Smoked Marzen
Brewsters Brewing Company & Restaurant - Eleventh Avenue

 

Enjoyed a pint on tap at Calgary Crowfoot location, a recent "seasonal" offering featured on their new menu format (I agree with my Canadian colleague below, I like the new format. No need to scan through tons and tons of seasonal/special brews they do not currently have). The beer arrived quickly, a dark reddish bronze hue with a dappling of light tan bubbles. Smells smoky (obviously) but sweet and nutty as well, the latter elements somehow preserved despite the decidedly bacon-like beechwood smoke aroma. Palate also features a huge meaty flavor, ham and bacon really, although again one can pick out some toffee, honeyed cereal, and black pepper notes as well. The smoke is certainly assertive but does not totally overpower the unsmoked malts and one can even pick out a faint whisper of noble hops. Great brew, really. This Gunther fellow is a bad-ass. I appreciate how the malt sweetness manages to build over the course of a pint even as the smoke persists.

20oz pint at Century Park. I like the new beer menu layout, with the inserted card for the current rotational, which contains all the brewing info for the beer in question, including who the brewer is - this being Gunther's, of course.

This beer appears a clear, bright medium orange brick amber hue, with one finger of loosely foamy, and generally wispy beige head, which leaves but a few wayward specks of pinprick lace around the glass as things move forward.

It smells of meaty smoke, more campfire grill than backyard, bready caramel malt, tanned leather, singed black fruit, and musty earthy, leafy hops. The taste is more meaty, somewhat medicinal and gritty wet smoke, biscuity caramel malt, a touch of toffee pudding, muddled dark fruit, a slight flinty minerality, more old leather, residual ash, and nice leafy, earthy hops.

The carbonation is quite light, and mostly ineffectual, the body a dense medium-full weight for the style, and actually fairly smooth, the smoke not willing to dabble here. It finishes well off-dry, the big malt kind of running away with it, the smoke trailing like a thin streamer.

A rather impressive Marzen, underscored by its ability to handle the beechwood smoked portion of its Munich malt with style and aplomb, i.e. let it strut itself up front, then slowly rein it in, before doing away with it at the end. The result? The desire for another big glug to repeat the process anew. Good stuff.