Trent In Canada

[Trent]

UNIBROUE'S EPHEMERE POMME (apple beer)
Wow, apple beer? Not too sure about this one. Wheaty breadiness, and granny smith apples in the aroma. Cloudy, gold in colour, head dissipates quickle, I am sure it is the glass. Sweet and tart flavour, the apple is definitely prominent, but mixed in with what I assume to be wheat, and wouldnt be overly identifiable unless you were told it was an apple beer. The bitterness is moderate, and the apple add a fair tartness to it. I think that the apple was added as juice, and is probably what I would expect if I ordered a half beer/half cider in a pub. Medium body, high carbonation, and um, not quite my cup of tea. I am sure that the raspberry verysion will sit better with me though
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OLD YALE'S SEARGENTS IPA 5.5%
Equal parts maltiness and hoppiness, with a few esters thrown in for the aroma. It is a pale copper with a low white head. Toffee-like maltiness and a med-high hop aroma that is kinda earthy, leading me to believe it is an english IPA. There is a definite caramel note, with some faint honey, that may be oxidation? Bitterness and malt and hop flavour are well balanced and linger into the aftertaste. Oh, just read the bottle, and the hops are EKG, so it is english. Bitterness is med-high, med body. Excellent example of an egnglish IPA, though lower in alcohol than I would expect.
I think it was $5 for a 650mL bottle
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Well, I am in a hurry, and am about to put up a few pics of beer, and will review them when I get a chance. they are on this computer, and I leave for germany at sparrows fart, so the reviews will come, I promise!
The next few pics, though, are of our wierd weather lately. After all the snow and **** gets packed down by loads of driving on it, it gets a bit dicey to drive on, but no-one cares. Anyway, 2 days ago, it gets warm, and is 6C overnight, and raining, and I get up the next morning, and it is -5C, and just freaking sheet ice. Lara and I actually went into town for a drive, and managed to get out of the driveway in her apt complex with alot of sliding, then the street was a bit slippery, but all the main roads get anti freeze put on em, so we were all good. Coming home, however, we couldnt get up the driveway, and tried to sneak our way back our, but the van ended up sliding sideways out onto the (luckily empty) street! Here are some pics of the car park, and the one of me on the driveway, I slid most of the way down to where I am standing! look at my reflection. The final pic is of one of the dodgiest footpaths in town, especially after the rain. The guy at the top of the pic is a schoolkid, and he slid halfway down the hill like he was ice skating. Musta done it before :blink:
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Just 2 quick pics of the local brewery, it used to be a micro, but is now more of a macro, having been purchased by Shaftebury, then purchased again by Sleeman (who I think is now a division of Coors). Unfortunately it shows in the beer, but it is still cool to have a brewery within cooee
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Well well, arent I a lazy *******? Anyway, 6 months on, I have lost my review of this beer, but I can tell you all that it was quite a pale looking beer, none of the typical pinks that you get in some raspberry beers, and the raspberry flavour was more intense than I have ever come across. I can only assume that they have used a raspberry extract, but the raspberry added quite a tartness, that got a bit cloying after a while. Possibly real raspberries in secondary. Anyway, I was really impressed with the raspberry flavour at first, and thought I would love it, but by the end of the glass, I decided I couldnt drink more than that. Mind you, I had been drinking non stop for 3 weeks, so I was fairly well ready for a rest! Pretty much the same as the Apple Ephemere, but just with raspberry, and a little tarter.
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OK, here is my raftman review, though after 6 months, I cant remember TOO clearly. What I do remember though, is it was a little heavy to drink too many (see previous post about drinking for 3 weeks, and needing a rest), and had a spiciness to it similar to Stuster's American Rye beer in last years July Case Swap. It said on the bottle, that they use Whiskey malt, which may be a proprietary malt name for a maltster somewhere, OR, and that brings me to my theory, it is actually rye malt. Given that they make Rye Whisky (canadian club) over here, it isnt too much of a stretch. Anyway, I enjoyed it, and look forward to the day I can try it on a non alcohol abused tummy.
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Anyway, my next stop was Germany. I went to visit my Auntie, Uncle and Cousin in a town called Pforzeim, not too far from Stuttgart. We had 4 days only, so I had informed my cousin previously that I wanted to try as many beers as I could (despite not feeling like ANY MORE drinking).
He had a few beers waiting for me when I got there, and the first was Hoepfner Edel-Weisse. It wasnt a bad beer, per-se, but for a weisse beer, it was a bit bland, kinda like a mega lager, to be quite honest. It is a filtered wheat beer, and I am thinking alot of the flavour gets filitered out with it. I was really looking forward to all the wheat beers in germany, this one was a bit of a disappointment Many more to go, though.
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After the ede-weisse, we cracked some Hoepfner krausen. I always spell krauesen like that, and discovered I spell it with an extra "e". Apparently I dont know much German (but I knew that a long time ago). This beer was a little bit better, but at the end of the day, not too much different to the filtered version. I was a little disappointed with the flavou of these beers, after a few weeks in Canada, but I was ready to take on the Dunkelwiezens when I got the chance, cause I love them. I was just surprised there was very little clove or banana in either of the weizens.
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The next day, we all piled in the car, and went for a drive to freiburg. All of us, being me, my new mrs Lara, my mum (who had been over for the wedding, then came to germany, she was NOT along for the homeymoon part ), my auntie margit, and my cousin Michael.
SIDE STORY - Michale has this crazy Mercedes sports car than can take 4 people, which I was SOOOO looking forward to taking on the autobahn, but as my aunty wanted to come along, we were forced to take the Honda CRV of his mums/my auntie's. Anyone that owns a CRV, hold your heads high. We all jumped in the car, and cruised out onto the autobahn, and got it into 5th gear and were just cruising along at a leaisurely 180km/h We were overtaking most cars on the road, but every now and then, when you were feeling like king of the road, you would hear this RRRROOOOWWWWW! as something like an audi or a porsche shot past at (best guess) 240-260km/h, making us look like we were standing still. It was really kinda funny, you would just hear the roar of an engine, and look to the left to see what it was, but it wasnt there - it was about 100m up the road, and disappearing quick. Driving along, though, there were alot of patches of the safety fence (that steel thing between directions that we get here) that were severely dented, or just missing and replaced with witches hats. Given the amount of missing sections we saw, I was very happy we didnt meet one of the people that came through at 200km/h . Generally, there is no speed limit, but at areas where there are on and off ramps, the speed slows to 80-110, and everyone slows down so the cops dont pinch em. Then after the speed zone is over, it is back to breakneck speed. I have no idea what the road toll is like on the autobahns, but if you think of all the ********* that try to drive to quick out here when it is illegal, I am sure a similar number drive outside their ability over there. Cruising along at 180 is a very fun feeling though :super:

BACK TO BEER - For lunch in Freiburg, we went to a place called Martins Brau that had quite good food, and I had one of their Pilseners, which was absolutely delicious. For some reason, German Pilseners are very good in Germany! And, they had a criminal amount of fresh hallertauer hops just decorating the bar and restaurant. I believe they are not far from the hallertauer region (if zwickel reads this, he can correct me I am sure). Here is a pic of me with my head in the hops. And it was like this around the whole bar area.
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After the lunch, we jumped in the car and cruised throught he Black Forest (which is really nice) to a town that i cannot remember the name of, for a personally organised English speaking tour (thanks to my cousin michael) of the Alpirsbacher Klosterbrau brewery. It was a brewery originally started by monks (though not run by them anymore) and they have their own spring that spits out really soft water. They are a bit of a mega brewery, something like 15 million litres a year, but the tour guide was very knowledgable, and actually very humourous. He showed us through all their old stuff, like the cask bender and cask room, and then the old bottler.
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Next up was the old beer filter, then the old kettle (at least if my memory serves me OK it was the old kettle.)I took a pic of an old hop bag, and what most of us wouldnt do to get a fresh bag of those hops, and a cask that had a tap in it, and looked old and decrepit, so I asked if I could take it off their hands, but the answer was no
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After the tour was over, we headed over to the tasting room, but on the way, I had to rub the little statue of a monk's belly for good luck! It supposedly gives you good luck or something, and it hasnt yet made me a good brewer, but I will give it more time to work its magic :lol: At the tasting room, we had a few beers, and the one I as keen as mustard to try was the Kellerbier. I had read a report on kellerbier in BYO, and was expecting (as BYO said) germany's answer to cask conditioned ale. I was SO psyched for it, so you can imagine how let down I was when it tasted not far from megaswill. The tour guide told me that it is their normal mega lager, with 15% hefewiezen added to get that cloudy appearance Their hefe didnt have much of the typical hefe characteristics, so I could understand. I wasnt overly impressed with any of their beers, though their black pilsener wasnt too bad, but what can one expect from a major brewery. The tour was excellent though. IIRC, they actually brew the beer on premises where we did the tour, then pump it through 1.6km of underground lines down the road to be fermented at their fermenting plant. Yep, these guys are MUCH bigger than I would like to be (if I had a brewery).
So anyway, here are a few pics of me rubbing the monks belly (and dont laugh at the yellow jacket, it was cold, and I felt warmer in that!), and getting served by the tour guide in the tasting room.
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Okay
The next day, Michael had understood I was disappointed by the fact that the kellerbier wasnt a cask served ale as the BYO had said, and felt for me after ordering a bock at the Alpirsbacher restaurant, and getting a beer that looked, and tasted, just like a pale lager. SO, he came home from work with these little puppies, 2 bottles of kellerbier. I was very stoked, only to discover, to my dismay, that they also tasted like a mega lager with a small portion of hefe added in to give the coludy appearance. At least he had a really finky glass to drink it out of! None of the beers I had tasted we BAD, its just that the lacked the clove and banana flavours you expect from a German wiezen, or had no real flavour that stood out, as with the German lagers, though the pilsener at martin's Brau was excellent, plenty of hops. So michael chucked me in his mercedes, and drove me about 30 mins to a town I dont remember, to a hotel who's name I dont recall, but I remember it seemed very upmarket, and was something like 150 years old, and hadnt been destroyed in WWII. The building was AMAZING, cannot describe how crazy it was to be in a building that old, and there was hardly anyone on any of the floors, so we went and sat in the restaurant upstairs, and drank beers. The beers there were brewed in Belgium, and all that I had were excellent. Trust the belgians to make really flavourful beers. I had a few semi sour beers, but the best beers were the lights! Michael was driving, so he had an apricot and a raspberry beer, both of which were 2.5%. the raspberry was the best, but they both tasted distinctly of the fruit they were supposed to, and had no tartness, or cloying to go with it. they were exceptionally well balanced, and possibly the best beers I tasted in Germany (and also the most expensive at 12 euro for a 750ml bottle of the light beer!)
In a country where they make beer with so few flaws that it is almost bland, I became convinced that the Belgians brew some of my favourite beers available on planet earth... And Mercedes sports cars go really, really fast.
T.

 

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Last full day, Michael, Lara and I went driving somewhere (cant remember where) and dropped into the supermarket on the way home to pick up a Jever Pils to start the night off with. The prices are ridiculous here, as is the selection! See pic attached. The price of my Jever pils? 79 euro cents. For a 500mL bottle. Anyway, I chose Jever cause I had read somewhere it was a sensational German Pils, but once again, I was to be disappointed. Not that it is a bad beer, it was just kinda "bland". Maybe my palate was shot from all the OTT beers in Canada, and maybe cause I so badly wanted a good dunkelweizen and it wasnt the season. Who knows? After that, though, we went out to a brewpub called Lindenbrau, in the town of Waldbronn. The beer was very good, they had a pilsener, a helles and a dunkel. I liked the dunkel the best, but it was a darker lager, rather than a weizen. Very clean beers all of them, and nary a fault to be found, and the place was packed, being a saturday night. It was an excellent night, but I was SO sick of drinking booze, I just wanted an alcohol free day h34r: . BUT, in the name of fun, I plugged on, and drank my own body weight in very good quality German beer (it wasnt a chore, honest - no matter how much I make it sound like it was!). Jeez, I lead a terrible life, hey :lol: And they also sold excellent pretzels (on top of their excellent food) that arent as big as you imagine them, but are just the right size. Germany makes the best pretzels in the world. I reckon. Here is a pic of me and Michael with a dunkel groBe and a helles kliene, and then me and a pretzel. Dont I look healthy?
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Last day, and off to Thailand we were bound. Michael took Lara and I to Frankfurt airport, and while we were waiting around for our plane, I grabbed us some drinks from the caefeteria, Michael had a coke, and I found my first dunkelweizen in germany! It was a sandwald dunkelweisse, and I must say, that I enjoyed it thoroughly, and it was probably the best German beer I had there. Next time I go there, it will be in summer, so I can get into the weizens in season, and I will also go to Berlin for the berliner wiesse!
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Next stop was Thailand, and it will also be my last beer review post on here. If I hadda known that Germans were the larget number of touro's in Thailand, I woulda waited till I got there to drink good german beer! They had Erdinger Weisse on tap in quite a few spots, and also had Old Speckled Hen in one pub! Just about any good german beer is available in Bangkok and tourist islands. My friends Ben abd SJ took me and Lara around bangkok, and to the night markets, Suan Lum (sp?) that had SO MANY beers available, including aventinus weizenbock, and weizen eisbock. I even found some Alpirsbacher Klosterbrau (the brewery we toured) available. I had a few German beers there, but mainly stuck to the local stuff, which was quite nice in the hot climate. All up, it was an amazing holiday, full of good beer and fun, and one that saw me drinking very little in the weeks after getting home!
Hope my reviews didnt bore ya too much, but if they did, ya shouldnt have bothered reading em!
I will put some more reviews on when I am in North America in 6 or so weeks.
All the best
Trent
PS In bangkok, they put ice in their beer, so we drank our chang with a handful of ice in each cup. Not as bad as you would think, but probably only do-able in thailand!