Imbibe Lager

Lager. I cannot believe that anyone who thinks and drinks beer and clinks their glass in the pursuit of a higher kind of lifestyle can believe that lager is just — to paraphrase a legion of people, a battalion of self-knowing buzzards, who perhaps also believe that Germans are not very nice and that the sun is a colony of lizards — yellow fizz; the idiocy of this position, the simplicity and the laughable lack of knowledge about lager is something that has always bugged me, something that has almost, you could say, haunted me from the time when I started writing about beer. I can hear the words rattle like Marley’s chains, ‘I don’t like lager, it’s yellow fizz, full of chemicals, foreign rubbish, and anyway doesn’t following the bear lead to cancer (or at least the annexation of the Crimea)?’

I still hear these sorts of sentiments from various people, some of them who purport to know about beer, but all I am hearing is a continent-closed-by-fog-in-the-channel attitude that suspects lager is the spawn of a lederhosen-wearing devil with a dirndl for a pelmet. For these people lager is a misanthropic liquid that crushed all before it like Genghis Khan and is now content to squat on the roof of the world like a malevolent toad. So who am I to deny them?

On the other hand, what kind of lager do they believe is yellow fizz? Perhaps it’s a Helles with its soft bready aroma and gentle carbonation (hey it’s the colour of the sun), or a Pilsener, a lemony, crisply bitter beer that arrays itself down the palate like a horde of horsemen crossing the Steppes; or maybe it’s a roasty, toasty, boasty East German Schwarz (though smaller German breweries’ versions I have tried recently seem to have become creamier and smoother in their mouth feel); how about a chestnut brown Dunkel with its mocha and chocolate notes or even a Bock or Doppelbock with lots of alcohol, hazelnuts, chocolate and mocha (midnight dark or cellophane blonde, take your pick)? Then there’s Keller, Zoigl, Rauch, Dortmund, Světlý Ležák, yeast lager, Spezial, dry-hopped, imperial. And then some are hopped more generously than others, while some might be darker or lighter or stronger or weaker.

So with all that in mind I can ask what’s not to like about lager – after all it’s a beer that should be a noble expression of its raw materials, a clear and clean acoustic chamber of barley and hops, the ocean breeze in a glass.

Which brings me in a roundabout way to this week’s Imbibe Live where I, along with Paddy Johnson from Windsor & Eton (makers of the exemplary Republika) will be talking about British craft lager at the Beer Academy stand on Tuesday and Wednesday. We will be tasting several examples, telling tall tales, rhapsodising, encouraging and enlivening the world (or those who are passing) on the glory of lager. If you’re around do pop over.

Jubilee beers: Harvey’s and Windsor & Eton

Jubilee beers, Jubilee beers, of which I have had several sent to me; one of which is Harvey’s Elizabethan Ale, 7.5% in the bottle, barley wine, wine of the barley. Debutante beer in 1952 and Harvey’s for this bottle have gone back to the recipe books to recreate it as it was (with black malt, flaked barley, plus Goldings and Fuggles, some of which come from growers who supplied hops for the original brew — so it’s slightly different from the regular 8.1%). It hangs limpid in the glass, glassy eyed, a calm surface, the mirror of the nostalgic view that invisible posters on certain newspaper posting boards have for the 1950s (forgetting nuclear scares, wars throughout the world and race riots) in the same way other newspaper posters have a nostalgic view of the 1960s. Deep molasses influence on the nose, while on the palate it’s plummy, woody, port-like, boozy and warming, bitter almonds, baked apple topped with brown sugar (oh the freedom that the end of sugar rationing brought only to end in the addiction we have for it now), more molasses. It’s a ripe and roisterous barley wine whose prodding bitter notes in the finish (and then there is the spice of white pepper) are an urge to the drinker not to forget to have another swig. Yummy, as I understand was the colloquial expression of delight of those days. 

And then I was sent a bottle of Windsor & Eton’s Kohinoor, named after a massive diamond in the Coronation Crown (I have also had Treetops, of which I have yet to taste). The brewery says it is a ‘classic Indies Pale Ale’ that also uses jaggery sugar, jasmine, cardamon and coriander as well as New World hops — I don’t think, unlike Harvey’s beer, that this was a typical brew in those days. Dark gold in colour, it’s got a sweaty, ripe peach skin nose (I’m thinking peaches in a bowl on a sunny kitchen table for a couple of days). After this initial swipe of ripeness the nose calms down a bit and develops a Epsom bath salts kind of freshness that I have always found appetising (Sierra Nevada Pale Ale sometimes has this). A bit of green apple stuck in your aunt’s Jubilee hat makes a slight appearance as well, and even a hint of spearmint gum from a fresh wrapper left in the sun plus — a bit late in the day — a cut grass sweetness can be noted. The path of palate enlightenment is peppery (white) and minty (spearmint) and fruity (pineapple) and dry and bitter, all working together with the preciseness of an engine in the latest Audi. It’s an angular beer, pretty intriguing, with all those various spices and hops. The dry, chalky finish reverberates with the equal precision of a metronome keeping time. And time and the passing of is what these beers are about. 

Beers I have been recently sent

Beer, I get sent to me, for consideration, or sometimes if I can’t get to try the beer for a feature, I ask the brewery if they could send me a sample. I trust the brewery; the beer, 90% of the time, is delightful — I’m certainly not a guy who likes every beer. But the result of this is that I have a swathe of tasting notes that I feel I should share, they’re not all in features or books and sometimes they’re so good or intriguing that I would like to share them, hence this post. So bear with me on this.

Sharp’s Honey Spiced IPA, 7.5%

Dark gold in colour; on the nose a ripe peach skin that has been sitting in the sun for too long; it reminds me of some of the erotic charge that the hop sack brings; there’s also a hint of the snappiness of green apple plus the soft sensual felt-like texture of honey. On the palate there’s honeyed peach skin, a softness of fruitiness (papaya, some lychee and orange skin where the thumb has made the spray come out) and a floral honeyed note that makes me think of honey slathered on fresh white bread — a breakfast beer then. It’s a ripe and voluptuous beer, expressive, yearning, a minor key in a chorus, but then the finish adds a sense of bitter betrayal, crisp, dry, chewy before the fruit and honey returns to take a more mellow bow.

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge, 7.5%

Scrounged a couple of bottles of this from Zak Avery. The nose was sherbet–like (it reminds me of a fascination I have always had with the Arabian sherbet, a soft drink I suspect I would enjoy) with a spray of grapefruit pith; sweet lemon without sweetness. It’s a big beer when taken from the glass — dry lemon, dusty grapefruit, a lack in sweetness, almost medicinal, an expression of the Saaz — it also made me wonder about imperial Pilsner, whether they are experiments or gimmicks or an organic expansion of the genre (see a comment from Doug Odell about his sour Pilsner here). There’s a big lemon sourness that is different from the flinty lemon sourness you would get in a saison. I was not entirely sure about the beer — I don’t know that the use of shedloads of Saaz works. Maybe an imperial Pilsner is an angel with a dirty face.

Fordham Copperhead. 5.2%

Don’t know much about these guys, they’re trying to establish themselves in the UK, and in my limited knowledge of where they are — Delaware — I assume that the Alt style of this beer is quite a common thing (vague memories of 1001 Beers’ beers from this part of the world intrude). Unlike Cyrano the nose is not big but there is a spicy pepperiness on the palate, plus a hint of green apple, some crisp ryebread, and the feel of an oily texture. For me this is a typical American interpretation of an Altbier though I think Otter Creek’s is one of the best (that is called Copper Ale, who got there first I wonder?). There is a dry, crisp, cereal-like chewy finish. It’s both chewy and refreshing, sweetish but also with a hint of white pepper; fruit pastilles perhaps in the background; digestive biscuit with a dusting of chocolate. There is also a traditional American hop — which delivers some grapefruit notes. I like this one a lot. Toffee notes came along cap in hand as it warmed up.

Windsor & Eton Republika, 4.8%

First thoughts: this beer owes more to Bavaria than Bohemia, with its snappy bitterness and lacking that voluptuousness that I would expect from a 12˚ Svetly Lezak — a crisp bitter lemon-tinged carbonation but again that high bitter note. It tingles away on the palate, rings away, like a tram clanging its way through some central European city. The carbonation offers a delightful bite of refreshment, a gorgeously crisp and appetizingly bitter mouthfeel that I want to experience more of — I had mine with freshly made spring rolls where the carbonation briefly swabbed the decks of the palate clean allowing the refreshment of the beer to emerge, five spice powder and chilli and all, before the spring rolls asserted their spiciness. It cut through the grease, faced up to the spice, but allowed the spice to have its own moment in the spotlight (I don’t want the chilli to vanish, I wanted chilli to have its own identity, but I didn’t want my mouth to become a gastronomic battle of Stalingrad). On its own, a superb riff on a Bavarian but also a cool fit with a vegetable spring and chilli.