Pilsner Showdown – a blind tasting

What a great day that would have been to drink and compare all of those great examples!

 

This guy and these sips. Drink the fucking beer.

 

Hmm. I know he didn't really tell us how much he was perceiving, but diacetyl in Pilsner Urquell is not a fault.

 

I am no tasting expert but a few sips of each does seems like a sub-optimal way to get an impression of beers that are intended to be drank by the half liter.

 

Go to Europe and drink at/near the source.

Oh the biggest serving of a Pilsner in Germany thst I've ever had has been 0.5 liters. More often you get 0.3 liters.

 

Nate does this shit correctly....you can see as he takes his time the impressions emerge stronger...I appreciate how he does these and the care he takes in tasting them,,,,he does a great job deciphering them....as someone who has done probably 50+ blind tastings in a similar manner I will say you can't get them picked correctly all the time but he is damn close......

 

No in-between palate cleansing could have really messed up his taste -- especially in the same or similar style.

 

I think it's pretty amazing that he (Nate Lanier of Tree House) got the first three identified correct. Excellent palate! In my opinion, the Pilsner Urquell has changed radically since I first drank it in the 70s. I'm not a big fan of it today. Obviously, taste comparisons (extrapolations) over 50 years are not "very" reliable. But its my impression that Urquell has lost malt body and depth of character over the years. Listening to the taster, the Urquell seems pretty similar to the German Pilsners. That's not a comparison I would have made when my wife and I were drinking Urquell draft at the Golden Ox in Chicago in about 77.

 

I didn't watch the whole thing yet, got about half done, but I enjoy watching these videos. Something I also appreciate is the fact that the ones I've seen both include every day beers that a lot of people may have just blown off as crap and maybe never even heard of, let alone try. Maybe some Treehouse fans may go out and give some of these beers a try now, "I mean heck if the guy behind my favorite brewery in the world enjoys these beers, maybe they're worth while." Yes they are

 

The Urquell didn't stand a chance in this incredibly lopsided context. The character of the beer (especially [but not limited to] the diactetyl) will really stand out and seem strange alongside all those German beers.

 

I'm not sure if you watched but there is a short snippet where he mentions this exact thing, something along the lines of "normally these would be drank out of mugs (or something like that), but here's why I'm using these teku glasses and why they make sense in this setting..."

 

The color was an immediate giveaway -- even on my phone's small screen.

I'm not 100%, but I also think the Urquell is the only one that uses Saaz hops.

And I'm not sure he didn't just assume there was trouble with the Urquell with the diacetyl -- something I've tasted in very fresh PU. But again, he didn't explain just how much he was tasting.

 

Hard to go wrong with that lineup. I love them all.

I'll raise a (hopefully fresher - June BB) Urquell in a Teku as an homage.

 

I bet most people could pick the Urquell out. The color, texture, and hop character = substantially different from the others. That's the case even if it's same-day fresh. I find the diacetyl to be completely random in that beer, though. I've had heavy doses of it in fresh bottles/cans/taps and I've gotten none at all in old examples. That beer is such a crapshoot to me as a result, because I despise diacetyl. I will admit that it's the beer I am most able to tolerate it in, but I still never like those batches.

With the others, I think he pointed out something I've noticed with Tannenzäpfle. It has a lot of hop character, but not necessarily bitterness. I did a (non-blind) tasting of a few German pilsners a few years ago and it had hops for days, but it was one of the least bitter examples I tried. Keesmann's Herren was similar, but it was probably 2x as bitter as the Rothaus.

Paulaner's newer Pils seems to be following that approach. I never liked the older one from 10-15 years ago (it was like a bitter helles), but I like the new canned one.

I've only had Weihenstephaner's once in Freising, and I definitely liked it at the time. There might have been a little bit of the "Red Stripe effect" considering I was on vacation in the Weihenstephan biergarten, but there definitely wasn't any acetaldehyde going on in that one. I haven't had it since, though. For some weird reason they don't distribute those bottles to CO.

 

Which makes his choice of hat - "Drink Fresh" - well, let's just call it inappropriate , especially given the "Best Before" dates I see on most of the German imports. (MC does OK with Pilsner Urquell, around here at least).

And, from the "That word does not mean what you think it means" dept:
~2:05 - "So, thank you Jan for being very impressionable to me...."

 

Would have been nice to see where he ranks Pizzeria Pils among those titans.

 

When revisiting urquell in the last couple years after having experienced a wide array of American and some German examples of the style I was shocked at how unique it was. I'd tried it early in my beer tasting without any context and had absorbed the idea that it was the original and therefor prototypical pilsner. But it's very distinct in the field of pilsner available in the places in the US I've been

 

Enjoyed the video. Urquell didn't stand a fair chance for obvious reasons a different style. Would like to see one with Jever, Veltins, Einbecher, and Ayinger.