After reading a recent article about smoked beers, I have no doubt that we need to carry one at the bar. Especially since our fare is New Ranch Cuisine, focused on cured and smoked meats as a centerfold to our menu. So the first sample came last week, Spezial Rauchbier Lager. Spezial Brewery is the oldest brewery in Bamberg (1536) which is located in Bavaria on the Regnitz River and is one of the few towns in Germany that was not devastated from bombing in World War II. Spezial does all of its own malting and smoking at its brewery in downtown Bamberg. In this beer they use 40% smoked malt and 60% Bavarian barley malt, which gives a slight smoky flavor to the beer but not as much as I was hoping for. Pours a nice deep amber color. The nose is fruity as in over-ripe apple with a touch of peaty smoke. It is sweet and malty on the palette with vanilla and very little smoke. The finish is not very long and the smoky flavor does not linger. Not quite what I was looking for, hoping that the next sample is smokier. This brewery also makes another Rauchbier that is 70% smoked malt and 30% barley malt, so maybe we can get a sample of that.
We just got in the Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier for summer and by accident our rep sent us the Weihenstephaner Kristall Weissbier. Pretty much any beer drinker knows that Weihenstephaner is the oldest running brewery in the world (although a neighboring abbey Weltenburg says that this claim to fame belongs to them). Regardless, Weihenstephaner is well known for their wheat beers and it is their dunkelweiss that turned me on to drinking beer, as I had absolutely no palate for beer before this experience and thought it all to be quite boring as it all just tasted like beer. The Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier is a beautiful wheat beer that is perfect for summer. It pours a beautiful golden color with just a hint of cloudiness. The nose is banana, citrus, and a hint of clove. Flavor wise there is a smidgen of citrus with a gorgeous creamy finish. It is by far the best Hefeweizen I have ever had.
The Kristall Weissbier was very light in style and if I had blind tasted it, I would have never guessed it was a wheat beer, but rather a lager. The color of it is a crisp clear yellow. There is still a hint of banana but minus the clove of the other Hefeweizen, it is also lacking the creamy finish of the Hefe but still had a refreshing finish with some nice hints of lemon zest. It was interesting but too light for most people’s expectations of a Hefeweissbier. I’m glad the regular Hefeweizen came on this last order.
We also got a new IPA two weeks ago, Lompoc’s C Note. It is an Imperial Ale which means that the brewer altered the style of the beer to make it bitterer. In the beer world there is actually a bitterness scale (IBU International Bitterness Unit) which is used to determine how bitter a beer is. Typically heavier beers have a higher IBU because the beer needs more bitterness to be balanced, but they might not taste as bitter because they used more malt to balance the flavor. There is no way to measure a beer over 100 IBU’s and the Lompoc C Note claims that they have over 100 IBU’s. To put things in perspective, most American lagers (Budweiser, Coors, Miller) have and IBU of 5. Porters tend to have between 25 to 40. Stouts tend to have between 25 to 60. And IPA’s tend to have over 40.
Lompoc named this beer the C Note because they are using all the C hops, Centennial, Crystal, Cluster, Chinook, Cascade, and Columbus. It is brewed in Portland, although I’ve been surprised that there is not a lot of name recognition. I’m sure time will change that. It pours a hazy amber color. The nose is very floral with a little bit of lavender and lemon. Has a very dry mouthfeel with lemon and pine and a long bitter finish. I personally like something a little more rounded with more grapefruit (i.e. Pliny the Elder) but this is a fairly-well balanced IPA and the bitterness is smooth and long, not abrupt as in the West Coast IPA.
It was also the week of bitters as my long awaited Angostura Orange bitters came in. I’ve wanted them for a long time and was hoping the liquor store would stock them, but that never came to fruition so I ordered them online. I also got a bottle of Regan’s orange bitters and Peychaud’s bitters (embarrassed we didn’t always have them). This in addition to the bitters I made last month, which all turned out quite well (although the cardamom in the Bitters IV is a bit too strong – will tool around with that in the near future) has made for very little space on the bar top (need a shelf just for the bitters). I cannot tell you how I love the Angostura Orange bitters, they got excellent reviews and they are the best orange bitters I have ever had. They have a much deeper complex flavor that the Fee Brothers (which taste like Fanta Orange) or Regan’s. There is cardamom, lemon zest, and cinnamon which add an intricacy that you don’t find in other orange bitters. The flavor is long and involved with the flavor of orange essential oils bursting through at the end.
I just ordered some bottles that I am quite excited about, so when they come I’ll keep you posted: Franca Menta, Strega Strega, and Aalborg Akvavit.
- Columbine Quillen I am a mixologist bartender and this is my blog.