So much time and so little Beer

Aak! No posts for many a long beerless night. Anyhow I made some beer from a kit - Called Brewferm Abbey It puports to produce a beer in the Belgian Abbey style, ostensibly a dubbel. You have to add sugar and to avoid the cidery twang you can get from putting lots of sugar in a kit brew I used dried malt extract which is rather like a million maltesers which have been peeled and crushed to form a sweet heavenly powder. To get a more authentic malty taste, I boiled up some crystal malt with the malt extract and the results are really quite good. A dark monastic brew with about 8% ABV. I feel it would stand a long maturation period and be much nicer by Christmas and beyond.

As for commercial beers I've mainly been indulging in Urquell and a few Chimay Blues. I have noticed recently that Budvar, the authentic Czech lager not the American piss water, is available in Cans!! Oddly as there is no bottle fermentation so I can't see any drawbacks with buying Budvar in Cans and it is a lot cheaper than bottle I'll report back when I get some in. For what it's worth the Budvar dark is a tremendous lager and I hope that's available in tins - OOH it's crackin' do try some.

Pilsner Urquell

OK this is a Czech beer - A real pilsner brewed in the correct way and "lagered" in huge wooden barrells if memory serves me correctly for at least a month at 0Degrees C. This allied to the triple decoction mash results in proper pilsner lager not to be confused with the chemical mediocrity of English generic "lagers" so beloved of the majority drinker.

What does this mean for the the rest of us? - Well flavour or more correctly flavours, many drinkers of UK lagers are disturbed by the assault of flavour that a proper pilsner gives. The first and most obvious is the malt - Wow this stuff is malty. The special mash gives the most tremendous malty flavour and I love it. It is also exceedingly dry and yet has a pleasant sweetness that balances it out - Sorry if this sounds hideously pretentious but this stuff is good. Available at almost any decent supermarket or off license, this Beer kills generic pretend Lagers for fun and there IS NO EXCUSE for reaching for a Fosters or Carling in the cold cabinet of your local seller in preference to this premium, properly brewed Pilsner Lager - in fact to do so is to deny yourself the REAL BEER and instead choose flavourless rubbish and there is no excuse for that.

I tried a pint of draught Red Stripe lager the other day and it was positively the worst pint of "Lager" I've ever tasted - Steer well clear.

Finally have you noticed the trend amoung the mediocre lager makers to produce a 4% beer and promote it like it's a premium beer? FOR GOD's SAKE you're not fooling anyone - Mind you people put ice in cider these days LOL.

Beer Reviews on the way

This blog is an excuse to taste and comment on some of the finest Beers in the world. I will be indulging my interest in Belgian Beer by tasting as many as my meagre pocket will allow.

First Up it's Bacchus Framboise - £2.41 from Sainsburys.
Now this isn't a beer you want more than one of - The one I did have was a festival of Raspberries. Sweet, very sweet but with an interesting balancing sourness that overpowers the sweetness like a Tiger Tank squashing a retreating SS Stormtrooper during the Battle of Kursk.

Bacchus is produced by the Vanhonsebrouck Brewery and their eccentric website at http://www.vanhonsebrouck.be/ is well worth a visit. This beer is of the Lambic type with the wort being infected spontaneously by randomly occuring yeasts and the later addition of huge amounts of the fruit that produce this undeniably fruity Beer. Opening the well wrapped plain bottle requires an opener as it doesn't have the champagne cork type stopper often seen on this type of Beverage.

On pouring the beer has a pleasant carbonation that produces a modest head that lasts throughout the entire quaffing process. Colour is dark red fruit and the aroma of raspberries is strong and pleasing and the sweet, tart, fruity flavour is really very good indeed without the hint of "cheesyness" I've had before in some beers of this type. This one runs at 5% alcohol and would make a very nice accompaniment to, well fruit desserts I suppose - It's a summer pudding of a beer and all the better for it.