Jump to content

Beers!


FullAuto

Recommended Posts

I'm currently enjoying:

 

Zywiec - A proper beer, Polish 5.7% lager. Could drink it all day. Well, I couldn't, because I'd pass out, but it's very nice.

 

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale - I like virtually everything Sierra Nevada do, but this I could drink a load of. Could drink and drink and drink this stuff.

 

Asahi Black - Not something I could drink a lot of. Almost coffee or liquorice in the aftertaste, one or two is fine.

 

Cobra - Very smooth and easy to drink. A beer where you think you've had three when you've actually had six or eight.

 

Leffe Blonde - All flowery. One is my limit, can't handle more than that.

 

Recommendations, please.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Recommendations, please.

In general? Any preferences? Looks like you have a diverse taste so I guess anything is up for grabs. :P

 

Let me just start by saying that I'm pretty biased. Being German-American I tend to go for German beer more. There are exceptions of course as I have tried a variety of beers from around the world. :) In no particular order:

 

Killian's Irish Red. This one surprised me. Nice tasting, not too strong, not too weak. A little bland though, but it's sometimes cheap to get which offsets that.

 

St. Pauli Girl Dark. (Now reformulated and renamed to Special Dark). I used to drink this like it was going out of style when it was just the Dark variety. Kinda bitter, strong, but satisfying in a strange way. I like the Special Dark reformulation more. Not quite as bitter, and very smooth.

 

Grolsch Premium Pils. (Dutch). Unlike Heinekin, it's never skunky even though it's in a green bottle. I don't know why this is, maybe Grolsch doesn't sit on the shelves as long or maybe it's transported better. In any case, it's an excellent pils.

 

Anything from New Glarus. A smaller micro brew here in Wisconsin, so I don't know if you can get it over where you are. Hearty Hops is probably my favorite. Really, REALLY strong hops flavor. It's enough to knock your socks off if you aren't careful.

 

Anything from Sprecher. Another micro brew here in Milwaukee Wi. Can't say I've ever had a bad beer from this company. One of the best traditional German-made-in-America breweries. Nothing too outlandish, just straight decent beer. Expensive though. For that price, I'd opt for a German import rather.

 

Warsteiner. Verum pils or the Dunkel (dark) are good, can't speak for the rest. Had a bad experience with the pils one time. Not really Warsteiner's fault, it was the person serving it. Warm pils sucks by the way.

 

Franziskaner Weiss. A nice light colored beer, fizzy and fresh. I like it a lot, but it's hard to find around these parts sometimes and has a high price.

 

Spaten Pils, Oktoberfest. Excellent beers as they should be. Hard to find the Oktoberfest variety here sometimes, and even the pils seems to be sparce. Maybe they get snatched up too quick to sit on the shelves.

 

Spaten Optimator. Doppelbock dark beer. Lots of great flavor with overtones of fruit, nuts and caramel. The alcohol content is 7%+ so it's almost like a wine. Most people can only handle one bottle of this stuff before switching to something lighter. My max is two bottles and I wouldn't ever go beyond that. Not because of the taste (it's really great) but of the alcohol. It's deceiving because it doesn't taste like alcohol, and it has a smooth finish. It'll hit you hard though. :P A satisfying, fill-you-up type of beer.

 

Paulaner. Hefe-Weissbier Dunkel Ohhh, I could get sick on this beer so easily. It's dark in color, but has a wheaty taste like bread. Oktoberfest. This is the one I live for. The best Oktoberfest beer I've ever had. It's always good from the bottle and even better if you can get a mini-keg and share it with some friends. Can't say enough good things about it to do it justice. Pity I can't find any of the other beers by Paulaner here though.

 

Schlitz. (Made in Milwaukee). You heard me. Don't look at me like that! Have you tried it recently? Granted, Schlitz was a crappy beer for many years. But when Pabst bought it out, they couldn't find the original recipe as it was lost to countless reformulations and changes. They actually went back and talked to the old brewmasters and pieced together how it was made, then recreated it. Best way to describe it is an Americanized version of a German beer. Unlike the other domestic crap beer around here, this actually tastes like hops and has some flavor. Not this piss water Americans call beer. Nowhere near any type of German import, but it's cheap and good for it's price.

 

Bitburger Pils. I really like this beer. Light (in color not in taste) and refreshing. Has a dreamy head too. This one is near the top of my list.

 

Moretti. (Italian). For some reason this goes well with most Italian food. Go figure. I'd drink it a lot more often if it was easier to find than a German import. As it stands though, I only drink it when I go to eat at an Italian restaurant.

 

Hoffbrau (HB). Lager, Dunkel, Oktoberfest. All excellent beers, with the lager being my favorite and the Dunkel close behind. I had a bad 6-pack of Oktoberfest recently (was a little skunky) but the time before that was excellent) so maybe it sat too long on the shelf or something. It rivals Paulaner Oktoberfest, and if I didn't have a bad experience with HB Oktoberfest, it might be better. HB's Maibock was a little bit of a letdown for me, but it's not bad (I was expecting something with a little more flavor to it, so it didn't live up to my expectations fully). That said, if I had to pick the brewery with the best beer overall, this would be it. Assuming you get it fresh of course. These have a tendency to diminish with exposure to light and warm temperatures. And I would hope that someday HB would consider a brown bottle instead of green for shipment to here in the US.

 

Kostritzer Schwartzbier. My all-time favorite. It's completely black. You cannot see your hand in back of the glass, even in strong light. It surprises you though, it doesn't taste bitter or strong. A nice clean beer with an amazingly creamy head and finish. It's a little expensive here, but not any more than a domestic micro brew. Can be found in a mini-kegger, though I haven't had it in anything but a bottle.

 

The one thing to look for is beers in a brown bottle. Those are normally better than those in a green or clear bottle due to light infiltration. With dark beers you normally can get away with a green bottle because the beer itself doesn't allow light to penetrate, but any other types really require brown bottles to preserve the flavor IMHO. Another issue (at least for imports) is the lack of refrigeration during shipment. All imports are shipped warm, and mostly sold on the shelves warm. There are some places here where you can buy it refrigerated, but those are rare. The nice thing about mini-keggers is that they normally taste a lot better than the stuff in a bottle (even brown). No light can penetrate metal. There may be a slight metallic taste to the beer, but it's nothing like an aluminum can taste.

 

Those are my recommendations. A little biased to German, so take that as you wish. ;)

 

- Zombie

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
  • Create New...