one but then when I came up with this topic I realized I did and I know you do too.
I’m not sure I do. Do you?
Remember, participating is easy. Create a post on Nov. 7 and send Matt a link.
This is my contribution to The Session #20, Beer and Memories, hosted by the Bathtub Brewery. Head there for a complete recap.
Schafferhof-Zoigl.
I drank it twice today, and I may never have it again. But if I do taste it I will be instantly back in Neuhaus, located in a bit of northern Bavaria known as the Oberfplaz. “Nobody in Germany comes here,” a Munich resident told us at the Teicher, run by the Otto Punzmann family, where we had another Zoigl beer. We were drinking, he explained, in an area lost to many Germans, between the north and Bavaria, between Prague and and the more prosperous west.
A good place to be on German Reunification Day, a national holiday and the only day of the year all the Zoigl breweries of Neuhaus (plus a few others – seven different in town, more if you wanted to drive a few miles) pour their beers. What the blank is Zoigl? Not a style, thank goodness. But beer from a community brewery that’s located in Neuhaus a short walk from the house breweries where the beer ferments, is lagered and served.
During the rest of the year each house brewery takes its own turn serving beer one weekend a month, usually Friday through Monday. In 2007 the breweries began what could turn into something wonderful. They all open on a single day.
Apparently the first round was a success, because sometime before 6 o’clock in the morning in New York (noon here) we pulled into the village of Neuhaus and saw cars lined up to the edge of town. The first brewery serving Zoigl was right ahead, the community brewhouse around the corner.
Each house brewery makes a beer to is own recipe. Schafferhof was the first we had, and our favorite, as if that matters. By chance it was our first, by design our last — where we enjoyed it with a feast that cost us €11.60 (including beer) and would have been at least three times that on Munich.
The 20-kilometer drive back to our pension was as spectacular as the trip up from southwest of Regensburg on Thursday. As was the journey to Neuhaus in the morning. I should have stopped when we left Neuhaus, and might have were it not for a Mercedes looming in the rear view mirror, to take a picture. The hills were laid out below us in layers, two different villages with churches at their center surrounded by bright green fields and dark green trees.
Fall has arrived, but gently. Yellow and red leaves blend with a lot of green, and the red flowers in planters on the second and third stories of white washed houses perfectly complement red tile roofs.
That’s what I’ll remember should I come across a beer that reminds me of Schafferhof Zoigl.
But back to that conversation at the Teicher. The Munich resident made it clear why some Germans embrace Zoigl when I asked him why he decided to come to Neuhaus — he and 10 friends made the journey via train. He looked around the room, beer and and conversation brimming everywhere.
“This is tradition,” he said.
Bathtub Brewery has announced the topic for Session #20 (meaning that in November it becomes “legal”):
Is there a beer that reminds you of a specific memory?
If you’re thinking, “Huh?” then you might want to craft your response along the lines of “Whenever I drink [insert brew here] it reminds me of that day …” Or perhaps it’s the reverse. Oooooh.
A great topic, but an interesting challenge here. We’ll be in the village of Neuhaus, Germany, because Oct. 3 is the one day of the year all of the Zoigl brewers they serve beer. Perhaps I’ll blog about that, perhaps something else and perhaps I won’t be online at all.
If you’ve got a blog and want to participate it is easy. After you post your contribution drop a line to Bathtub Brewery.
This post is my contribution to Session #19, Deutsches Bier, so head there for the roundup, and check out Bathtub Brewery for details about the 20th gathering of beer bloggers. My entry was written Sept. 4 with no clear idea when I might be able to post it.
Three days and four Bavarian weiss beers into the European leg of our grand adventure and I can see a problem. Each of the four was noticeably different than the others.
Different is good. You don’t end up with a situation like Lew Bryson describes, where drinkers can’t tell the difference various stouts. Different is a pain in the butt if you are writing a book about wheat beers and are expected to single out beers that “define the style.”
The picture above was taken at Barfüsser die Hausbrauerie in Ulm, Germany, Albert Einsten’s home town. The brewpub makes a weiss that would likely do well in a scored competition because it is bold on the banana and clove fronts. (The pub also brews weiss light, a growing trend; geez, I’m really going to enjoy writing about that.)
So if you’ve got a checklist (in your head or otherwise) of weiss beer essentials you can mark off banana and clove for this beer. But what about other fruit character, notably apples? Or mouthfeel? Or appearance? (Oops, forgot to ask, do you like your weiss beers turbid or party cloudy?)
These are peripheral questions when drinking beer in Germany, particularly in smaller towns than Ulm (we traveled the Romantische Strasse much of the way from Frankfurt south). Lots of beer, lots of choices (though not usually in one spot), lots of people having a good time and not giving a damn about if their beer “defines the style” or hits 99.8 on the WOW scale.
There may be multiple variations on weiss but usually from the same brewery. In some cases a bigger producer — plenty of Erdinger and Tucher in Rothenberg — but often a smaller one.
After we walked the town of Dinkelbühl earlier today we stopped in a cafe that seemed to specialize in wine but that also gives beer a page on its drinks menu. The lineup includes four weiss beers (one the ubiquitous leicht) from nearby Konig Ludwig, well known in the States. However, we chose the cafe because they serve beer from Houf’s, a Dinkelbühl brewery that’s been around more than 100 years. I had Houf’s Hefe-Weiss, took a couple of quick notes, then resumed enjoying Germany.