Pilsner
Double Mountain Brewery & Taproom

 

 

 

8oz glass, at Beer Revolution Edmonton's Double Mountain tap takeover, or at least the dregs of it, come the bright new following Monday. A pretty dear price, for such a small pour, I gotta say.

This beer appears a mostly clear, medium golden yellow colour, with one finger of weakly puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly off-white head, which leaves some lovely cobwebbed lace around the glass as things slowly seep away.

It smells of crisp, grainy and doughy pilsener malt, muddled citrus flesh and pome fruitiness, and leafy, spicy, and grassy noble hop bitters. The taste is bready and doughy pale malt, white saltine crackers, domestic grapefruit, and more leafy, spicy, and floral green hoppiness.

The carbonation is adequate for the task at hand, via its stoic frothiness, the body a decent middleweight, and generally smooth, as the hops are not exactly of the interfering sort here. It finishes trending dry, but balanced all the same.

Overall, this is certainly one of the better versions of the style the I have experienced of late. True to form, and very, very easy to drink - just not at $12.50 a Yankee pint - what is this, Rogers Place?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crystal clear golden colour with a smooth white head. Some lacing and decent head retention.

A little grainy with some good spicy hop notes. A big, bold American style Czech pils.

Smooth malt with a crisp finish and spicy hops. Nice bitterness. My style of pilsner.

Medium body with moderate carbonation. Crisp.

A solid pilsner that I found really quite enjoyable on this hot dfay in Hood River.

Sampled at the recent 2011 OBF. At least for me, I found this to be one of the more enjoyable beers at this year's fest.

The beer pours a solid gold color with very good head retention and decent lacing. The nose is all pilsener goodness, showingcasing light pepper, biscuit and cookie dough, and a hint of dry citrus. On the palate, this beer is pretty impressive, and will bring a smile to any hophead (like it did for me). There's also some light honey and biscuit flavor, but the beer otherwise finishes with a long, dry, wave of bitterness. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, with the beer demonstrating a mouthfilling quality I don't see too often in a pils.

Just an all around excellent beer, especially considering the 5.5% abv. One of the richer, more intensely flavored domestic pils I've had (very much like a Victory pils on steroids).

Too bad for Double Mountain I'd just come down the hill from Elliot Glacier where I was very impressed with their summer pilsner called High Prairie. With High Prairie fresh in mind I sat down to an imperial pint of Double Mountain's pilsner and found that it couldn't hold its own against its upstream neighbor.

DM's pilsner is reasonably clean and refreshing, but at 55 IBU it's a bit overplayed for the style. It is pale straw colored, modestly clear, and shows a rimmed head and exceptionally low carbonation. There is no lace and no particular aroma.

This may be a case of "too much of a good thing." Double Mountain's kölsch is successfully over-hopped. The pilsner is unsuccessfully over-hopped and lacks for balance, finesse, and definition.

Not a bad beer. But it didn't make me sing as Elliot Glacier's did.

On tap at Baileys in Portland.

This is a great pilsner that is clear crisp and possessing of a big finish. I could have drank this all night though I had too many choices to make that an option. This is the type of lager that makes you realize how great the style can be.

This new recipe was brewed for the first time back in the spring, lagered for several weeks then released on-tap around the first of July (in Hood River and, now, elsewhere); it happens to be Double Mountain's first shot at a Lager, after much success with their lineup of Ales. I sampled a pint (which proved good enough to then order a second to 'evaluate' further...) at the release party held at Henry's Tavern in Portland, July 9th.

According to brewer/co-owner Charlie Devereaux, this should be a summer-only release, available til September or so. Tasting notes from the brewery describe this as: "Matt [Swihart]'s own 'Bohemian Rhapsody', fermented with a true lager yeast from a Czech brewery and nurtured by more than six weeks of aging. the distinctly herbaceous and spicy hop character comes courtesy of Sterling hops, an American-grown variant of the classic Saaz. Liquid bread at its finest...Na Zdravi!" Brewed with Gambrinus Organic Pilsner malt, imported Vienna malt, and Sterling hops.

5.5% ABV, 50 BU

A: Quite a lovely pilsner: glowing golden, hazed slightly due to the fact the brewer doesn't filter the beer (which makes it pretty remarkable how close to clear this is). Crowned with a pure-white pillowy cloud, about 1-finger high. Generous carbonation fizzes rapidly to the head, helping it retain its form for several minutes. Excellent lace in wide bands.

S: Chilled glass, cold beer, set on a frosty 'ice rail'? Dammit, Henry's, how am I supposed to smell this? For the first 10 minutes, I got nothing aroma-wise from this beer. But with patience and some blatant cradling of the glass, I elicited the aromas I was hoping for: bready malts, crackery dry yet with a little honey sweetness.Good doses of hops, spicy and grassy with a touch of citrus zest. Once it warmed, the smell was spot-on pilsner and was appealing.

T: It's quite the flavorful pilsner! Lots of doughy bread, a sort of zesty sourdough. Malts are surrounded, perhaps in a boundary-pushing way, with hops - loads of 'em. This is a Northwest take on a traditional Czech Pilsner, with a high level of hop spiciness, a zest, and a leafy bitterness that just manages to stay balanced with enough maltiness. The brewer admitted that in its freshest state (now) this one could taste pretty 'green', with a hopping that may need time to mellow. I'd concur, but I did still enjoy the flavor.

M: Crisp, clean, good carbonation. Spritzy and light-medium in the mouth. Lasting bittering.

D: A tough call. As much as I enjoyed this beer, it's not quite my style of pilsner. A '50' on the Bittering Unit scale is awfully high for a style that's usually moderately bitter but has a malt bill to balance. I'll definitely come back to this in a few weeks for a comparison. And I certainly recommend this for a try to all - something tells me the Hop-Heads will like this alot.

Anecdote: I overheard a guy repeatedly proclaiming to friends: "Man, this is the HOPPIEST pilsner I've ever had!". But he would follow it every time with: "And it's the BEST pilsner I've ever had!"