Any Dream Will Do?

Last night I surprised the missus and took her to see Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Due to reality TV star Lee Mead moving on to greener pastures and replacement (and also reality TV star) Gareth Gates unavailable for the next few weeks, they are running the tickets at a bargain price. Whilst I am not usually a fan of these sorts of musical displays, I must say that I was particularly impressed with the performance of Ricky Rojas who is currently filling in the lead role. This guy could sing and dance whilst not looking like a girlie man.
What does this have to do with beer you may ask? Absolutely nothing, but I did want to pose the question. At these West End shows, how come they always have 15 varieties of generic lager on offer and only one ale choice?? In this case, they had London Pride, so I was more than adequately catered for, but where is the choice?

In other news - I am feeling thirsty and could do with a beer, but this chap needs it more. He accidentally killed himself having a wank at work whilst wearing a gas mask and a wetsuit. What is the world coming to?

Take Away

On Sunday I was well and truly back on the drinking wagon after giving my liver a two week reprieve. I met up with some friends at my local Young's pub - The Brook Green Hotel to enjoy a typical Sunday meal. I made mine a Burger, and I upscaled and payed the extra pound for bacon and cheese - a worthy investment in my book.

After smashing down three or four pints of Young's brilliant Winter Warmer I needed to relieve myself. I will spare you the details of how I wrestled the massive serpentine that is my manhood and fill you in on the poster I observed at eye level. Now normally in pubs they will display the newspaper (sometimes page 3) or their guest ale list. Not at the Brook Green! Here they advertise their new take away beer service.... That's correct - you can now take your favourite draught ales home with you in a sturdy 2 pint beer hopper. This looks like an over sized milk carton (pictured top left), I spied this specimen on the bar. Anyhow I am intrigued to see whether this concept takes off, especially as there is a giant Tesco supermarket located directly behind the pub which is bound to have a greater selection of ales at cheaper prices.
By the way, I only managed to get one or two strange looks as I took the photo of the poster (which is below). It did not occur to me until a little while later that it must be a strange sight seeing a guy taking photos in the gents - one hand on the camera phone, one hand on his wang.

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Wine vs Beer

I have been writing some silly posts of late, the word CAMEL springs to mind as one such post. Putting all silliness aside, I thought I might actually blog about something semi-serious.

The debate regarding the social standing of beer vs wine is starting to reach fever pitch in both the press and the blogosphere. Melissa Cole has challenged serial w@nker Malcolm Gluck to a beer food pairing challenge. The idea is to 'educate' Mr Gluck and hopefully challenge his point of view on beer. I have a couple of issues with this whole affair, the first being that this is starting to sound like a staged public relations exercise, one that I seem to be now drawn into. The second being that Malcolm Gluck takes an iconoclastic view to his journalism. The fact that he openly slanders beer in an attempt to provoke reaction is unlikely to be his true viewpoint, but is a useful tool in drawing an interest to his work.

For anyone who cares, I can simplify the whole situation.

Flavours in wine; Red and White. Rose is just a shade of Grey. Any talk of mild citrus and soft vanilla undertones is absolute rubbish. Anything produced from a simple fruit such as a grape does not have the capacity to be complex and these flavours do not exist in grapes, nor are they a character of yeast. The general rules of thumb concerning food wine pairings clearly demonstrates the simplicity of wine. Red wine with beef and white wine with fish. You don't need a wine critic to tell you that!

Beer on the other hand is made from more ingredients (malt, hops, water and yeast), and these ingredients have the scope to be modified (roasted, caramelized, acidified, hardened and softened). These produce a myriad of flavours that are infinitely more suited to food than the two dimensional flavours of wine. The following flavour wheel, supports this. A similar wheel for wine would have two sides, red and white with possibly some extra sub-nodes for production taints such as 'oaking' or 'botrytis infection'. Thats right, these flavours are actually defects.

Join CAMEL today!

Just a quick post today as I am pressed for time. I have set up the official CAMEL support page. Click the link and become a fan. Membership is free, but then CAMEL does not actually campaign anything anyway!

Click here to join CAMEL today!

Suck and Chew

I have been on a bit of a beer drought. After the excesses of the Christmas/New year period I have been laying low and not showing my face around my usual drinking haunts. I actually made 15 full dry days before I caved in. A significant achievement and probably the longest period of time since I was 16 or 17 that I have gone without a beer.

Anyhow on Saturday, the wife and I went to meet her future sister in-law who is staying in the East end. I have to be honest, this is a part of London I tend to avoid. I think it's an age thing. I don't like hippy stuff and it's been a good few years since I have been a student. I am not particularly fond of graffiti either and the whole of Tower Hamlets to me seems like a spray can ghetto. The fact that the Jerry's plastered the area with 500lb bombs during the blitz does not add to it's aesthetic appeal either, unless you are inspired by post war housing estate architecture.

On this occasion where I left the cosy bubble that is West London I was pleasantly surprised. Not because it has changed to any great extent, but rather of the pub she chose for lunch - The Royal Oak on Columbia Road. This pub has been blogged about a few times by various beer geeks such as myself, most notably Ron Pattinson as it was used in the filming of the TV show "Goodnight Sweetheart" and it's a former Truman's tied house. The war time period interior has not changed, but the beer certainly has. Now Timothy Taylor's Landlord Ale and Adnam's Broadside feature on the bar and the menu is decidedly gastropub. The punters are now all trendy urban young professionals rather than soldiers or aging cockney gents in flat caps, and the staff are tattooed and eccentric. Overall though there was a good vibe for the lunchtime trade and it was a well deserved pint of Landlord to break the drought (ok well a few pints!). I can heartedly recommend the ploughman's lunch as well as the steak sandwich. The bangers and mash looked top spec, but sadly was not on my agenda. After leaving the pub and walking across the road to find my wife, I noticed an oddly named shop which had a door leading up some stairs. The shop is called is "Suck and Chew" and looked slightly like what I would assume a brothel would look like. I'm certain there is a market for such a business in the area! I think I will send Chris (my mate with the big head) to investigate!

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Australia Day

It's Australia day today and instead of surfing or drinking beer at a BBQ, I am at work.

Although most Australians will be drinking a cold lager today to celebrate the birthday of Modern* Australia, the settlers of the first fleet made toasts with London porter when they first set foot on Australian shores. From the Fuller's website;

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"When the First Fleet had arrived in Sydney Cove, on the east coast of Australia, in 1788 to set up a pioneering penal colony, the new arrivals drank toasts to the success of the settlement in glasses of porter brought 11,000 miles from England."

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Shortly after arriving in Australia, brewing in the colony started in earnest with former first fleet convict James Squire becoming Australia's first successful commercial brewer. He was the first to brew 'true' beer bittered with hops. His name lives on in a popular microbrewed beer line.

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I think it is important to not forget Australia's colonial roots as it was the early years of Australia's history which forged a great nation. I am a proud Australian and also of distant Aboriginal descent. I think it is sad to think that the 2009 Australian of the year, Professor Mick Dodson AM thinks that having Australia day on the 26th of January is disrespectful to Aboriginals. How Un-Australian........ Australia is a tolerant and multicultural nation and hopefully not one that will yield to the will of a spoken minority. Kevin Rudd's direct 'No' response is the most sensible thing he has said since coming to power.

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On a brighter note, Rolf Harris is still an Australian to be proud of, while Germaine Greer is still one to be ashamed of!
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*Modern Australia refers to post 1788 Australia. It's a PC term even though Australia did not exist as an independent country until 1st January 1901.

Paris, a tramps heaven?

After leaving Brugge we caught a high speed Thalys train to Paris. This trip was quick and uneventful, but provided me with an opportunity to make faces at a small child across the carriage.
When I was in Paris last year with my parents we failed to find any really interesting beer. I can report that this trip was no different! I popped into a small independent supermarket off Boulevade de Grenelle and was astounded to see that it catered to tramps more than my local off-licence 7-Up does. Every beer in the fridge was tramp juice ranging from 7.5% to 13% abv. Even faux Mexican style lager Desperados was weighing in somewhere near 7% abv. I did manage to come across one interesting beer however - Affligem dubbel (6.8% abv). The Affligem brewery produce abbey beers and have three in their range. I managed to have the dubbel, which was slightly sweet, but most agreeable. You can find out more about them at their website: http://www.affligembeer.be/
I also managed to track down the usual suspects such as 1664, and Amstel but you don't really need to hear about those. What was even stranger about our trip was that it snowed non-stop while we were there. Bizarre
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NB. The picture above is of a tramp called Paris, rather than a tramp from Paris. It was the best I could do. Actually the picture below is of a tramp in Paris - much better.
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CAMEL

In these troubling economic times people are looking to save on costs. Due to the success of consumer groups like CAMRA, pubs which have been serving cheap cooking lager for decades are being forced to replace their best sellers with quality real ale.

My observations have been that cheap lager still out sells real ale by about 10 pints to 1, and the low cost and high sales of these products in supermarkets is another testament to their popularity. This raises the question is CAMRA too powerful?

I will not raise the issue of beer and social class again, but generally it's accepted that whilst CAMRA insists that it represents the working class, it's members are on the whole middle class readers of the Daily Mail. CAMRA also has no interest in lager whatsoever, even if it is high quality lager such as Moravka. So who is going to protect the interests of the low income earners, and lager fans alike? My solution is a rival consumer group called;

CAMEL - Campaign for (Cheap) Economic Lager

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This group will lobby on behalf of Carling, Fosters and Carlsburg. It will aim to get Victoria Bitter and Tooheys New on tap in every pub in England. It will be bounded by no social class, or newspaper! Readers of The Sun and News of the World will be most welcomed, and Jeremy Clarkson has agreed to be our president.

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I think the motto will be "A man's not a CAMEL".
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This post is not intended to be serious and is purely fiction, but I guess most people could tell that.

Kwak! Kwak!

Ok, I think I may have given away a few clues as to what this post may be about. As much as I want to talk about the delicious amber nectar that is Kwak, this post is going to be dominated by Brown ales - or more correctly Bruin ales!
After leaving Amsterdam, we headed south into Belgium with a pit-stop in Antwerp before heading onto Brugge. I have stated many times that Brugge is my favourite European city and my faith was restored yet again upon arriving in the town square. I have yet to watch the Virgin media release, In Bruges, but it is high on my list of movies to see after what must be my fifth or sixth visit to the city. Brugge is a great place to go drinking, with more than enough bars, café's and pubs serving up Belgium's finest to satisfy your beverage needs. My favourite place to grab a beer is 't Hof Van Rembrandt a smallish café that has a modest beer selection and a nice outlook over a small square. In Summer it is an amazing place to sit, people watch and enjoy a beer during the long sun lit evenings. Some may argue that there are a lot better pubs such as De Garre and 't Brugs Beertje, but as I have been with my wife on every occasion, I simply have not been able to trounce around looking for these gems.
Anyhow, over the new year period when I was there I had a little bit of a fetish for Bruin ales. Some that spring to mind are, Grimburgen bruin, St Feuillien bruin and Kasteel bruin, with the latter being 11% abv and tasting sickly sweet. It poured almost like maple syrup! I also ordered a Brugge triple which I don't think I was served. The beer tasted a lot like Leffe bruin to me and I feel I may have been swindled, but then I didn't mind too much as I was in a bruin ale mood. Other highlights included Primus Haacht witbier which my mother-in-law bought me whilst my wife and father-in-law went climbing up the tower in the main square as well as a nice pint of unpasteurized Bruges Zot. I must say that I am not really a fan of this beer normally and find it a little bit rough, but I think I have been put off by an obnoxious lady from the USA who ruined the brewery tour for me a couple of years ago. The murky beer I had recently was a top spec pint, over-sized wine glass. This leads me to Kwak, a favourite of mine just because of the novel glass and stand. I really appreciate the inventiveness involved. An over-sized wine glass in this instance would have been the easy option to take - full marks for effort and it does make the beer taste better.

In other exciting news: Did you know that you can die in North Korea by sleeping in a room with the fan on? Linky.

My favourite pub in Amsterdam

Amsterdam, the European capital of sin, sleaze and spliffs. I also forgot it is the home of Heineken, but for that it can excused. On new years day I flew from Prague to Amsterdam to begin the last few days of my Christmas vacation. Whilst the in-laws were cruising canals and walking around the red light district, I decided to revisit my favourite pub in Amsterdam - Café de Koningshut which is located on Spuistraat. For some reason this pub is not mentioned in Ron Pattinson's Amsterdam pub guide, but I think it's a gem with plenty of character. It's what is referred to as a traditional or 'brown bar' and it's a bit of a locals place with sand on the floor, whose upper reaches are rich with pre-war memorabilia, animal heads and hunting horns and dangling steins. You are also greeted to a warm welcome from the barman who is only to happy to have a chat whilst he polishes his glasses. The fire place is stoked so the warmth hits you as you walk through the door, it's like a home away from home.

What did I drink? For those of you who are interested I had a Brand Dubbelbock (7.5% abv) from the Brand Bierbrouwerij. It was nice, although it did not taste as alcoholic as it actually was. It was a good combination with the cold weather!

What is a Ticker?

Welcome to the new updated Beer Diary. For a while now, I have felt like I am becoming more and more like a ticker, or a scooper. To be honest, I really have no aspiration to be one as there is no possible way that I can drink every commercial beer available (nor do I want to). A while back Prof. Pilsner asked me what a ticker was. My response is below;

"A ticker is a breed that are found in the UK (usually around CAMRA sanctioned events) or internationally on the web site Ratebeer. The general sterotype is bushy beard, plastic bag carrying sandwiches and attrired in a fleece (or rex hunt style fishing vest) and usually a notebook. These strange creatures will drink beers in half pints or thirds and make notes on each beer. Their mission is to rate and evaluate every beer possible, much the same as some bird watchers tick of species after sighting them. They can be observed at any CAMRA beer festival with their programs in hand, ticking off the beers as they drink their small measure."

I still think this holds true. Whilst I am the first to admit that I am a beer geek of the highest order, I do not consider myself a ticker.
For those interested in more info, be sure to read these official rules of ticking!
Welcome to the new Beer Diary!

Pilsner Urquell 2

Pilsner Urquell is a beer that I manage to have at least once a week. In London it is widely available and reasonably priced. In short, if I were to blog about this everytime I had a pint, there would be a lot of posts about it!

Anyhow Prague is not really the home to Pilsner Urquell, but even when I am in Prague, it is my beer of choice. For this reason alone, I chose to spend my new years eve in Kolkovna, an original Pilsner Urquell restaurant which has a restaurant housed in an old mail room with a cellar bar well, in the cellar! The food here is amazing, with a wide selection of traditional Czech food ranging from wild game sausage to goulash with dumplings and everything in between. Being a connoisseur of the gastronomic delight that is Pork Knuckle, this was my choice which I washed down with several glasses of Pilsner Urquell. Anyhow we finished up in the restaurant at about 11.45pm and headed to the old town square to count in the new year. Following the festivities we braved thousands of misguided youths throwing homemade firecrackers at people and made a dash for the hotel, in a drunk and merry manner.

This caps off the year 2008 in beer for me. I think it is the first time I have actually set out a new years resolution and actually kept at it. In saying this, I actually really enjoy blogging but the format and subject matter of the original endeavor tends to get a little bit stale after a while and I feel like I am a ticker trying to sound intellectual about beer. The real reason I started this blog was to show my wife that there is more to beer than just drinking, and also so she could keep track of what I am drinking (It was felt by the Mrs that a crate of cheap lager a fortnight was too much booze). I have never really taken things seriously and I now feel that beer is something to be enjoyed, and the actual taste of the beer is just a small part of this and it's the environment and company in which it is consumed that really matter. So tomorrow will see a number of changes in the format of this blog. Along with a new look and feel, there will be content changes with my opinions/rants about various beery things as well as stories of my travels and beers consumed. Thanks to all those that supported the old format, I hope you continue to enjoy reading in the future.

PS. I have a new resolution for this year as well, and that is to write a book outlining some historical Sydney pub and beer walks. if you have any ideas/suggestions please forward them on.

Kozel Dark

Also in the 24 hour non-stop across the road from my hotel in Prague was a bottle of Kozel Dark (3.8% abv). I had to pay a 'premium' of 30 crowns (~ £1) for this gem, but it was worth the extra.

My first experience with Kozel was on my last trip to Prague and I remember clearly how different it was to German Schwarzbiers such as Köstritzer. Where the German offering was dark pretty much in colour only, the Czech brewed Kozel is full of melanoids and a thick full body. This difference is something which is rarely acknowledged in craft brewing circles where Bohemium dark lagers tend to get lumped into the generic schwarzbier category with their softer German neighbours.

I don't need to go to much about how good this beer is. I am pretty suire that 90% plus of readers would already be educated in the delights of this gem. I did find this little paragraph here though which sums up my feelings.

"This beer came in its standard Czech 500 ml bottle and poured a dark ruby red, near black colour with a light tan head that swelled to about an inch before slowly settling. It had very little aroma, but I could sense the Saaz hops and slight burnt malt in it. The first taste had a full, but not too heavy taste of malt, and the Saaz could be felt on swallowing. Subsequent sips wend down smooth and easy.
It was a good drinking experience, and would likely go well with a steak dinner. But I don't think I would pay the full price for it. If I see it in the bargain bin again, I'll grab it."

http://www.kozel.cz/

Gambrinus Premium

On New Years Day we caught the train from Vienna to Prague. I was last in Prague back in 2006 or was it early 2007? I'm not entirely sure, but anyhow the place has become even more dominated by tourism since my last visit, and it appears that every second shop is now selling tacky souveniers. The taxi ride to our hotel was full of adventure with the driver getting lost even with the use of a SatNav.

This aside I was lucky enough to have a nice 24 hour off license type place across the street which was selling Gambrinus Premium (4.9% abv) on offer. I know that this is not exactly the best of Czech lagers, but it was one I had not had before and I was keen to pick something up with the few crowns change I had in my pocket.

Gambrinus is brewed by Pilsner Urquell and is the most popular beer in the Czech republic dominating with 25% of the market. The beer is ok, and was much needed after the drain of the train ride and the taxi adventure but still did not 'excite*' me in the way and unpastaurized glass of Urquell or Kozel does. But it still whet the whistle adequately!

Website:http://www.gambrinus.cz/

*No erections were observed during this excitement. I don't get hard, or even semi over beer.

Gösser Märzen

Ok, I only have four posts left for 2008. Being an impatient lad, I have resolved to get them out of the way this afternoon, and revamp everything for tomorrow! Yay!

Anyhow, Gösser Märzen (5.2% abv) is an Austrian Mega swill and is the cheapest beer I came across during my travels. It's not really to style and tastes pretty ordinary and makes Australian megaswill taste like god's nectar. I recommend steering clear of this one, which I tracked down in Vienna.

Schwechater

I found this one in a dodgy off license type place near our hotel. I only picked one up to see what it was like, and I was rather surprised with this Austrian brewed beer.
A bit of history. The history of the Schwechater beer started in the year 1632. Peter Descrolier, who was valet and paymaster of archduke Matthias, founded the brewery in Schwechat. But the real success story only began in 1760, when the waiter Franz Anton Dreher moved to Vienna and leased the brewery Ober-Lanzendorf. In 1796 he bought the brewery in Schwechat, and the Schwechater beer was ready to start its triumphant advance.
The next milestone of the success story followed in 1841. Anton Dreher, the son of Franz Anton Dreher, who already collected a lot of beer brewing experiences during his trips to Munich and England, tried to produce for the first time a bottom-fermented beer, and brought it to Vienna.The Viennese people were so excited about it, that they only wanted to drink the Schwechater beer. This was the hour of birth for the nowadays popular "lager beer". Because of the big onrush at the beer, Schwechater had to use machines for the production. Dreher was the first brewer in Austria who used a steam engine to brew his beer. This was in 1848. Nowdays the steam engine is displayed in the technical museum in Vienna.Anton Dreher senior dies in 1863 and his son Anton Dreher junior takes over the company in 1870. In the "iceless winter" 1872 100 million kg of ice had to be brought by railway from Poland to Vienna. Such experience motivated Anton Dreher to learn more about artificial cooling and production of ice. In 1877 Schwechater Beer was the first who invented and used a cool machine for artificial cellar cooling.During the first world war the production reached it's all-time-low. The brewery workers which had to go to war, still received their salary the whole war through. During the war the production was reduced, but never shut down. Anton Dreher died as a very rich man in 1921. After his death the company was handed to his oldest son Anton Eugen Dreher (born 1871). But he died already in 1925. He was the last brewing master of the Schwechater beer, and so this was the end of the long lasting Schwechater beer dynasty. The lead of the brewery was inherited to some relatives of Anton Eugen Dreher. But the relatives were not interested in the brewery, and sold their participations to several banks in 1925. This was how the 130-dynasty of family Dreher and the Schwechater beer ended.
I think it is interesting how this brewing family is related to the Dreher family who also own a Hungarian brewery. I had one of their beers earlier in the year as well. You can read about that here.
http://www.schwechater.at/

Radeburger Pils 2

You may remember that I had this beer way back when I was in Berlin. I have found out a lot more aboiut the beer since then and wanted to share a bit of the story.

We stopped into a cafe at around lunchtime after doing the 'hop on, hop off' buss tour around Vienna. They should use these terms loosly as the services were running every two and half hours and there were not enough seats left on the bus to accomodat a 'hop on, hop off' service. Anyhow, this cafe, whose name escapes me now is supposed to be famous for it's apple struddle, but as my luck would have it they were all out so I went for a pint of Radeburger Pils instead (and yes, everyone else had hot chocolate). A little bit of hostory would not go astray here, as the beer is actually from the former DDR/Prussia rather than Austria.

The Radeberger brewery was born in 1872 in Radeberg, a suburb of Dresden. It was the first brewery in Germany to brew beer exclusively in the Pilsner style. By the late 1880s the brewers numbers had risen to 300,000 cases per year which was a lot for a regional brewery back then. The brewery takes pride in the fact that in 1905, Radeberger Pilsner became the favourite drink of king Friedrich August of Saxony. In 1946 the communist East German government took control of the brewery until after the fall of the Soviet Union, when Binding Brauerei purchased the company and returned its sales to West Germany. After the purchase the brewery underwent comprehensive renovations to bring their brewery up to speed with modern brewing. In 2004 the brewery was sold privately and was delisted from the stock market.


Website: http://www.radeberger-pilsner.de/

Ottakringer Pils

On Boxing day we ventured to the Austrian capital, Vienna by train. It was a most pleasant journey and we arrived in good time to get caught in a minor blizzard whilst trying to find our hotel. I think you know what is going to happen now? Well the wife and out-laws decided to warm up over a hot chocolate and I opted for a beer yet again. This time I took the only option available and ended up with a pint of Ottakringer Pils. I now beleive that this is a limited edition beer, as most of my google based research tends to lead me to Gold Fassl, which this beer is not.

Out of the Austrian beers I did have, thie is my firm favourite. The beer is more in the style of a modern Australian Bohemium pilsner along the lines of James Squire Pilsner which is a great beer. Anyhow, I sure did enjoy this beer a lot more than the tee-totaling in laws would have enjoyed their hot chocolate! http://www.ottakringer.at/

Stiegl Pils

It seems that along with Zipfer and Gösser, the other main megaswill of the Austrian beer market is Stiegl. Recently I gave my spiel on Stieglbock which went down quite nicely on a cold evening. Well the Stiegl Pils (4.9% abv) is also a cracking brew. Noticeable features are a crisp bitter finish. Again I was drunk when I had this particular beer. Ieven forgot to take a photo myself, so I have stolen one. It really was a boozy Christmas. Website

Weininger Bier

On Christmas day we had dinner in a lame pizza joint that was the only place in Salzburg that we could find that was open. They only had one beer available and although I was pissedup enough that I didn't need it, I oblidged anyway. The beer was called Wieninger bier and it loosly falls into the pilsner category, You can read more about it here (if you can read German).

Edelweiss Weissbier

Regular readers are probably asking why I have not yet moved onto the promised new format. Well basically I have been pretty busy in real world stuff and the in-laws are still dominating the floorspace of my humble flat. I also am getting a little tired of the format and longing to mix it up, but being true to my original aim for the blog, I will document every different beer I had in 2008 even if it makes me look more and more like a ticker. I didn't set out to make this my personal version of rate beer and I am hardly re-inventing the wheel in terms of beers I have been getting down my neck.

Anyhow, my wife also picked up a bottle of Edelweiss Weissbier from a Spar supermarket. i was way to pissed when I drank it to tell you any more about it! I'm just being honest here.

I did steal this from their webpage though.

The history of Edelweiss and the tradition of Hofbräu Kaltenhausen
Kaltenhausen, a small, idyllic village at the foot of the Untersberg, located in the middle of the Alps, not far from Salzburg in Austria. It is here that in 1475, the "Kalte Bräuhaus" was founded by the Salzburg mayor and judge, Johann Elsenhaimer. Following Elsenhaimer’s death in 1498, the brewery became the property of the court chamber of the prince archbishop of Salzburg for the next three centuries, before being purchased by the Electress Marie Leopoldine.
In 1898, the Deutsche Bank bought the flourishing company, turning it into “Aktiengesellschaft Brauerei Kaltenhausen” in 1901. In 1921, Hofbräu Kaltenhausen became one of the founding firms in the former BRAU AG (today BRAU UNION ÖSTERREICH AG). In other words, the brewery can look back on over 500 years of brewing tradition!
Apart from the privilege of being the oldest brewery in Salzburg, Hofbräu Kaltenhausen is also the oldest brewer of weissbier in Austria. The history of brewing weiss- and weizenbier at the Hofbräu dates back 350 years and is therefore longer than that of the majority of Bavarian weissbier breweries.
This tradition was revived in 1986, with the launch of the „Edelweiss“ weissbier brand. Today, Edelweiss is market leader in the segment of weissbier in Austria, and has a very strong presence in countries like France, Russia, Hungary, Italy and the U.K.

Zipfer Stefani Bock

Zipfer is the defining Austrian megaswill. I can remember my first encounter with the stuff in 2002. Back then I was 'beer' ignorant and brewed kit and kilo beers because it made for cheap drinking! It was on a Contiki tour and I was staying in the Austrian Tirol and I nearly got in a fight with a dick head from Melbourne called Logan because I had cut his grass. The girl was certainly not worth fighting over!

Anyway, fast forward 7 years and now I am a creature of sophistication and beer class... well one can hope.

Anyhow my wife picked up a bottle of Zipfer Stefani Bock (7.1% abv) from a Spar on Christmas day. It tasted remarkably similar to a strong Polish lager. Not true to style and basically just a supercharged tramp juice. I still drank it though. It was a Christmas present after all and it's the thought that counts!

Surprisingly it is apparently brewed in accordance to Reinheitsgebot, well it says so here!

Franziskaner Weissbier

I think Franziskaner Weissbier is the last of the big Bavarian wheat beers that I had yet to have in 2008. I had at some point or another managed to stumble over the rest! Anyhow, I located this particular offering in my hotel bar. Once again, while the rest of the out-laws got stuckin to hot chocolate, I held true and went for a beer. I am pretty sure this was a Christmas beer and it was still snowing outside. I think it tasted nice, but I was suitably lubed up by this point! http://www.franziskaner.com/

König Ludwig Dunkel

On Christmas day, in a effort to escape the cold, and snow, I headed to a nice small bar terrace located on the roof of the Stein Hotel, Salzburg. From an uninspiring beer menu I ordered a bottle of König Ludwig Dunkel which appeared to be the only non mega swill available.

Anyhow, König Ludwig Dunkel is a delicious, dark bottom-fermented lager. It's Bavarian, hence Reinheitsgebot-brewed. I have actually had this gem in Munich before and could not really remember much about it. The beer has a deep chestnut colour and a slightly-sweetish, a burnt wheat flavour, and a nice clean finish.

Oh, and did I mention that I had a white Christmas... A first for this Aussie.

Erdinger Dunkel

In Germany and German speaking countries, Christmas celebrations normally are held on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. In Salzburg, this especially holds true and I ended up with a glass of Erdinger Dunkel in my hands at the bar of the Sheraton Hotel.

Erdinger is basically the megaswill of the wheat world and as such must be treated with the suspicion that is to be afforded all megaswill's!

Anyhow, moving along from the sillyness, it's ok and probably a tad nicer than the regular Erdinger. Website

At this point I should also mention that the beer was a good one for Christmas and was no where near as creepy as the voice of the guy that runs the "Sound of Music Tour". What makes it even worse is that it was the second time I had been on the said musical tour - scary......

Paracelsus Zwickl

On the way back to the hotel, I ducked into a Spar supermarket and bought a couple of beers for later on. The first of these I picked up was Paracelsus Zwickl (5% abv), an unfiltered beer similar in style to dampf beer or Australian sparkling ale. This particular one is produced by Stieglbrau, which seems to be the dominant brewery in Salzburg.

From the website: "Paracelsus Zwickl is a natural beer specialty with a mellow impression on the tongue. The aftertaste unfolds a slight bitterness. Zwickl-beer is not filtered and therefore shows some cloudiness due to rests of yeast, minerals and trace elements.

This very special beer is brewing at its best using a sophisticated recipe combined with love and dedication. Stiegl only uses excellent ingredients from Austrian agricultural suppliers, applying biological techniques. As a result of this Paracelsus Zwickl beer was awarded the Bio-Austria certificate. Bio-production is subject to strict yearly controls by “Austria-Bio-Guaranty”.

“Bier is a really divine medicine”. This quotation comes from Paracelsus (1493 – 1541). He was a well known physician, forward thinker and visionary who lived in Salzburg for many years. He found out that beer had healing powers.

Advice from our Gourmet Chef for food pairings:
The Paracelsus Zwickl is a beer to satisfy thirst and ideally to accompany meals such as beef, lamb, venison, goose and duck."

Trumer Pils

To escape the cold after the effects of the Steiglbock had run it's course, we headed into some lame smoke filled café for dinner. It was a huge menu which consisted of Lasagna or Weiner Schnitzel - tough choice. I had the Schnitzel and a Trumer Pils to wash it down. Trumer Pils seems to be a bit of an Austrian version of mega swill. Fair enough it's mass produced, but it still kicks the absolute pants off anything produced by Scottish and Newcastle.

Anyhow the beer is produced in both the US and Salzburg, Austria. In April, 2008 Trumer Pils won the Gold medal at the World Beer Cup for Best German-style pilsner. An extraordinary accomplishment for Trumer Pils following the Gold medal win at the last World Beer Cup competition in 2006. Winners were selected by an international panel of 129 beer experts from 22 countries judging an impressive field of 2,930 entries from 646 breweries in 58 countries. The World Beer Cup competition is a bi-annual event sponsored by the Brewers Association.

Anyhow, Website!

Stieglbock

After the 'hot chocolate', we headed out to have a look at the Christmas markets located in the old town. It didn't take my wife long to locate the stall selling giant pretzel shaped donuts. I didn't mind buying her one as it gave me the opportunity to pick myself up a bottle of Stieglbock (7% abv), which was suitably appropriate to warm my freezing bones and coax my testicles down from the space that would have been reserved for ovaries if I was born female. Anyhow, the beer was nice. A powerful combination of malt/malanoids and alcohol. My only complain was the fact that it was freezing cold and this influenced the beer and did not allow me to truly 'taste' the beer. By freezing, I mean there was actual icicles forming in the beer, so colder than your local JDW serves up a cheap pint of GK IPA. Website

Raschhofer

We awoke early in Munich and at a German's breakfast of ham and cheese before heading down to the local hauptbahnhof to score a Bayern ticket and a train to nearby Salzburg - our Christmas destination. You may be thinking: Why the rush? Well, my brother in-law and his girlfriend were flying in from Berlin early in the morning and the rush was on to beat them to the hotel. Anyway, we lost and they were waiting for us when we arrived. I must say though that the €30 for the Bayern ticket is a bargain! Anyhow we met up with them at the hotel and after briefly checking in we reconvened in the hotel café for a hot chocolate. Ok, I will clarify that while everyone else had hot chocolate, I got stuck into a Raschhofer which is a helles style of pale lager and was pretty drinkable. Apparently it's brewed in Innviertel. It is a family run small brewery and has a long tradition, since 1645! Anyway I thought the beer was pretty good, maybe you will too? Website

Hofbrau Dunkel

Hmm, I am back at work today after a hectic two weeks living out of my backpack. I know I promised a revised format, but for now you will have to wait till I have time to implement my transformation! For the next few days however I will cover the events of the last couple weeks.
Some time after my last post, I met up with the in-laws and headed out for Munich - land of beer, pork knuckle, sausages and German people. Can't win them all and three out of four ain't bad! (that was a joke for any German readers who may or may not have a sense of humour, actually they don't hence this strike through). Anyhow, in an effort to help the in-laws overcome jet lag I decided to take them out in Munich in the freezing cold. We first headed to the Christmas markets for some Gluewein before heading into the much clichéd Hofbrau haus for a feast. As per usual, I ordered the gastronomic treat that is pork knuckle, which I am pleased to announce is now served with extra crispy crackling and opted for ein Krugen of the Dunkel.

It went down rather well and my only disappointment is that jet lag finally overpowered the old volks and I was forced to leave after only one beer. Boo hoo.