Stomachs on legs are proud to present

My next bier-tasting foray involved the organic filtered Kristall Weisse offering from Neumarkter Lammsbrau brewery. It's the brewery responsible for my thus-far-favourite beer, their Dunkel. But this filtered white beer - the style drunk at Munich's Oktoberfest - I am afraid to say, inspired nothing but ambivalence in me. In fact after half a glass I lost interest and tipped the rest down the sink. If I can't dig the most chugged beer in Germany, what kind of real potential can I have as a beer drinker?



Feeling overwhelmed by ambivalence, I decided not to rush into any more experimentation.

But getting back from the Biomarkt, the Dunkel was not chilled, and there was still that bottle of Köstritzer Schwarzbier in the fridge. I brought it home the other night from the underwhelming selection at a shop nearby which dares to call itself a 'beer museum'.

Apparently this East German schwarzbier is a type of lager, and not supposed to be heavy like a stout. The Köstritzer brewery in east Germany has been owned by the Bitburger Brauerei since 1991 and is located in Bad Köstritz, which is close to Gera in Thuringia. The brewery was founded in 1543 and it is one of the oldest producers of Schwarzbier (black beer) in Germany. This particular old black brew was a favourite of Germany's proud author Goethe, at least on the days when he felt a bit ill.

A classic style, it is cold fermented and cold lagered, and thus, as I have read, "the finished product is relatively clean and free of fruity esters". I get the feeling I am not so much the fan of fruity esters.

Pitch black like coffee, with a head of foam that within a few moments deflated to a floating piece of brownish-creamy scum like sea foam after a storm. It then dwindled further to dregs with a certain mucous-like viscosity in appearance.
Clean and bitter, refreshing, quite a light malty mouth-feel and a rumour in the mouth of a pot of drip coffee that's been on the burner for a while, or tobacco. Like the 'Old Spice' of beers. Not much substance but full of promises. There is a taste to this one that makes me want to be a newspaper man with a black umbrella, in a city where a million hollow souls trade jaded glances between skscraper canyons.
In other words, I got a bit drunk and became a little bit too effusive. And couldn't spell skyscraper properly.

In this bottle of Köstritzer Schwarzbier, there is also a very faint freshness of a bitter grass or a tiny, tiny bit of sweetness: something hopeful.
Maybe the hope I'm tasting, is the hope that I can really be friends with beer.

There are now at least four or five types of beer that I can say I really enjoy. The cool thing about this one is that it is available from a lot of cornershop kiosks.

Part 2 of an adventure in which a beer lite-weight tries out brews from the local kiosk, biomarkt and 'beer museum' shop in Cologne, Germany.

It doesn't get much more lite-weight than Neumarkter Lammsbrau's BLOND.
"Blond ist in!" said one website.

In fact though, and unfortunately for Neumarkter Lammsbrau, boutique beers like this are not the order of the day. As you would expect, traditional German beers rule, though Belgian beers are well-stocked at beer-shops and the bigger commercial brands (Becks, Corona etc) have their time in the sun, quite literally when it comes to their summer time offerings..

I bought a Blond from the Biomarkt (organic supermarket) and took it to the park to accompany our first BBQ of the season.
Quite like the packaging... one review said that only the label gives this beer 'Discotauglichkeit' (Disco-friendliness).

It would have benefitted from being more chilled than it was after 5 minutes in the freezer when I popped back home to pick up the picnic mat. Passed the Blond to DJ Adlib and his reaction was also a bit non-plussed. "Tastes like beer."

Conclusion: a very easy-to-drink gold beer, certainly clean and organic seeming: inoffensive with very little mouth-tackiness and very mild astringency, some would say a little on the bland side. But I would drink it again for the clean mouth feel alone e.g. on a summer afternoon.
This Blond is easy.



Went back home and cracked open another offering from the Neumarkter Lammsbrau brewery and my favourite German beer so far: the organic Neumarkter Lammsbrau Dunkel.
After commenting that he finds my increased alcohol consumption quite amusing (maybe it's like seeing your mum open a beer at the breakfast table), Denis aka DJ Adlib had a sip and said: "Somewhere near Malzbier" which was also Carmen's reaction when we tried it for the first time the night before.
That's what I like about it. It's as malty as these fake-beer malt-drinks called Malzbier, which are so delicious with their cold syrupy foamy maltiness, but must be about 5000 calories each.

This Dunkel combines toasty malt with just the right bitterness for refreshingness. A bit sticky on roof of mouth, creamy, full-flavoured but not super heavy. I read one review that suggested 'barnyard' notes. I wasn't sure but I thought I might have tasted chicken's feet.

Champion. Any time I'm in a beer mood after work or about to watch Muay Thai downloads from the K-1 fan forum, this will be my go-to beer from now on. Even if the package isn't so disco.

Here's a well-written review which says "The smoothness of this beer is out of this world, the medium body and moderate carbonation level make you want to take a sip quicker and quicker." The review goes on to note "the palate is clean from start to finish with only a ghost faintness of cooked veggies."