Favorite Reinheitsgebot beer?

A great German style beer has incredible depth and complexity. Problem is most Americans are used to out of date, stale imports.

 

The large print giveth, the small print taketh away.

 

Andechs apparently still follows some older versions of the Reinheitsgebot (not like that really matters much beyond pride), so they seem like an appropriate choice. Love the hell, doppelbock, heller bock, and dunkel.

 

Well actually it may matter some beyond pride. Turns out that while many of the teeth have been removed from the RHG, if you publicly claim to be following some version of it and are not you can get into serious legal difficulties (e.g., false advertising). And the appearances are that many German beer drinkers won't buy a beer unless it is supposedly brewed under the RHG.

 

I don't mean the RHG itself, just that they pride themselves in internally following an older version. I forget what tweaks they didn't adopt but there was a brewer in the German forum who got into details about it. I think a few other places (maybe Forschungs?) that also do that.
Agree about the drinkers, 100%. It's a big deal to a lot of folks in southern Bavaria. They're hardcore enough to shun beers from other regions in Germany, let alone something called a beer that was impure.

 

Got it. Have any thoughts about whether that is related to the age of the equipment, etc. or is a "philosophical" commitment?

 

From memory it was a philosophical thing and not something they necessarily publicised. I think one of the older brewers had trained using certain techniques and had insisted that they stick to it. I'll have to dig around in the German forum and see if I can find it. Someone who had intered there posted about it.

 

Most Stouts and Porters will have a certain amount of roasted, unmalted barley in their grain bill for that roasted, coffee-like character. Though Founders' web site isn't very concise on the recipe, I'd bet they break the RHG just as Brooklyn does -- at least with the Stout.

 

From their website they have a picture of the ten grains around a bottle. Flaked grain would not be RHG, and neither would roasted barley as it is not malted, but there are a lot of loopholes for top fermented beers.
Where have you seen that it is RHG compliant? It may be as a top fermented beer.

http://foundersbrewing.com/our-beer/imperial-stout/

 

Regarding the freshness of these German beers. Could I ask the folks at the bottle shop when their last shipment of a certain beer was for gauging freshness?

 

Problem is the shop has no idea how long it sat in a distributor's warehouse.

 

Well damn. This is why EVERYONE needs to put bottled/canned dates on

 

Thanks for bringing up an American beer. I get why German beers often come to mind first when the Reinheitsgebot comes up, but plenty of American brews meet the requirements of the law as I understand it.

 

There are many brewers which adhere to the principle but allow what they consider slight deviations. Such as artificial carbonation , yeast nutrients.
An RHG Porter is possible , no Porters contained any grains except brown malt up to the early 1800s and no unmalted grains until 1880. Top fermented of course so the RHG is academic.

 

Recent brewery only release from New Glarus. Dan Carey is a true artist of beer.

 

^ DO WANT.

 

Please tell me this sucks? If it's good, I don't think I can take it So geeked to see NG do a zwickel...

 

Ayinger's Marzen. Hands down. One of the handful of beers I look forward to every year.

 

Thumbprint pricing was an initial shock since Yokel, very similar style a couple years ago, was a seasonal price and full distro. But I do have to say cost be damned on this one, I love it!

 

Any comparison to Yokel is fine by me. Only at the Depot, right? Really hoping to score some of this before it's gone.