Beer with a view

A flight of pigeons, Venice echoed, Don’t Look Back, St Mark’s Square perhaps, wheel in the tight space above Christmas Steps, while the backbeats of some dance tune, I know not what, whirl from somewhere amongst the slow, jerky trail of Friday evening traffic down below the balcony on which I sit. A bruised gold glass of English — Bristolian — Pilsner stands sentinel-straight on my table as I watch both birds and cars make their different shapes in and above the space we call a street. I like Bristol’s Zero Degrees, I like the stainless steel vessels, the lagering tradition and the temptation of time; I like the quiescence of a brand that doesn’t really shout but still makes great beer (and wood-fired pizza too). As I sit and gulp my Pilsner, a glass of beer that brims to the rim with Saaz spice and niceness, its brisk and frisky character gambolling on the palate, and its bracing bitter finish putting me in mind of Zatec 12˚, I enjoy the view of an irregular roof-scape of turrets, chimneys and spires and another sip later, and a turn of the head, take in the contrast to the clean and angled shapes within Zero Degrees. Sometimes a beer with a view is all I need.

Style

I’ve written a couple of times about London breweries, here and here, over there and over the hills, but since the time of these two articles things have raced on, taken various bends, crossed continents, frosted up arguments and then warmed and warned them up again; things have accelerated and accentuated the positive, grown up and thrown up all manner of conundrums and now there are god knows how many existent in the capital; countless amounts are capping bottles and kegging kegs, but that’s not what I want to write about.

I’m in the Dean Swift, a few moments from where Barclay Perkins used to send out beers to perk up Londoners; the Institute of Brewing and Distilling is a corner away, my happiness being a final trawl through a variety of brewing publications from the late 1950s onwards: finally I have all the results of every brewing competition for what is now the InternationalBrewing Awards since its inception in 1888 (I’m writing a book). Four cask beers and — I don’t know — six or eight craft keg beers (it’s ridiculous that I feel the need to identify the dispense system of the beers I want to choose from) face me and my throat desires the first drink of the day, the drink that I want to percolate down through my palate and whose character I want to stay around and get me to remember it in 100 years. So I chose the pub’s own branded London Lager. I ask questions. Is London Pilsner a Czech style then? No it’s a London style. I try a tasting, there’s a billowing diacetyl note that I’ve always associated with Pilsner; there’s a bite of bitterness. It’s Czech I mutter to myself, very happy that there are breweries bold enough to take on this style (it’s Portobello btw). However, what it also makes me think. So what is a London style, how can a city influence a beer style?

The next day, I’m drinking Kernel’s London Sour with founder Evin; mindful of the previous day’s thoughts about London, I’m thinking about the beer: it’s sour but not too sour, not too assertive in its sourness, but still sour enough for someone not attuned to sour beer to make a face a contorted as jazz and ask what on earth are they drinking. It’s a refreshing beer, a beer Evin tells me has Berliner Weisse, the idea of Berliner Weisse as its idea, but I then think about London Pilsner and wonder if there is such a thing as a London style.

Could there be a London style and what would be the influence? I know about the water of London and the availability of the hops and the malt, but there’s got to be more to a style than this? What about the people, what do they eat and what do they like to drink with their food? What about the climate, the temperature, the summers and the winters, the happiness and the sadness, the carefree index or the lack of care, the influence of wine, the silence of temperance, the ghosts that haunt people’s palates, the food that they eat and dream about and then there‘s the feats of strength they like to boast about and toast. All these must surely contribute to a contemporary London style? Or any style?

Epiphanies

I like epiphanies; I like the way they come out of nowhere, bolts of lighting delivering self awareness, a realisation of something I wasn’t aware of before and how this awareness has added to the quality of my physical and mental life. 

I remember being in what was then Virgin’s flagship store in Marble Arch when Anarchy in the UK was being played — it has just been released and sounded disturbing but also exhilarating; at last I had my own Beatles, Who and Rolling Stones I thought. Then there was Max Bell’s review of Unknown Pleasures in the NME, a mention of the Doors sent me scurrying to Andy’s Records and I got the last copy in the shop. It’s still on my iPod. 

In beer there have been epiphanies, which in retrospect I could have got from books or fellow writers, but it that isn’t as much fun. 

There I was on the French-Belgo border in the autumn of 2005, visiting bière de garde breweries for a feature and as I shared a glass of Cuvee de Jonquilles with Roger Bailleux, owner of Brasserie au Baron, I realised that my whole notion of bière de garde was wrong.

As I wrote at the time: Yet, trying to pin down the meaning of bière de garde is like having to sculpt Rodin’s Thinker with blancmange. The definition is wobbly. The beers of Northern France, because of their proximity to Belgium, have their fair share of spicy blancs (known as witbiers over the border), citrusy tripel look-alikes and even fruit beers (La Choulette’s Framboise is a splendid example). There are also big and beefy ambrées with spicy, earthy hoppy notes, as well as pale ales. All also romp home between 6-8.5%, so they’re not for the faint-hearted, and are ideal partners for the local robust cuisine.

I thought of the next epiphany last week when I was drinking a glass of tank Pilsner Urquell at the White Horse after a weary day judging at the International Beer Challenge. I remembered my visit to Pivovar Dobrany in a town a few kilometres outside Pilsen and the time when I realised that many 12˚ svetly lezak were of the Pilsner style, but because PU got there first and was still regarded with some affection no Czech brewer used the word (as opposed to brewers throughout the world).

Here is what I wrote in my piece in All About Beer. Dobranska Hvezda is the 12˚ svetly lezak (light lager), a superlative beer with sweet toasted grain, slight pepperiness and delicate Saaz-derived floral notes all vying for attention on the nose. The palate has a hint of fruit pastilles, a slight sweetness and a long lasting dry and bitter finish. A light bulb flashes on in my head. I ask Petruzalek if what we are drinking is really a Pilsner style, bearing in mind the closeness of the historical brewery (I didn’t know then that he had worked there until 2003). The answer, translated, comes back. ‘All these beers would be adjudged to be a Pilsner style, because of the way they are made.’

A couple of paras down, I then wrote: Eager to discover more I communicated with Josef Tolar, formerly brew master at Budweiser Budvar (Czechvar). I asked him how he would define a Pilsner, was it the same as svetly lezak? His reply was short and succinct: ‘the Pilsner style is really svetly lezak in the Czech Republic.’ Budvar’s bottle labels in their home country bear the legend svetly lezak, make of that what you will.

Ok, straightforward simple stuff (and you can argue that Budvar and a Pilsner are different to each other), which no doubt most people know but what I enjoyed was finding out for myself, this is why beer and travel are mutual allies; you have to get out there. Beer is not an armchair sport. There have been other epiphanies: back in February realising how good Italian brewers had got when I judged a flight of DIPAs at the Birra del Anno in snowy Rimini; the connection between Bavarian and Bohemian beer after a glass of tank fresh Spezial at Pivovar Chodovar, something that I am still researching and obsessed with. 

The continuation of epiphanies long into the future fills me with glee for when they cease I may be dead. 

Stella Artois this is not

A-ha! Thornbridge’s Italia Pilsner appears in the post — for me one of my favourite brewery’s long awaited cracks at the Pilsner style, something I recall asking Kelly Ryan about before he left for NZ, something I was really looking forward to, Thornbridge’s final frontier, to make a beer with time and cold maturation on its hand. And to make things even more exciting, brewed in cahoots with Birrificio Italiano, who make one of my favourite beers in the world — Tipopils. I’m not going to hang around for this fella so here goes — spritzy and cheeky in the mouth, it’s got a delicate lemoniness, almost reminiscent of lemon sherbert, an Epsom salts freshness, a gentle giant of a carbonation that reminds me of Augustiner with a lingering, long loving kiss of firm bitterness that at the end that needs to be fed by another gasp of beer. Is it to style (I say with next week’s Brewing Industry International Awards in mind, from which I shall be blogging) — who knows, who cares. What I do know though is that it’s a mighty brew, a new age Pilsner that shines with the bitter lemony character of Bavaria while mulling with the body and fatness of Bohemia. I must admit that I adore it. 

Lager of the week — Mongozo Premium Pilsener

Gluten-free beers. Good cause, filthy stuff in my experience, and you have to feel sorry for someone who likes a beer but can’t stomach the barley. Several years back I was sent a gluten-free beer. It was Hell in the Pacific in the mouth — Lee Marvin and Toshirô Mifune battling it out on a small Pacific island translated into varnish and Cherry Blossom boot polish rattling each others’ cages on my tongue; I remember thinking: well at least it’s wet. Result: have stayed clear of them until now.

In the middle of researching a ‘whither Pilsner’ piece for All About Beer, I spot that Beer Merchants have got a g/f Pilsner from Huyghe, under the Mongozo brand (was the ‘banana lambic’ I sampled in an Antwerp beer festival in 1996 one of theirs I wonder?). It’s Fair Trade and organic as well, but I’m not chucking my hat onto that particular ethical table. A quick email to BM’s Phil Lowry and he sends me a couple (along with some other Pilsners, thanks Phil — the Rothaus Tannen Zäpfle is monstrously glorious, a cavalry charge of noble hops) and with a sinking heart I pour myself a glass…

Believe it or not it’s great to be wrong, especially when it comes to beer. This Premium Pilsener is easily the best g/f beer I have tasted. For a start it tastes like a good version of a Pilsner, even with rice in the mix (I’m a firm believer of rice in risotto rather than beer but that’s for another debate and there are respected brewers of my acquaintance who will actually argue that rice is not the devil) — it’s pale gold in colour with a nose that’s suggestive of bitter lemon, though lacking the sour-sweet poke in the eye of a lemon. There’s a mineral-like firmness on the palate (rather than that flabby syrup-sweetness you get with many commodity lagers), a pleasant sweetness in the mouthfeel and the slightest of bitter finishes that gets me going back for more. Gluten-free beers have obviously come on since I last carpet-bombed my palate in a good cause. 

Lager (?) of the week — Plzen Ij

I haven’t been drinking in Holland since an enjoyable afternoon at the Red Lion in the Limburg city of Venlo several years back; here Lindeboom’s uncomplicated but enjoyable Pilsner was the order of the day amongst others, including the landlord’s own home-brewed take on a tripel (it was pretty good). I enjoy Grolsch and Christoffel’s beers, as well as the ones I have had from De Molen, but more recently I have discovered Plzen Ij from the Amsterdam-based Brouwerij Het Ij. It’s an honest, unreconstructed, complex, horny handed, rough arsed, plain-spoken beer that dubs itself a Pils (see below) — and an utter delight. The nose is sweet and herbal, with hints of resiny hoppiness; on the palate it was balanced between its bittersweet notes and the start of a long bitter finish. My version was unfiltered and slightly cloudy and all the better for it. Like swallows and summers, one bottle does not make a classic but it’s a beer that really stands out and makes me want to try it again. I really like unfiltered Pilsners and I still drool over the deliciousness of the Pilsner Urquell that was served to me straight from the wood in the old tunnels beneath the brewery back in 2005 — I wonder if it is the same?
Just as I prepare to post this, I read that a top fermenting yeast is used for Plzen Ij — once again the thorny question comes to mind: is this a lager? It brings to mind something someone from one of my favourite British craft brewers said to me recently, when I asked if they were joining the British Lager campaign: ‘we make good beer, full stop.’ I won’t change the heading of this post, but if we are going to be doctrinal it’s incorrect. Oh lord, the semantics of beer don’t half drag one down.

I love lager and Tipopils is one of the best Pilsners in Europe at the moment

Some time ago a lot of loot is spent promoting Peroni with the fountain scene recreated from La Dolce Vita (well I suppose it wouldn’t work recreating a scene from Bicycle Thieves or Rome Open City). Why bother though, Birrifico Italiano’s Tipopils is the most glorious Pilsner in Europe at the moment (for me that is). A bottle finds its way to me and boy do I enjoy it (in company with last night’s Doctor Who). Poured into the glass it crackles and snaps on the palate, is big and bold in both nose and flavour; it’s a beer that stamps its own identity with a crisp and refreshing arrival in the mouth. It’s bitter and aromatic, dry and sprightly, fragrant, resiny, powerful, punchy (if you want to be technical a bright fragrant note mingles with a darker hop pungency on the nose, whilst on the palate it is clean and refreshing and expansive in the finish). It’s put into a 750ml bottle (the sort of bottle that is always tiresomely designated as ‘good for sharing’, but no one but me is having this beauty). I’ve visited the brewery whose nerve centre is a Swiss-looking tavern in Lurago Marinone, south of Como and I can recommend that the trip be made. Amber Shock and Bi-Bock are there for the taking as well, while at the right time of the year Extra Hop (see pic), can be found, which is served with a hop cone of Mittelfrau on the top of its foam. The crying shame about this beer is that apart from GBBF’s foreign bar, this glorious beer and others like it from the Italian renaissance are not available over here — whether that’s good (it means a trip and the widening of beer-drinking horizons) or bad (you fly and rack up the air miles), is up to others. I know that I hope to return next year, my palate can hardly wait.

Helles vs Pilsner

Having just drunk a St Georgen Helles and then its Pils, I am slightly at odds with what is the difference. The Helles has a fresh and even fragrant nose and a malty snap, while the Pilsner seems to be cleaner in the palate though there is still some fragrance on the nose with bitter notes in the finish. Good beers both of them, but is this the German equivalent of the difference between Best Bitter and Bitter?