Is it me or is it the pils?

Urban Chestnut makes some of the best german styles in the US.

 

Have you tried Pilsner Urquell. I can't compare it to what you had 30 years ago, but I always enjoy it. Better yet, if you can find an excuse for a road trip to Hudson Valley, Metric from Industrial Arts and Palatine Pils from Suarez are both great.

 

You can't rule out the possibility that it's you, if only because in those 30 years all the taste buds you had back then have died and gone to be totally replaced by newer ones about 4-5 times (and there's no written guarantee the ones you have now are identical to the set you had then ).

But your comments about "the stronger Pils of the north" suggest two ideas. Have you tried Jever or Victory's Prima Pils yet? The former, when fresh and well-protected from light that could skunk it, is from the north and has nicely defined hop flavors. The latter is actually disliked by some who like Pils beers in general because they consider the flavors too strong.

The Jever might be available to you in western PA (still a big territory) and I'd be surprised if you couldn't find reasonably fresh Prima Pils somewhere near you in western PA.

 

I blame failing memory after 50 years of beer drinking though when I think about it that's a good excuse to explore them all over again.

 

Can you get Neshaminy Creek? Their Trauger Pils might be just what you're looking for. Sly Fox Pikeland Pils and Victory Prima Pils are also pretty hop forward.

Fwiw, I have a friend whose family emigrated from Northern Germany and he prefers the Sly Fox- he says it reminds him of the beers from his mother's home town.

 

And Sly Fox markets Pikeland Pils as being a northern German-style Pilsner:

“Pikeland Pils

German-style Pilsner

11.7 OG44 IBUs4.9% ABV

A northern German-style Pilsner brewed with imported German pils malt and hopped with German and Czech hops. Light in body, light straw in color and dry.

AWARDS:

Gold Medal GABF 2007, Bronze Medal GABF 2003”

http://www.slyfoxbeer.com/beer/pikeland-pils

Cheers!

 

To set the record straight, tastebuds are actually replaced about every two weeks.

More importantly, "taste" is actually more about the olfactory sense - the majority of what you "taste" is actually what you're smelling. That's why sometimes you smell something you say "Oh, I can almost taste it"... and, well, yes, you can almost taste it.

As to the actual question, I don't have an answer but having just returned from 2 weeks in Germany I can definitely say that he's onto something. I think freshness is a major factor but there has to be more to it. Lagering time probably comes into play. I saw some beers listed as being lagered for 40 days (Budweiser is just 16). Another thing might be the generally softer carbonation. Germans love to carbonate mostly naturally by spunding their tanks. Or is it just the great amount of time they put into the detail of getting their beers so perfectly balanced? I don't know, but on my last day I had a Hasseröder Pils that tasted exactly as it had the first time I tasted it 4 years earlier. That was draft but I can't imagine a bottle shipped to the U.S. would taste nearly as good.

 

Jim, do you have a reference for the 16 days?

According to the Anheuser-Busch website they lager for 21 days:

“6. Beechwood Aging: During lagering, the beer is krausened, naturally carbonated and aged on beechwood chips for 21 days to mature the flavor of the beer. Anheuser-Busch is the only major brewer in the world using beechwood aging.”

The principle purpose of the beechwood strips is that this permits the yeast to not settle to the bottom of the lagering tanks and expedites the secondary (lagering) conditioning.

http://www.anheuser-busch.com/index.php/our-heritage/commitment-to-quality/brewing-process/

Cheers!

 

10-14 days per tastebud, eh.

So that would mean the total population replacement would occur even more rapidly and more often than once every 7 years.

BTW, another factor to add in to the list of factors potentially influencing perceived flavor differences over time, there are some older discussions in the Germany forum (including citations to data) that suggest there has been a decline in IBUs in German Pils beer in general over the last 30 years or so. So some familiar beers from 30 years ago may actually have a different flavor profile now a days.

 

I think I heard some Neshaminy Creek does hit Pittsburgh, they're expanding things. But it's easy as a phone call. I'd have to assume if beers like Trauger Pils or Pikeland doesn't float your boat, I hate to say it's you but it might be. IMO they're quite different but as good as it gets IMO. You just might have to accept that American Brewers can't hit thst sweet spot of very fresh beer you had or remembered you had at the source too.

 

Yes, there have been a number of papers on this topic:

I have hardcopy of the following articles:

D.W. Lachenmeier, S. Triiebel and E. Lerch. “Bitterness Unts in beer: retrospective trends and current concept of commerce,” Monatsschrift für Brauwissenschafft November/December 2006, 1-2.

Dr. Rudolf Thalacker, “Zur Verkehrsauffassung über die Bittereinheiten von Pilsbier.” Brauwelt NR 31-32 (2007), 848-851.

Dr. Dirk W. Lachenmeier, “Allgenmeine Verkehrsauffassung über Bittereinheiten von Pilsbier,” Brauwelt NR 46-47 (2006), 1446-1448.

Susanna Mayer and Dirk W. Lachenmeier, “The trend of reduced hop-content in Pilsner – type beer in Germany. A change in taste?,” J. Inst. Brew 2015; 121: 28-30.

I was able to find a link to the fourth article listed via a web search (see link below). Perhaps some of the other articles are available online as well?

In Figure 1 of the fourth article it is easy to see that there has indeed been a decline in bitterness units from 1983 – 2013. I strongly suspect this trend has continued in the past 4 years.

Also, if you extrapolate the trend in the opposite direction it seems that German Pilsners in the previous decade (1970’s) likely were more hoppy (bitter) in comparison.

Below is something that Conrad Seidl wrote up on the topic of German Pilsners in The Oxford Companion to Beer:

“In 1973 the average German Pilsner would have had a bitterness of 34 IBUs, with extreme samples going as high as 50 IBUs and the low end having only 16 IBUs. There was little change until 1985, but by 1995 the average bitterness was down to 30, and another decade it was 27. Statistics from 2008 indicate an average bitterness of 26.5 IBUs….”

“In the style guidelines for the prestigious World Beer Cup competition, German Pilsner is still defined as having 30-40 IBUs, but the German brewers themselves have allowed the snappy hop character of pilsner to erode.”

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jib.188/full

Cheers!

 

I love old Mech beers, I'd guess them to be under 30 IBUs, more like 27-28 give or take.

 

No, from memory, not sure where I got it but it certainly wasn't just beer chat. Might have been at Siebel but that was in '95. Or, most likely, being elderly I've confused something.

 

This is also very true of Helles as well, almost to the point of sweetness in some of them, and additionally many seem to have lost the rich graininess of the Munich malts but that makes sense because otherwise they'd be out of balance.

On that note I'll also point to the decline of Oktoberfest biers. At the fest it's completely understandable to have lighter versions because people from all over the world want a lighter styled beer that they can keep up with, but outside of that there seems to have been a downturn as well. Fortunately I was able to find some very good Märzens in the smaller towns so it's not like they're completely dead.

I'll also suggest, and I don't have any real info or data on this, but it seems in general to me that overall aroma hops have become more limited. Just my perception.

 

So the average went down from 34 to 27? I wonder if I could personally tell the difference between a Pils, with the same exact recipe, that was hopped to 34 IBUs and the same one hopped to 27? I'm not saying I could or couldn't, I honestly have no idea.

I imagine with an IPA, which isn't as clean and will no doubt have more IBUs, I couldn't tell a 7 IBU difference. But with a Pils I might.

Moreover, averages tend to not tell the whole story. As extremes can average out to a specific number, but that average isn't representative of that population.

For example (and this is hypothetical, not accurate obviously), let's take 10 Norther German Pilsners. 5 are 50 IBUs, and 5 are 16 IBUS, they would average out to 33 IBUs. And then we take 10 Southern German Pilsners that are all 33 IBUs. The average is the same, but clearly each region is producing Pilsners that are hopped differently.

Anecdotally, during my time in Munich, the Pilsners were under-hopped, although admittedly I didn't drink many and focused on Helles and Oktoberfests (since it was Oktoberfest).

@drtth I recall you being a stats guy, is any of this making sense? It's already been a long day of Oktoberfest festivities, so I could be way off.

 

Mostly basic stats, not much of the really fancy stuff.

Re the IBUs across styles, the number of IBUs is going to give us some information about relative percived bitterness of examples within a particular style but not necessarily between examples of different styles because style differences can impact perceived bitterness. (This can also impact how large the difference between IBU have to be for someone to perceive the difference in bitterness.

Re the averages, you're right they don't give the whole picture. What you've added to the averages is an important comment about variability within the distribution of scores that make up the average. Both numbers describe or can be said to be representative of the population but neither tells/shows the whole story or picture.

 

Report back if you find something ... as a pils lover, I know I'm interested.

 

Compared to...

On my first couple trips to Germany I found Pilsners pretty hoppy -- especially when compared to Helles, thus I gravitated more to Helles.

To that... @Urk1127 -- while I enjoy Urban Chestnut's Stammtisch Pilsner, it's hoppier than most German-style Pilsners. That said, maybe the O.P. might compare it to the Pilsners he enjoyed in the late '80s.