Saturday 16 January 2010

German Beer Tasting at Mark and Monica's

Tonight Teena and I went over to our friends, Mark and Monica's, for dinner.

Teena wrote about the night on her blog.

Mark is of German descent so I thought it would be fun to bring along a half dozen German beer to sample. Mark thought this was an excellent idea. So here is what we had.

We started off with a Lowenbrau Original (5.2 ABV). Lowenbrau is owned by Inbev but the original brewery opened in 1383. There is a U.S. version of Lowenbrau brewed under license by SABMiller but does not use the original recipe. The folks at Lowenbrau calls this one "Original" to distinguish the one that is exported from Munich from the inferior U.S. product. I thought it was nothing special but Mark called it a "solid beer", that got better as it warmed.

Next up was Dortmunder Actien Brauerei (DAB) Original (5.0ABV) brewed by Dortmunder Actien Brauerei. The brewery has been brewing beer since 1868 and this is their premium lager. We both found this a better balanced beer than the Lowenbrau.

After an excellent supper, we then opened a Warsteiner Premium Verum (4.8 ABV) brewed by Warsteiner, which has brewed beer since 1753 and is Germany's largest family owned brewery. This is their most popular brand. Brewed under German Purity Law. We found this beer to be along the same lines as the DAB.

The fourth brand we opened was Schneider Weisse Original (5.4 ABV) – “The Original Liquid amber since 1872”. In1850, George Schneider was granted by Royalty the exclusive right to brew wheat beer in Germany . This made his brewery the oldest brewery of wheat beer in Germany. This is a bottle-conditioned beer that has been brewed for more than 130 years in accordance with the brewery founder's old unchanged recipe. It poured cloudy and was full of flavour. I thought there was a hint of orange in the taste, whereas Mark spoke of it being "citrusy" We both loved this one.

Then it was the Hofbrau Oktoberfest Bier (5.7 ABV) from Hofbräu München, a brewery which has been around sonce 1589. This particular brand was created in 1810 to celebrate the first Oktoberfest in 1810 and has served it at every Oktoberfest since. I thought it was a great beer, full of taste with a dry finish. Wish I had this one before the wheat beer as it likely would have been even more flavourful. Mark thought it was an enjoyable beer.

We finally arrived at our last beer, the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel (5.3 ABV) brewed by Weihenstephan, which claims itself as the worlds oldest brewery having started by brewing beer from its Weihenstephan Monastery Brewery in 725 AD. The original brewery still stands on Nahrberg Hill and still brews beer. It too had a hint of orange in the flavour and was a wonderful beer, my favorite of the night. Mark claimed to have lost his taste buds by then and could not comment on the taste, except to say that he liked it.

And the verdict? Not a bad beer in the lot and we had a lot of fun. I put the Weihenstephaner as my favorite followed by the Schneider then the Hofbrau. Mark liked the DAB the best, the Schneider second best, then the Hofbrau.

It was a fun visit!

1 comment:

MonicaH said...

Great post Gord. What a fun evening. Love, love, love the pictures, especially the last one. Teena and I married to some pretty handsome dudes. :-) - Monica