Haimhauser - Kellerbier Hell

After a long day of being ruthlessly efficient and conforming to stereotypes I like to sit in my well ordered garden and relax. It is days like this that I truly understand the Germans. I've spent all day lugging heavy vegetables around while all around me people were purchasing sausages and BBQ equipment. I did not fuss, I simply got on with it and promised myself that when I got home I could sit in the sun and drink something light that looked happy to see me. I'd made sure that it was chilled perfectly as anything less than perfection just wouldn't do and popped the cap. The pour was a joy, bubbly and excitable with the perfect proportions of head, the kind you only ever see in the movies. The smell is lightly spicy, which suits its hazy blond body perfectly.

I have not had a helles in a long time.

Equal parts soft and citrussy, this is a joyful beer that must be enjoyed only when the conditions are right. A true German chugging beer that you should really be drinking out of a litre stein in front of a plate of meat, potato dumplings and sauerkraut. It's not complex but who needs complex on a glorious day like today? I've got other things to do with my time, just let me laze in the sun, basking like an iguana. Keller, I imagine, stands for "...that is as refreshing as being doused with cold champagne after 3 hours in a sauna," in German and bier stands for "beer."

The smoothness and drinkability of this is high level and there are biscuity undertones with only a very light hoppy zing. This maybe isn't the beer for everyone because some people prefer something that challenges them, which is fine because I'm often one of those people but sometimes I just want to lounge and I want to lounge with really well made beer that just makes me feel good about my life. Today Kellerbier Hell is that beer.

Food Suggestion: Currywurst or Wienershcnitzel with a mound of mash or a potato dumpling and enough gravy to drown in. Failing that, a sausage butty with caramelised red onions and your choice of pickle/chutney would go down a treat too.

Drink this if you like: Germany.

Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche - Doppelbock

Suggested as a definite purchase for the man who likes an interesting pint, a pint so interesting that the name of it is almost completely indecipherable to anyone who is not completely fluent in German. I had to cheat and actually do some research (yes, I consider research to be cheating. Where's the fun in it?) This pours like flat coke and smells like pig grease... And it's already intrigued me to the point that I'm salivating at the thought of chugging the living hell out of it.

This was described to me as the smokiest beer the sales person had had in a while and that was enough to get me hooked. I'm relatively new to smoked beer but I get the impression that the idea of them is to push you to the very edge of what you can perceive as pleasurable, which in turn creates a whole new level of pleasure through the sense that you've actually achieved something by drinking a beer. A nice thought, though I imagine the truth is a lot closer to 'farmers accidentally set fire to barn but still wanted to make beer with the fire damaged grains.'

As previously mentioned, this dark beauty smells like delicious, salty, pig grease and tastes like someone poured molasses into an ash tray and mixed it with a candy cane made out of ROCK SALT! You can eventually learn to ignore the pig grease smell but WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO?! What on earth could be better than the aroma of hog death and thick, gooey, brown 8% alco-booze? It's an entire pub experience in a bottle, beer and pork scratchings. It tastes like a bag of good ideas that's been left out in the sun to fester. Beautiful!

Food suggestion: A bacon sarnie or a lovely chunk of pork knuckle. Something greasy and fatty to accompany the intoxicating smell and cut through the subtly sweet flavour.

Drink this if you like: Working in a tannery or if you like the idea of hunting for wild boar whilst wearing a pointed hat that has feathers in it from birds long extinct.

...I keep expecting to find greasy white lumps floating in my beer but as yet I remain disappointed.

Lowenbrau Original

It's odd, you couldn't move for this stuff when I was much younger. I've heard stories of how Safeway cut a deal with Lowenbrau and sold it for half of what everyone else was selling it for... And then Safeway went the way of the greedy Dodo and popped its clogs, leaving poor Lowenbrau (brewed by InBev) out in the cold. I haven't seen a bottle it since my trip to Munich and before that I hadn't seen it since I was around 8 years old and at that tender young age I was far too young to appreciate it, I was busy being baffled by the mechanics of transformers. The Munich 6 are like the holy grail for me, each representing a chapter of beer history, so what's the story behind Lowenbrau?

Well, if I may concentrate on the beer itself for just a moment, it smells like honey wafting in a summer breeze and tastes as sweet and as a boozy butter biscuit. Like the rest of the big 6 it is supremely easy to drink, making it perfect for drinking out of giant steins that dwarf your tiny, sozzled, face. The beer is lovely, it trumps most anything else you'll find in the imported beer section of your local supermarket, even fellow German Warsteiner (who I am a big fan of,) falls a little short.

What I like about Germany is that they don't have BAD beer like we have BAD beer. We have Carling and Fosters and Stella, all of which is BAD beer. I asked a German tour guide if there was a "worst" beer in Germany and he said "Ja, zere iz a wurst bier," except in a less racist way, "it is ze non-alcohols bier! Haha!" Which sums it up really. I'd say that Becks is their standard beer over there, the one they sell to tourists, the one they export the most, the one you could compare most to our Carling, but even that kicks the s*** out of our worst beer.

Lowenbrau is now on sale in a Sainsbury's close to where I live... It came out on sale for a fiver... I don't think I've ever been happier to be in a Sainsbury's than I was when I saw that 6 pack sitting, as if nothing big was happening, on a shelf next to the likes of Cusquena and Asahi who, even though they try, are LESSER beers, sitting in the shadow of a giant. It's good to see Lowenbrau back on sale here. Hopefully the rest of the big 6 will follow suit.

InBev have the rights to Franziskaner, which is on general sale here, they also have the rights at all the Spaten stuff and I would LOVE to see that on general sale too. Let's start a petition!

Food Suggestion: German food. Eat any other kind of food with this and you're dumb as a bag of poorly constructed similes that go on for longer than they really need to.

Drink this if you like: Drinking with your friends, wearing lederhosen and practising dances that involve slapping each other on the butt!

Paulaner - Salvator

I wish I had a t-shirt that said "I <3 Germany" with a disclaimer on the back that says "...Well. Just the beer and the efficiency with which it is put in front of me." I went to Munich last summer and I've been in search of the big 6 (Augustiner, Hofbrau, Spaten, Hacker Pschorr, Paulaner and Lowenbrau) since I returned to England. I've found bits and pieces, I've found a bottle of Augustiner (that I greedily snaffled up on Christmas and didn't review due to all the fun I was having,) and a bottle of Spaten Oktoberfest, which was delicious. I had a crappy imitation of a Lowenbrau in a local establishment but the less said about that the better. So it is that I come to Paulaner Salvator, the ORIGINAL Paulaner, the one that monks used to drink instead of eating bread during lent. This has a lot of history and a lot to live up to, but does it?

(Of course it does, I haven't even tasted it yet and I know it's going to.)

On the nose it's soft and malty with a hint of fig and raisins, suggesting that the beer itself is going to be smooth with a good bite of flavour. The other indicator is that it's a 7.9% doppelbock and when you get a beer like that then flavour is somewhat implied. Drinking it is like drinking a smooth version of some delicious brandy with a side of hot crossed buns, dripping with melted butter. The texture is creamy with a little fizz, making it is drinkable as the very tears of god.

The maltiness in it is somewhat reminiscent of malt loaf and there is a bread like quality to it but it is somewhat over powered by the sheer force of the sweet, tangy, raisin and malt flavours. It does taste like you're drinking history, I can easily imagine drinking this instead of eating, though I'd prefer to have this with a meal but if I had to choose between drinking and eating then I'd hope that having a beer blog speaks for itself.

It's so satisfying, sometimes, to drink beer that's ALL about the malt and less about the hops because you get such a deep sweetness and richness that is often lost elsewhere. I would advise anyone who is interested in beer history to give this a shot... A pint... And then a litre Stein.

Food Suggestion: This was made for lent, I'm writing this review around Easter, it would only be appropriate to eat this with a bit of stollen cake or a couple of hot crossed buns. If you're feeling like a glutton then you can crack open you're Easter eggs too. Religious holidays have such odd food associated with them.

Drink this if you like: Kill Your Darlings by Thornbridge is very similar to this with maybe a little bit more of a wild side compared to the traditional demeanour of Salvator.