Extreme Tastes and Lager

This was a thoughtfully written article indeed with two links worth reading. Thanks for posting this.

 

Great article. Thanks for posting.

Cue Jack's Abby posts.

 

Great article. I think he's right on. Thanks for posting.

 

Recently I chatted with one of the top craft brewers in the country. He said at the end of the day, he likes to drink a brisk refreshing Pilsner, after all the heavy, hoppy, or barrel aged beers he samples during the day when working.

 

i agree with this article...ive always kept this premise in mind and i love a good weizen or traditional lager as much as the impy craft styles...some of my favorite beers are sixpoint the crisp and weihenstephaner hefe weissbier...abv is definitely not synonymous with quality good article

 

I think this is an understandable approach. High abv beers seem to me as intended for special occasions, or at least infrequent occasions, either by design (as a seasonally available type of beer) or by necessity (a farmhouse brewery trying to conserve limited reasources and make them last). With modern societies, breweries, agriculture and disposable incomes there are of course few such hindrances left and it is possible to drink high abv beers all year round as often as one desires. And the key here is of course personal taste, which is allowed and able to play a much greater role today compared to previously.

The problem that is discussed in the blog (as a clarification of where I'm going with this, not meant as a lecture to you hopfenunmaltz, your post simply provided me with a good entry into the discussion ) post is the risk of personal tastes, aggregated into the overall craft beer market, creating a homogenous flavor profile of the beers that are available to the consumer, similar to how light beers came to dominate the US beer market. Such a development would of course be a negative, unless one happens to belong to either one wing of the market, those that enjoy light beer and those that enjoy the high abv options as their regular beer of choice. Whether that is a real risk or if it's exaggerated is difficult to say. The risk might be greater in more sparsely populated areas where it is more difficult for niche products to find enough consumers, whereas the risk might be smaller in a more populated area where niche products and companies can more easily exist and find a market. If craft lager brewing remains a niche market in the overall craft beer market, then access and availability might continue to be restricted geographically (and quality imports of these styles might become more scarce in these areas as well).

 

I hope the pendulum that seems to be frozen on "extreme beers" swings to well balanced, lower abv, Eastern European-Style lagers at some point. It would be nice to be able to go to a bottle shop and have more to choose from than just a sixer of Victory Prima Pils, a sixer of Brooklyn Lager and a .5 L bottle of Weinstephaner Original, over and over again.

 

Good article, but, I don't know - this idea that the ratings dictate our palate seems a little ill concieved. We rate based on our tastes. I never gave a beer a high rating before deciding I liked it

 

“Eastern European-Style lagers at some point”
Is there a specific style(s) of beer that you have in mind here?

Cheers!

 

I was thinking of Zwickel.

 

Zwickel (Kellerbier) is more a German style, see BA’s description below:

“A rather old, rare, and unique German beer style, Kellerbiers are unfiltered and unpasteurized lagers that date back to at least the Middle Ages. The beer is matured, unbunged (beer is exposed), in deep vaults. The final product is a smooth, naturally cloudy beer that's rich in vitamins (from the yeast). Hop bitterness can be high and alcohol will vary. Zwickel Bier is similar to a Keller, but not as pronounced.”

I don’t doubt that some unfiltered lagers are made in Eastern European countries but I personally have never seen (drunk) any. Strike that, you can obtain unfiltered Pilsner Urquell at the brewery (and a bar in Plzen); that beer is called Pilsner Urquell Nefiltrovaný. I haven't seen (drunk) Pilsner Urquell Nefiltrovaný since I have yet to travel to Plzen.

My homebrewed Bohemian Pilsners are unfiltered and unpasteurized!

Cheers!

 

But I think the point of the article is that ratings sites such as this one give higher (or inflated) ratings to more "extreme" styles.

For example, look at the WRs for the top 5 American Double/Imperial Stouts vs the top 5 Munich Helles Lagers.

American Double/Imperial Stouts:

4.82
4.75
4.7
4.69
4.67

Munich Helles Lagers:

4.1
4.09
4.05
3.94
3.94

 

No, but the high ratings convince more people to try it.

Also there's some psychology, if you have negative views toward a high rated beer you might see yourself as an outlier and subconsciously adjust your rating slightly closer to the average than if you have negative views toward a low rated beer. A 'safety in numbers' thing.

 

My bad, for some reason I thought Zwickel was something that originated in Poland.

Strike my original comment then and just say I want to see more craft lagers similar to the craft lager offerings in Europe

 

Right, but all I'm saying is that this is because American craft drinkers genuinely do - generally - prefer the former style to the latter. They don't drink more of those beers because the internet tells them to.

 

Found a good article explaining the use of the word Zwickel in German for those interested.

http://www.weyermann.de/ger/news.asp?go=ne&show=yes&idne=656&umenue=yes&idmenue=4&sprache=1

Basically a Zwickelhahn was a tap on the lagering tank or vessel from which the brewmaster could take samples of the beer being lagered, and the beer that was drawn was Zwickelbier. At some point it became commercialized as beer which was not filtered or pasteurized.

 

Haha - you sure about that? You don't think BAs (or folks on other sites) are at all swayed by what they read in the forums or in other's reviews?

 

Fixed that for you.

I think you underestimate the band-wagon jumping to "extreme" beers because of web sites such as Beer Advocate.

 

We are absolutely influenced - but if BA scores indicate that this style over here is super popular, and I take some home to try - that doesn't mean I'll automatically decide that the rest of you guys are absolutely right and this beer is the greatest thing under the sun. I've never had a sour, and since they've been hyped up on this site, I'm very excited to try one - but if I end up hating it I'm not going to lie to myself or the rest of you...

That being said, I may not be in the majority on this. An American thinking for himself - it is a novel idea. Next we'll be aging ourselves in oak barrels