Bayernbiere Bought and Drunk

Wow, I never heard of this practice.
Bananenweizen, made with Banana juice or syrup, is a very common thing though. And not really a trendy, new one. I can remember it being common over 10 years ago........
And while "Saftweizens" with all other kinds of tropical juices are made here and there, I'd say Bananenweizen is still by far the most commonly drunk one.,
I personally don't like it. What i sometimes like though on a hot day is what in bavaria is referred to as "Russ" or "Russenweizen"- Hefeweizen mixed with Lemonade.

 

I haven't had many weizen mixes, but I thought that the Andechser Apfelweisse, a mix of their weizen and apfelschorle, was quite good.

 

I have heard this description before. Someone needs to explain to me what banana juice is. I have eaten lots of bananas, I have never gotten juice out of one!

 

If you let them sit long enough, they pretty much turn to juice.

 

I still prefer Märzen...

 

Grabbed one single for tonight -- opted for an Andechs Doppelbock. Showing some shelf age with a little clay-like earthiness up front in the nose and flavor, but still a great Doppel. Bread crust character, smooth mouthfeel, chewy body -- delicious.

 

Do you see a date code on it? For the last two weeks I've been buying two Andechs Dopplebocks during the week and having one on Friday night and one on Saturday night. It's the beginning of a beautiful routine.

 

I've bought a couple recently with the code L3013, or late October of '13, which is slightly horrifying that they're still on shelves, and yet they're still pretty darn tasty. More horrifying are the Vollbiers next to them with the same code. I just haven't been able to bring myself to buy one, even if it's the first time I've ever seen it in stores around here.

Praying this is just the start of more permanent distro, with fresher stock soon coming.

 

Doppelbocks will handle age much, much, much better than a Helles beer. The fact that there are Vollbiers from 2013 sitting on shelves is extremely disturbing.

Cheers!

 

Let the store owner, or more specifically the beer manager, know about this. If the store is worth returning to, they'll remove these and get fresh stock from the distributor. If they don't at least pull them, I wouldn't go back.

 

There was a code on the back of the bottle, but I'm pretty sure it was different from Breadwinner's number -- mine didn't seem to follow any of the usual number coding. I'll double check to be sure (bottle's in recycling), but the good thing is that the retailer I purchased from keeps a lot of his beer refrigerated all the time.

I did notice SH Distributing listed on the label, so I know it's fairly new.

How often do you try this with any luck? Any time I mention out-of-date beer -- and I've done it all over, from liquor store to specialty store to grocery store -- I get a blank look or a song-and-dance... usually with some lame BS about European dating being "different" than American dating. "Um. See that 13? It's the same 2013 in Europe as it was here in the U.S."

It's just one more drawback of so many beers on shelves and little education of retailers on their product.

 

I'll see if the code on mine is similar (at least in coding, if not in actual date!).

 

I went ahead and ordered another box of beer from Biershop Bayern and delivery was pretty quick I have to say. This time I went with a box of Faust beers, having read alot about the brewery and its beers on this forum I've been interested in trying their beers for some time now. I went with a mix of their Kräusen, Export, Pils and Bayrisch Hell. It will be interesting to compare and contrast them against one another.

 

I’ve been quite successful at a couple of stores. Especially my main store, but I have a great relationship with the beer manager, this was how I found out about Rothaus/Fastenbier coming to MA.

I also live in the epi-center for craft in MA living near Cambridge, where most of the top beer bars/stores are located (one of them is about ten minutes outside of the city, but still a well-known store). If I was to go to random stores, I assume I’d receive similar treatment that you’ve experienced. Some examples below of my good luck….

-Two years ago I opened up a gift pack of Schneider, and they were all 1 to 2 years old. My beer guy allowed me to return it, then returned all of his stock to the distributor, and received fresh gift packs.

-This year as most of you know, I found floaties in my Schlenkerla bottles. I let the bottle shop know, and they returned their entire stock, and received fresh stock. I was in contact with Schlenkerla, the distributor, and the store at the time. All three were quite accommodating. I had found expired bottles in three different stores, after I complained, all three had fresh stock (two of them I never even talked to specifically about it).

-Another time my local had expired Kellerweis a number of years ago, I drank two bottles from it with a buddy, and then returned them after I noticed the date that same day. The owner gave me a fresh six pack from his stock.

-A random store in my area also allowed me to return old bottles that my brother purchased for my birthday. The dates on the Stone bottles were expired, and I was able to exchange for the same price.

I’m sure there’s others that I can’t think of at the moment, but I always have good luck.

 

I've been thinking about it, to be sure, but these are the first Andechs bottles I've ever seen in our market, so I've been guessing that, if they had access to fresher stock, we'd have them and that the distro wants to see how these sell before committing to more. If that's the case, that'd be pretty sad to force people's first exposure to them be with super dates bottles (even if the doppelbock is holding up quite well). I'll report back if I decide to contact the distributor/hear back.

 

Hope you enjoy! I'm a Faust fan - I think their stand-out beers for me are their Pils, their Schwarzviertler Dunkel, their Hefeweizen, and their Dopplebock. I have had the above beers as well, though, and I'm sure you'll enjoy them (especially the Pils). I hope you give those other beers a shot as well, lots of good stuff to explore from Faust.

 

The Schneider gift packs I spoke of earlier were new to our area as well, and the distributor simply took their oldest bottles and packaged them. They actually got into some hot water over being called out on that.

 

I have been able to return a six-pack now and then (in exchange for another at the same price), but if I start talking dates and freshness -- even with the specialty store guys, I get the cold shoulder.

One of my favorites was, after pointing out Salvator that was over a year old, "Oh, that's that high alcohol German stuff, it should last on the shelf for years." I'm sure the look of incredulity on my face said it all, but I tried to explain how wrong that concept was. Guy didn't care.

 

First up is the Bayrisch Hell. The description on the label says that it's mild, lightly malty and with a fresh and delicate floral aroma. That description is pretty spot on. The maltiness, and body, is light, the aroma is very fresh, and very delicately floral. The bitterness is mild (20 IBUs perhaps?) and balanced out by the light malt. The aftertaste is noticably bready and quite satisfying. As a mild and refreshing pale lager beer this is really nice I think, everything you taste is tasty, albeit mild and light.

 

Continuing with the Export. It's a very different beer from the Hell, fuller bodied and bitter-sweet (almost to the point of being too sweet for my tastes, but the elevated bitterness provides a good balance). The Hell was gold, whereas this beer is dark gold in color, so it contains a decent amount of Munich malt I would assume. It tastes like a slightly sweeter version of a Swedish Export lager beer (this beer has an OG of 12.9% with an abv of 5.3%, the typical Swedish Export lager these days has an OG of 12% with an abv of 5.2-5.3%). This is probably quite close to what a Swedish "lager beer" (around 5% abv, 13% OG, 200-250 grams of Bavarian hops per HL) would have tasted like in the early 1900s.