Mild Ale (according to a German)

Here's a special treat for Mild Month. Schönfeld's description of Mild Alefrom "Die Herstellung Obergähriger Bier".

The book has a big section on British Ales (as opposed to German Ales - you must be getting well fed up of me banging on about this - don't worry, I'll be continuing for several more years). I hadn't looked at it until today. On the positive site, the author seems to quite like Mild. Pale Ale he absolutely hates and writes it's impossible for a German to drink more than two glasses of it.

I was interested in his description of the colour of Mild. Remember that the book was published in 1902. It's sometimes difficult to know what an author means with colour descriptions, but "deep gold" does not mean dark in my book.

Apologies for the translation. The sentence structure in the original is almost as bad as Marcel Proust. Sentences that fill a whole paragraph. You can't accuse me of that.

"In the group Ales, there's another beer, which in contrast to the heavily-hopped, light Pale Ale is characterised by a mild and very malty flavour and a darker, deep gold to brownish-yellow colour, called Mild Ale and forms a special type of beer, which as a result of the low degree of attenuation, the soft, sweet taste, the low level of hopping and a colour resembling our Lagerbier, forms an intermediary step between Pale Ales and Stouts. It is a draught beer and is especially well brewed in London.

It doesn't keep anything like as well as Pale and Bitter Ales, since it does not have a high degree of attenuation, nor is heavily hopped, nor dry-hopped it doesn't have such a good protection against bacterial infection as these, which are stored for months in unpressurised barrels without falling prey to light bacterial sicknesses and also can be stored long, in some circumstances months longer, in bottles, where in the beginning they also sit for quite a long time without the protection of CO2, but are still so resistant to bacterial infections that they can be kept for an unusually long time."

What I'll be doing during the holidays

Did I mention that I've finally been paid? Just 10 weeks after starting my new job. Oh the joys of contracting. Now there's something in the bank, we can start booking our summer excursions.

The first week in August we're going to Berlin by train. We couldn't get a budget flight so we're going by train. As all the cheap second-class tickets had gone, we're going first class. It's still less than half the price of the cheapest flights.

The train takes a little over 6 hours. That's about the limit of what we can expect the kids to endure. Fortunately, we have a psp and a portable dvd player to amuse them. And the train has a buffet car. They like going to the buffet car. Almost as much as I do. I like to sit there and have a beer or two. German trains are so civilised. They usually even have a fairly decent beer - some sort of Hefeweizen (a great German Ale). Served in the proper glass, too. If only every country could be like that.

There's a reason why we're going to Berlin. Several reasons actually. The trip, however, has been timed to coincide with the Berlin Beer Festival.

The Berlin Beer Festival is a slightly unusual affair. It's held on about a mile of street. Karl Marx Allee, to be precise. It's a street I've admired ever since one of my Polish friends acquainted me with charms of Stalinist architecture. The style is one of the highpoints of post-war architecture. Sort of socialist classicism. Karl Marx Allee, built in the early 1950's, is a great example. It even used to be called Stalin Allee. (Amsterdam used to have a street named after Stalin, too. Stalinlaan. They soon changed the name to Vrijheidslaan - Freedom Avenue. I suppose it's just about the same, really. Stalin is synonymous with freedom, after all.)

It's a huge wide street, Karl Marx Allee. Wide enough for them to be able to form two rows of stalls without coming anywhere near the actual road part. Lots of breweries are represented. Several hundred. And a couple of thousand beers. You could call the selection eclectic. Or totally random. It goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and back again. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff can be difficult. Last time I prepared a list of the beers I wanted to try and their location. Saved me loads of aimless wandering about. Potsdammer Stange was top of the list. I wonder if they'll have that again?

The beer festival isn't the only reason we're going to Berlin. We have friends there.

Jörg went to university with Dolores. In sunny Merseburg. I went there once. Dolores told me it was a horrible, filthy place. I thought she was exaggerating. She wasn't. Either side of the town is a massive chemical works. We once took the tram from Merseburg to Halle. When the doors opened at the stop by Leuna, air that had a higher chlorine than oxygen content streamed in. I almost choked to death. Lovely place. Coincidentally, during the war Dolores's granny was on a train passing through Leuna while it was being bombed by the Americans. I hope I never have an experience as scary as that. Leuna is also notable for being responsible for losing Helmut Kohl his job a German chancellor. He took a big back hander from Elf to sell it to them for 7 or 8 Deutschmarks. Naughty man.

Jörg lives just a couple of hundred metres from the beer festival. Very handy. I wonder if he's still planning to emigrate to Venezuela?

I'm sure the kids will like the Pergamon Museum. They'd better at least pretend to like it, because I'm taking them there. That's the sort of father I am. One with children. I keep telling the how lucky they are. My dad hardly ever took me to the pub.

The beer festival isn't the only reason I want to revisit Berlin. I still haven't got around all the brewpubs.

Spandau's a bit far, but there are a couple of other, less inconveniently placed ones. Like that in Köpenick, which is tiny. It's in a shed or something similar. I have happy memories of Köpenick. Dolores and I ate in the stylish Ratskeller in the pre-capitalist days. I'd read about Tokay in André Gide's "Les Faux-monnayeurs" (a wonderful, wonderful book) but never seen it until then. We shared a bottle with our meal.

I've heard good reports of Marcus-Bräu, too. I must check it's exact location. Andrew will be able to guide me there, I'm sure. He's good with maps and public transport.


Berlin stories

Me and Dolores spent a great deal of time in Berlin leading up to our marriage. The first months of 1988. It was a pain in the arse getting an entry visa for the DDR. But you could get a 24-hour visa for East Berlin (Haupstadt der DDR) at the border. I used to catch the train on Friday evening after work and arrive at some ungodly morning hour at Friedrichstrasse, 06:30 or something like that. The journey was such fun. Despite it being overnight, there were neither sleeper nor couchette carriages. You get used to it. You really do. And I used to be a complete bastard and just lie across three seats and pretend to be asleep if anyone else came into the compartment.

Sunday night I made the journey back to Amsterdam and went straight to work from the station. You can do that type of thing when you're young. I did it two or three times a month.

At Friedrichstrasse I'd go through the border controls. That was also a real pleasure. You could never be certain how long it would take. The guards were in no rush. Dolores would be waiting for me on the DDR side. She'd also travelled overnight from Thuringia in the south, where she lived. Through John Hamilton, who was working for Radio Berlin, we knew someone in Prenzlauer Berg whose flat we could stay in.

Because the visa was only valid until midnight, I had to return to Friedrichstrasse late in the evening. I would technically leave the DDR, but remain in Friedrichstrasse station. I'd pass the outward border control at 11:50 and walk straight around to the inward side again. And go through the whole palaver with the guards again.

I wasn't the only person playing this game. I soon started to recognise the same faces queueing up each time. Like me, they were mostly men with a girlfriend in the East. I even bumped into a bloke who'd been at the Czech language summer school in Brno with me. It was the same for Dolores. She waited with the same people on the DDR side every Saturday night.

It wasn't so bad. There was a decent pub just over the river from Friedrichstrasse station. We used to sit drinking in there until 11:45. And, even though I didn't often get through until 01:00, that wasn't a problem as East Berlin had a night tram service. It was a very civilised city. The shops had more convenient opening times than those in West Berlin, too.

We stayed on Glassbrennerstrasse, which is just off Wisbeyerstrasse. I became acquainted with most of the pubs in that part of Prenzlauer Berg and there were quite a few. Feierabend Klause. That was a good one. Very nice food. The first piece I ever had published was a pub guide to East Berlin that appeared in What's Brewing.

Most of the pubs are gone, converted in restaurants or buggered up. There's a delicious irony in Zum Hackepeter, a former Nazi Stammlokal, having become an Indian restaurant. Zum Schusterjungen, the communist Stammlokal opposite it, is still a pub. Metzer Eck is still going strong. It was a quite a shock to discover that Mike's mum used to fetch beer for her parents from it in the 1920's. Even more remarkable, given the upheavals since that time, is that it's always been run by the same family. Me and Mike went there when we were in Berlin for the beer fesival two years ago.

Leipziger Strasse used to be lined with restaurants from other socialist countries. There was a rather good Czech restaurant that sold both Pilsner Urquell and Budvar. But it was always weird being in that part of Berlin with Dolores. It was very close to the border. You could clearly see buildings on the West Berlin side. Yet she couldn't go there. A strange sensation.

East Berlin wasn't bad for beer. Berliner Pilsener was acceptable enough and pretty cheap. Though it was often hard to tell exactly which brewery it came from. The Berliner Weisse, on the other hand, was truly outstanding. I often passed the Schultheiss Weissbier brewery, which was on Schönhauser Allee just about where the U-Bahn line emerged from it's tunnel and became elevated. Very sour and packed with character. The best Berliner Weisse I've ever had. Which is why (West German) Kindl bought and closed it after the Wende. They didn't want it showing up their crappy version. The premises are now a Kulturbrauerei, whatever that means. I preferred when it was a Bierbrauerei.

I get funny looks when I say East Berlin was one of my favourite cities. It really was and it still saddens me that it has disappeared. While waiting for Dolores to get hold of all the documents she needed for our marriage I spent a great deal of time in the city. Parts of it I got to know pretty well.

Feeling, for the only time in my life, a rich man probably helped. I could afford to eat anywhere. I did, too. We tried the most expensive restaurants but I still often couldn't get rid of my Klara Zetkins quickly enough. There was a Cuban restaurant on Friedrichstrasse that was supposedly the priciest in the DDR. I found it was reasonable - a meal was slightly less expensive than a Currywurst on Kurfürstendamm.

At least once I got hold of a couple of bottles of Porter. I can remember the purple label, but nothing else. If only I'd taken proper notes and kept the labels.

Both sides of the argument

I've been so impressed with the standard of debate on RateBeer that I want to try and emulate it here on the blog. That's why I've started a new poll.

What's the poll about? Good question. It's about letting all sides of the argument be heard on the topic of the day: are German top-fermenting beers Ales?

These are the possible answers and what they mean:

• - No. German top-fermenting beers should not be called Ales.
• - Never. German top-fermenting beers should never be called Ales.
• - F*cking no way. German top-fermenting beers should f*cking no way ever be called Ales.
• - It's inaccurate and misleading. German top-fermenting beers should not never be called Ales because it's inaccurate and misleading to do so.
• - I didn't bother listening your question. You're an idiot.
• - I once spoke to a German brewer. You're an idiot.
• - Top-fermenting yeast is called saccharomyces cervesia. You're an idiot.
• - I'm a homebrewer. You're an idiot.
• - I've read Eric Warner. You're an idiot.
  

I think that just about covers all the possibilities. Vote now!

The perfect summer beer

Counterintuitive is my middle name. (I don't actually have a middle name. My parents could only afford one. Times were hard in the 1930's) Light, pale-coloured beers. That's what are usually seen as perfect for warm weather. But is it true?

Had my family been able to afford three names, perverse would have come after Ronald and Counterintuitive. Ronald Counterintuitive Perverse Pattinson. It as a certain ring to it. (I keep telling Alexei he was lucky I hadn't discovered archives before he was born. Otherwise he'd be answering to the name Barclay.) Stonch has called me perverse for liking U Rotundy. He could be right. That adjective is likely to get thrown around some more when I tell you my perfect summer beer.

It's not only excessive carbonation I don't care for. I dislike all but the most minimal level of carbonation. But that's not what I meant. I don't like my beer chilled, either. My fridge has no beer in it. Except for that bottle of something or other Rosé I put in there 18 months ago. Refreshingly warm and flat is how I like my beer. With one exception.

When the temperature gets too warm for me to feel comfortable (that's 20.1º C), I stick a few bottles my summer beer in the fridge. Arriving home all sweaty from a day at the coalface, I climb into my tin bath and get Dolores to bring me a beer. A nice slightly-below-room-temperature glass of Guinness Special Export.

My Dad really did go down the pit. His side of the family is from the Northeast and many of them were miners. He liked being a collier so much, he went and joined the Royal Navy after a single day. He worked in the stokehold of battleship HMS Rodney. So he still didn't get to see daylight during working hours. But he did at least get to travel.

Continuing the tradition of iced Mild, if there's no Special Export in the fridge, I'll add a few icecubes to my glass. This may sound like sacrilege, but I've even put icecubes in my 1914 SSS.

Guinness Special Export. My perfect summer beer. Black, strong and heavy. It works for me. You may say "A strong Stout - that's a crazy beer to drink in hot weather". That is conventional wisdom. But if strong Stout is so poorly suited to warmer climes, why is Guinness Foreign Extra Stout sold throughout the tropics? Someone must agree with me,

What's your perfect summer beer?

Intelligent debate

It's ironic that many in the American craft beer community, which prides itself on innovation and new ideas, should be so conservative when it comes to alternative ways of classifying beer styles. In my recent set of pointless arguments, my opponents were clinging to definitions coined in the 1970's. Our knowledge has moved on since then. It's about time they did, too.

New ideas, that's how humanity progresses. Not every new idea is correct or useful. But not to even consider them is just being pigheaded. Intellectual debate is about proposing new ideas and then defending them while others try to pick them apart.

Little of this went on in the Kölsch debate. No, that's not quite accurate, there was no intellectual debate. "Top-fermenting means Ale, you idiot." was about as far as the arguments got. "we're right, so you must be wrong." No-one bothered to consider questions like:

• "Why do we classify all top-fermenting beers as Ales?."
• "When did we start doing this?"
• "Who started doing this?"
• "Why did we start doing this?"
• "What connection is there between German top-fermenting beers and British Ales"
• "Should the name of a specific group of British beers be used as a general term for top-fermenting beers?"
• "Is this an accurate and helpful method of classification?"
• "What alternative systems of classification are possible and would any of these be more historically accurate and less confusing?"

I don't know all the answers. Which is how it should be. Once you have no unanswered questions, you're an intellectual corpse. Here are my attempts to answer my own questions:

"Why do we classify all top-fermenting beers as Ales."
- Because the word Ale has a single syllable.
- Because the definitions were coined by English speakers.

"When did we start doing this?"
- I believe in the 1970's, but I'm not certain. Older British brewing texts don't use Ale as an all-encompassing term. Wahl & Henius, wrting just after 1900, didn't either. I need to check some more recent technical books.

"Who started doing this?"
- Zythophile suggested it was Michael Jackson who initiated it. I'm not sure if this is true or not. More research is needed.

"Why did we start doing this?"
- Not sure about this one. Laziness is my best guess.

"What connection is there between German top-fermenting beers and British Ales"
- Very little, if any. Beers like Berliner Weisse or Kölsch developped over centuries in Germany and were not directly inspired or influenced by British Ales, something which isn't true of all Belgian beers.

"Should the name of a specific group of British beers be used as a general term for top-fermenting beers?"
- I would argue no, because it destroys the original, well-defined usage of the word.

"Is this an accurate and helpful method of classification?"
- Again, I would argue no, as it lumps together beers which have none but the vaguest and most general connection. It implies a relationship which does not exist. In that respect, it's confusing and unhelpful.

"What alternative systems of classification are possible and would any of these be more historically accurate and less confusing?"
- I would say yes. But then I would do. See my earlier post proposing a classification of German top-fermenting styles.


Feel free to answer any of these questions yourself. Unlike some others, I am open to persuasion by reasoned argument.

German Ales

Of course I mean German Top-fermenting beers. Just a little windup there with the title. I thought I might give you my classification of the different types.

1. Rhineland Bitterbier. These are the classic Obergäriger Lagerbiers. Beers that have a top-fermenting primary fermentation followed by a long period of lagering at 0-2º C. I've sort of made the term Rhineland Bitterbier name up. It's not that important. I just wanted a general name to cover these two types:
   
   a. Düsseldorf Altbier
   b. Kölsch
   
   
2. Bavarian Weizen. Brewed with a specific type of yeast that produces spicy flavours.
   
   
3. Sour beers. These fall into two groups:
   
   a. Lightly-hopped beers which sour during primary fermentation: Berliner Weisse, Leipziger Gose.
   
   b. Heavily-hopped beers which sour during secondary fermentation: Münster Altbier and Lichtenhainer. There is only a single example of each still brewed.
   
   
4. Grätzer. Smoked wheat beer not brewed with a Bavarian wheat beer yeast. I'm still hoping this will be revived.
   
   
5. Süßbier and Einfachbier. Sweet, malty, low-alcohol beers. Once all such beers were top-fermented. Many are now bottom-fermented. I suspect very few top-fermenting examples still exist.
   

Comments are welcome. (Unless you're one of the Homebrew Twats, in which case you can f*ck off.) I know at least one beer that doesn't fall into any of these categories: Dampfbier. It isn't a wheat beer, isn't sour and isn't lagered. Maybe it needs its own category.

What strikes me looking at this list is how under threat most types are. Only Bavarian Weizen is flourishing. Even Kölsch and Düsseldorf Alt have been hit by falling sales over the last decade and the number of breweries producing them seriously pared down. The remainder are hanging on by a thread or, as in the case of Grätzer, extinct.


Note: this list has been compiled without reference to homebrewing books (no Eric Warner) nor other authorities such as the Brewers' Association and the German Beer Institute.

Difficult choices

I don't out much during the week, especially not on Monday. Yesterday was an exception. There aren't many who could drag me out. But Kinky Friedman can.

Who couldn't like a man who called his band The Texas Jewboys?

I've long admired Kinky Friedman as a writer. Witty, humane and with his own particular twist on crime fiction. He casts himself as the detective and his friends as victims, suspects and supporting characters. As his books are stuffed with autobiographical detail, I knew he'd had a career as a country singer. I even knew the titles of many of his songs.

Lucas told me Kinky would be playing the Paradiso. He pays more attention to what's going on music-wise in Amsterdam than I do. I don't have the time. This beer stuff has gradually crowded out my other interests. Music used to play a much more important role in my life.

Look carefully at my desk and you'll see a synthesiser buried underall my books and papers. If you're very unlucky, I might make you listen to some of my music one day. There's about two albums worth. Hippy hop, that's a good one. Dum dum - dum dum dum - dum - dum dum dum dum. It goes like that. Very catchy.

Lucas and I arranged to meet in De Balie, which is almost next door to the Paradiso. Balie is the best bar around the Leidseplein by quite a large margin. It has pleasant interior, isn't full of drunken idiots and has Columbus on tap. This next feature is particularly unusual in Amsterdam: it has a no smoking room. I only know of two others. Though, like everywhere else in town, they've put their prices up. 3.40 euros a Columbus cost me. I'm sure it wasn't more than 3 euros last time I dropped by.

I used go to the Paradiso at least once every fortnight. I can't remember how long it had been since my last visit. There've been changes. Some new stained glass windows. Quite nice. But the bar has been renovated, too. And the beer selection reduced. Heineken Pils and Wieckse Witte is the choice now. A difficult choice. Neither is a beer I would usually drink. Which would I go for? I eventually decided on Wieckse Witte. If it was cold enough and I didn't go looking for it, maybe I wouldn't notice that weird bubblegum flavour that lurks in the background.

It came served like a fruit salad with a slice of orange stuck in it and one of those stomper sticks. I'm not keen on fruit in my beer, but I'm always happy to get of those sticks. That's what I use for degassing my beer at home. I'd been starting to run low on them. Because I'm always tapping out a rhythm with them on my desk, I keep breaking them. At the weekend, I got down to my last one. So I dumped the orange and slipped the stomper stick into my pocket.

Kinky was no disappointment. I laughed, I cried, I had a thoroughly good time. And I was back home by ten. If only I'd had something better to drink, the evening would have been perfect.

Challenge everything

Standing on the shoulders of midgets. That's what modern beer writers are doing. We need a year zero.

I was lucky enough to be young during the punk period. Suddenly all my ideas about music were challenged. Relistening to my records, I found many wanting. About half went in the bin. Looking at the current state of beer writing, I can't help thinking a similar process is long overdue. If I took a critical look at the books I own, how many would survive the cull?

I've been doing my own research into beer history for about five years. What I've learned is at odds with almost everything published. Mild, Porter, Stout, IPA, Brown Ale: the history of all these styles is at best distorted. In some cases, it appears totally fabricated. And that's just British styles. Don't get me started on lagers. Or German Ales, sorry, top-fermenting beers. Anyone know the story behind Düsseldorf Alt? I certainly don't.

Much of the work on beer history is so misguided and misleading, it would be better to start afresh. Just forget everything we thought we knew and do a Michael Finnegan - begin again.

Why not make 2008 year zero?

Drinkin' USA

I'd like to share some personal memories with you. Memories of the time I've spent boozing in the USA. That's right. I've run out of things to whinge about. I've only memories left. And precious few of those after all those years of boozing.


The first time - New York

I arrived in the USa for the first time in October 1985. I landed at Newark airport in the early evening. A woman from the agency that had recruited me drove me to my hotel on Manhattan, the Barbizon. My bags safely stowed in my room, I asked the bellboy where there was a bar nearby. He pointed me down the avenue on which the hotel stood. (Can't remember which one, but i guess I could look it up).

There I was. On Manhattan for barely an hour an already sat in a pub. Not bad going. The pub wasn't great. Modern and shiny, glowing with neon signs for crap beers. I ordered an Amstel Light. At the time I didn't know any better. It wasn't great either. But the world always seems a better place half way down your first beer. My world does, at any rate.

This was my introduction to drinking in the USA. It was less different than I had imagined. No gunfights, no stabbings. Surprisingly civilised, in fact, compared to London. I'd witnessed a couple of scary pub fights in the months before leaving. A particulalry nasty glassing incident in Camden really shook me. It struck me just how dangerous pubs could be.

A week later and I'd rented an apartment on Staten Island. On Stobe Avenue to be precise. I had a purpose built studio flat in the ground floor of a (virtually) brand new semi. The whole are had just been developed, and there was still the odd patch of marshy scrubland awaiting the bulldozers. I rented the house from a working-class family that, like many others, had moved over the Verrazano Bridge from Brooklyn. They lived in the house above me.

There was something I soon noticed about the area. It was 100% white, except for the Koreans who ran the convenience store. This was very different to where I'd lived in London. Thornton Heath was pretty mixed, with a sizeable black and Asian population. Come to think of it, I don't think anywhere in London is all white, not even the really posh bits. Maybe some of the dodgy council estates on the Essex border, but they aren't somewhere you'd want to live out of choice. Well I wouldn't.

Talking of the Korean convenience shop, that's where I'd buy beer. Ballantine's Ale was about the best they had. I'd heard of Ballantine's. The Ale was a shadow of its former self, but still better than drinking lager. I used to call in on my walk back from the train station. Though I still found drinking beer at home slightly strange.

There were a few bars within walking distance. Of these, I preferred the Recovery Room. It was the longest walk, but I liked it best. It looked just like the bars you see in American films. You know, the ones with flickering neon signs and rednecks playing pool. Except that there were neither rednecks nor pool table. It wasn't really rough at all. Quite the opposite.

The Recovery Room's beer selection was slightly better than the other local bars. They had bottled Heineken in addition to the ubiquitous Bud, Bud Light and Michelob. Still not my first choice, Heineken, but sooo much better than Bud. I hadn't expected Bud to be much cop. But it was far, far worse than just bad. It was positively nasty. Even ice-cold, the horrible chemical taste was still detectable. The only way I could drink it was to try to get it from glass to stomach as quickly as possible, reducing the time I could taste it to the absolute minimum. I'm not joking. I really did find it that unpleasant.

I'd only ever drunk Heineken on draught before. In Amsterdam, when I'd been there on holiday. I hadn't been overly impressed. But that was before I'd tried Bud. Drinking it didn't give me any positive pleasure, but that easily trumped the negative pleasure of drinking Bud.

Another thing the Recovery Room had going for it was the dartboard. We'd played darts a lot at lunchtime when I worked in the centre of London. It was nice to be able to keep it up. One of my English colleagues was a pretty good darts player and we used to take on the locals. See, it couldn't have been rough or I would have been long dead. The jukebox, I could have lived without. I hope I never have to listen to "We built this city on rock and roll" again. Though whenever I do hear it, I always think of the Recovery Room . . .

I was working for the Bank of New York. My office was in downtown Manhattan on Franklin Street. We were on the 19th floor and had a pretty good view of the new development that was being built next to the World Trade Center. I commuted by train and ferry. Arriving by boat was fun and there was a great view of the city as you came in. From the ferry terminal it was just a short walk to the office.

There was much less drinking at dinnertime than I'd been used to in London. There we'd be down the pub 2 or 3 times a week at lunchtime and 2 or 3 times after work. That's what you do in London. Sometimes you need a few pints to be able to face the nightmare journey home.

I occasionally went to one of the downtown pubs for a couple of beers after work. They were full of men suits. People just like me and my colleagues. As in the City of London, these bars closed at nine or ten and didn't open at the weekend. Bass was my tipple here. It wasn't the Draught Bass I sometimes drank in London, but some blanded-out keg version. Still a lot better than Bud. Then again, what isn't?

Even at this early period of my life, I already did some research before travelling abroad. In those days, that mostly meant looking in Michael Jackson's "World Guide to Beer". I had a couple of adresses to check out. First was McSorley's Old Ale House (15 E 17th Street), supposedly New York's oldest pub. It was genuine enough looking inside and had a certain charm, but queueing to get into a pub was a new concept for me. Never had to wait for someone to leave in order to be able to enter before. They had a house pale and dark lager. They sounded more interesting than they were: bland and overprocessed.

McSorley's was in the East Village (I guess it still is). One of my favourite bits of New York. On First Avenue was a string of Ukrainian restaurants, further east Avenue A was full of Indian restaurants. But this about beer, not food (though if I remember correctly, the Ukrainian places did sell Czech beer). One street along from McSorley's on, I believe, St. Mark's Place, was another pub I frequented. Down in a basement. I'm afraid I can't remember its name. here they had Prior Double Dark on draught, supposedly based on a Czech dark lager. It wasn't bad, really. The best American-brewed beer that I'd tried so far. Not exactly a world-beater, but pleasant enough to drink.

This pub whose name I've forgotten also had a dartboard. Here it came in really handy having a darts-talented colleague. One evening we won pitcher after pitcher of Prior. We still hadn't finished them all when the bar closed at 3 AM. It was so late, it wasn't worth all the trouble of getting back to Staten. We had a couple of coffees, followed by a cooked breakfast and went staight into work. It wasn't my most productive day ever.

Another place I knew about before I arrived in the USA was the Peculier Pub (145 Bleecker St.). I recall this being somewhere inbetween the East Village and Greenwich Village. As a specialist beer pub, it was a real rarity in those days. It wasn't very big and it could be a pig to find a seat. Even worse, it only had a single toilet. Taking a wedge could be very time-consuming, waiting for the bog to be free. The selection was mostly Belgian, but ask me for any specific examples. Too much beer in the intervening years has fuddled my memories.

In the mid-1980'S the micro movement was, unbeknown to me, starting to take off in the West. Washington, Oregon, Colorado, California. But it had had almost no impact on New York. Win one exception: Manhattan Brewing. It was New York's only brewpub, housed in a former electricity substation close to Canal Street. In walking distance of my office.

I think it was me who persuaded my English colleagues to start going there once a week after work. It was a pretty big place with the brewing equipment at one end behind glass. I'd discovered heaven, or at least its nearest earthly likeness. Handpulled British-style beer. This is what I'd been missing. I used to drink their Stout. Pint after pint. For the first time I'd found an American beer that I didn't drink just for lack of anything better, but out of choice. Easily as good as what you found in Britain. Better, and more to my taste, than most of the beer in London.

It became a home from home. Proper beer and fish and chips (with vinegar). What else does an Englishman yearn for? I don't think they had mushy peas, but nowhere's perfect. We played darts here, too. Lots of darts. I need a few pints to be able to play my best. Beer relieves tension and relaxes. You just have to be wary of getting over-relaxed. That happened to me more than once. Then the darts acquire a will of their own. Best stand behind me.

One evening we got talking with a dapper young chap who told us he was the brewer. He didn't look like any brewer I'd ever seen. What did I care? He brewed great beer. We had quite a chat. It was soon apparent that he really knew his stuff, which shouldn't have been surprising, given the quality of the beer. I think he might still be in the brewing industry.

Manhattan Brewing is the only place I've poured a drink over someone. Deliberately. I've spilled my drink on someone accidentally lots of times. This was premeditated. But it wasn't a beer, so it doesn't rightly belong amongst these recollections.

Manhattan Brewing might well have been the only brewery of any kind in New York City. The industrial breweries were long gone. I think the one in Staten was the last to close. There was an outfit called New Amsterdam that marketed a bland beer that pretended to be special, but that I'm pretty sure was contract-brewed.

My American visa, a J1, was only valid for a maximum of 18 months. I had a simple choice: apply for a green card and have to remain in the US for two or three years while it was processed; work illegally (remarkably simple, but risky); or leave. I chose the latter. In April 1987 I boarded the plane to London, not knowing if I would ever return to America.

Let's Brew Mild!

I always deliver on my promises. I told you I'd be posting some Mild recipes. Here they are:

Whitbread 1881 XXX:


Barclay Perkins 1925 X:


Whitbread 1940 XX:


Barclay Perkins 1941 X:


I haven't got time to extract the details. There's a beer festival to go to. PINT's Meibokfestival. If I don't drink too much (ha, ha, ha) I may do that later. Up until then, you're on your own. One small tip - the gravity in the 1881 Whiybread log is given in brewer's pounds.

What can I do?

We bear collective responsibility. Humanity is a sum of us all.

If there's a theme to my life, I like to think it's learning. There's stuff I don't understand and I want to try and explain it. I hate not understanding. That's why I spent four years learning how to read Kundera in Czech. If you're wondering, pretty good in the original.

But Paral. Now there's a bloke with imagination. Best novelist of the 20th century. "Valka s mnohozviretem" what a book. It distorted the whole way I thought for several years. Who am I kidding? It still influences how I think. "Láska v Praze" is supposed to be a good one. At least what Phil told me of it sounded pretty groovy.

Phil and I met at Czech summer school in 1985. We practised our colloquial Czech in most of Brno's pubs. Which is why, though I may have forgotten most everything else, my pub Czech is still quite functional. Some things you just don't forget.

God, I've been rambling. You doing my work for me. That's what I wanted to talk about.

There's just one me. I've searched cyberspace in vain for a cloning machine. We're really going to have to make do with just the one me.

I do my best. I read brewing manuals on the way to work. (God that makes me sound sad. It's a positive thing. I don't waste any of my time (well apart from arguing with Homebrew Twats on the internet) ) All those brackets. I was starting to lose track there.

There's a limit to how much I can do. My imagination is greater than my physical body. So much information sits in archives across Britain. I can't look through all of it.

What can I do? Indeed, what can you do. Where is your nearest archive? Do they have brewing records? You'd be amazed at how many there are. Go on. It's not difficult.

The procedure varies, from location to location, but it isn't complicated to request to see documents. At the London Metropolitan Archives fill in a form with the number of the document you want to see. You can put in up to four at any one time. After about half an hour, the documents are delivered to the reading room. It's allowed to take photos, without a flash, on the payment of a small fee.

The staff are very helpful and the procedure is very simple.

It's easy. Go and do it. If you can't be arsed to interpret them yourselves, just send me photos. I'll do it for you.

I've only looked at London brewers. I've still a couple of years worth of work looking at them. At least. Can you help pick up some of the burden?

There's so much I've learned. But still loads of questions. Here's my personal holy grail: an AK recipe. Anyone who can send me an image of a brewing log for AK can have a box of my beer. For other interesting ones, maybe a bottle.

What can I do? Go to the archive. Collect information. For all of us.

Educate yourself

I have to share this with you. One of the Homebrew Twats I was arguing with about Kölsch came up with a great response:

"In addition, you obviously don’t know who Eric Warner is. Educate yourself."

That is so funny. I need to read an American homebrewing book to learn about German beer.

He was deadly serious. Laugh or despair? I'm still trying to work it out. I may need professional help.

If you're interested (and why should you be? Listening to other people's arguments is as entertaining as watching them eat soup. No, not that much fun. Like watching them have their hair cut. No, worse than that. Like watching them have a Spanish lesson.) , you can see the discussion here:

http://www.ratebeer.com/forums/what-is-a-kolsch-style_91933.htm

I started getting a bit impatient at times. You'll have to excuse me. I need to go away and educate myself.

Whither Mild?

Mild might have lived a long and (mostly) happy life, but what is its future?

Here are a few of my thoughts on how it might live on.


As coloured ordinary Bitter
A lot of this goes on. Probably more than is healthy. Some breweries who only brew small amounts of Mild make it by basically adding caramel to ordinary Bitter.

This isn't a cheering prospect. The skills of brewing Mild would be lost, though the name might live on. As a stop gap, keeping the style alive and in public consciousness, it may be a necessary evil. Longterm, it's unlikely to save Mild.

This is an ironic one. As, when sales of it fell to low to justify a separate brew, Brown Ale often lived on as Mild that had been interfered with. Basically sweetened Mild. In all the Brown Ale logs I've seen from the 1930's, it's a specific brew, unrelated to the brewery's Mild.


As a seasonal special
In May, obviously. This already seems to be happeneing, with many Milds dusted off and brought out as a one-off for Mild month. If it keeps Mild-brewing skills ticking over ib breweries that no longer make it regularly, this is no bad thing of itself. But it does marginalise what was once just a standard everyday beer. And should the Mild Month initiative ever fizzle out, surely many examples would be lost.


As a beer festival special
This already happens, too. Brewers either revive their discontinues Mild for a festival, or only brew Mild to order. As in the above case, this is leaving the life-support machine on rather than rousing the patient from its coma. At least with Mild Month there's a specific trigger each year to prompt Mild brewing. Brewing it as a special on an ad hoc basis is more likely to fade away and die.


As a stronger beer
As I've already explained in my definitive "A Short History of Mild", Mild as just a very weak beer is a relatively recent phenomenon. I'm old enough to remember brewers with both a Mild and a Best Mild. Perhaps pre-war style Milds with an OG of 1040 to 1050 might help create a new market. Or even stronger pre-WW I versions, with an OG of 1050 upwards (the sky is the limit).

One of Mild's particular features is the incredible range of gravities to which it's been brewed - 1024 to 1105. What other style can match that spread? Perhaps it's time for Mild to break out of its low-gravity ghetto.


As a standard beer in every pub
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, you can't make the clock run backwards. I don't see Mild once again becoming an everyday beer, sold in every pub and rivalling Lager and Bitter for popularity. Just can't see that happening. Perhaps once Mild has been all but forgotten, along with its damaging old- bloke-in-a-flat-cap image. I would be gobsmacked if Mild could even get a 5% market share. Delighted, but gobsmacked.


As a memory
It's still possible that Mild will disappear altogether from Britain. As Porter did. Depressing, but possible. Then, in 2060, some small brewery looking for something unusual will excavate an old recipe from the archives and bring Mild flickering back to life.


Summary
If you'd asked me 10 years ago, I would have said that I expected Mild to die out within my lifetime. Will it? Possibly not. If only because the odd American brewery is bound to give the style a try every now and again. Does it have a future as a mainstream beer? I doubt it. But weird things happen. Fashion is a fickle beast.

I expect Mild will just about cling on in the UK, but not as a beer brewed year-round. Except, perhaps, with the odd exception here and there. How many Milds are currently available 12 months a year? And how many occasionally or for part of the year? It would be interesting to know and reveling to track any change in the proportion of permanent to occasional. Where on earth do I get hold of the numbers?

Is Kölsch an Ale?

I try to stay out of arguments with certain American homebrewers. The ones who lurk on beer forums. That's where you find all the self-appointed experts. People who've read a few homebrewing texts and think they know everything. I'm not calling every homebrewer a smug idiot. The majority aren't, I'm sure. Just the Homebrew Twats*.

So I really should know better than to get involved in a discussion about whether Kölsch is an Ale with these people. They've read that top-fermented = Ale. Try telling them any different and see what shit you get thrown back at you.

As I've said before, lots of things annoy me. Calling German top-fermented beers "Ales" is one. Why does it irritate me so much? It's an example of nailing Anglo-American terminology onto a foreign beer culture. Like reducing Czech beer styles to Bohemian Pilsner. It's lazy, sloppy and rather condescending.

German top-fermented beers have their own, very long history. One that is pretty well totally independent of British top-fermenting beers. By calling them "Ales" a false connection is made. It's not only inaccurate, but highly misleading.

Naively, I tried explaining that Kölsch is an Obergäriges Lagerbier. Top-fermenting Lagerbier in English. What an idiot I am. Evidently that demonstrates just how little I've read about brewing and my total lack of practical experience. Silly me. All those German brewing manuals must have just been a dream.

I do my best to respect different beer cultures and not to impose my own systems of classification and terminology on them. Lagerbier has a couple of meanings in German. Just how much the Homebrew Twats know about German beer is evident by the fact that they are clearly unaware of one of them. Here they are:

1. - beer which has undergone lagering, i.e. a long period of cold storage where the temperature is gradually reduced to around 0º C.
2. - a bottom-fermenting beer of around 12º Plato

Kölsch obviously falls into the first category. The primary fermentation is with a top-fermenting yeast, but it's then lagered at low temperature, pretty much exactly like bottom-fermenting beer should be. (I say should be, because much "lager" is just rolled through the lagering cellar nowadays.)

There's a reason why they produced top-fermenting Lagerbier in Cologne: their Reinheitsgebot. No, it's not the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot. Cologne had a quite different law. There it was forbidden to brew bottom-fermenting beer. If you wanted to produce a Lagerbier - which as the 19th century progressed more and more breweries wanted to - then you had to top-ferment it. But, if you'll excuse my French, that doesn't make your beer a f*cking Ale.

If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that, in addition to Obergäriges Lagerbier and Untergäriges Lagerbier, I've mentioned a third type. You don't remember? It was in one of my many translations of "Die Herstellung Obergähriger Biere". Where it describes the practice of, during years when there was little natural ice, mixing top-fermenting and bottom-fermenting beer. Of course the Homebrew Twats will never had heard of it. For a couple of reasons. They've read no German texts nor anything earlier than Charlie Papazian.

Let's see how Dr. Franz Schönfeld categorised top-fermenting beers in his definitive "Die Herstellung Obergähriger Biere":

German beer:

I Lagerbier ähnliches Bitterbier
II Grätzer Bier
III Süßbier - Einfachbier
IV Berliner Weißbier

English Beer:

A. Stout
B Ale

It seems pretty clear that the German types are not classified as Ales. Who am I to argue with Dr. Franz Schönfeld?

I try to use the word "Ale" carefully. Basically for those beers that are called Ales by natives of the country in which they originated. British, American, Irish and Belgian top-fermenting beers. That seems reasonable enough to me.

Now if I were to be a real pedant, I'd start getting funny about calling Porter, Stout and even Pale Ale "Ales". They're Beers, not Ales. But I've given up on that one. I'd spend the whole of my life arguing about it. And I have better things to do.

That's why I shouldn't have got involved in arguing the toss about Kölsch with Homebrew Twats. It's a waste of my time. They know all the answers. No amount references, history or logic will convince them otherwise.

How do I know this? I've argued with some of them before. Porter and Stout is a good example. I supplied 150 years worth of evidence showing no difference between the malts used in Porter and Stout for any given brewery. Did that convince them? Don't be stupid. Their homebrewing books said something different. They didn't have a scrap of evidence to support their point of view, but that didn't matter. They had something far more important: belief.

Why does this stuff upset me? Because the Homebrew Twats aren't just keeping this misinformation to themselves, they're actively propagating it. Building a giant edifice of beer "knowledge" without the slightest factual foundation.

OK. Rant over. Normal programming will now resume.

And before you ask, yes; Altbier is an Obergäriges Lagerbier, too.

*Homebrew Twat - a homebrewer who writes with self-proclaimed authority on a beer forum, whose opinions cannot be swayed by anything as boring as facts and whose faith in American homebrewing texts is absolute.

I am human

Great news. I've received confirmation from Blogger that I am human:

"Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that
it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and
sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your
patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."

What a relief. I was starting to worry about what species I am.

Has anyone confirmed your humanity? No? ALIEN!!!!

When is a Dortmunder Imperial?

I've been asking myself this question a lot of late. When is a Dortmunder Imperial? Logic would say that it would need to be brewed in an Empire.

Problem is, there aren't many empires left. The Russian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, British and Austo-hungarian Empires are long gone. As are the Chinese, Indian and Turkish. Even the Central African Empire has become a republic. Where is there left to brew a genuine Imperial beer?

Whether or not the United States was ever an empire is a contentious issue. Politics are beyond my remit, so don't expect an opinion from me. Just an observation. Where are most beers labelled Imperial brewed? Why are brewers in a republic so keen on the word?

. . . . . .


Because this is Mild Month, here's an extra bonus: some new Mild styles:

• Mild Extra Super Special (MESS)
• Cascade-Hopped American Super Mild (CHASM)
• Triple Russian Imperial Mild (TRIM)
• Republican American Mild (RAM)
• Democratic American Mild (DAM)

Why I don't brew

When I was younger. Much younger. Much, much younger, I used to homebrew. I started while I was still at school.

It was my elder brother that got me into it. We were broke. Dead broke. It was the only realistic way of getting our hands on any booze. With mum living on a widow's pension and pocket money non-existent we had no choice.

We started with Geordie kits. Cheap and cheerful, bought in Boots. At first we just stuck to the kit recipe. Then my brother bought a copy of "The Big Book of Brewing". That was when we started getting more serious. When was it? 1974, I think, that we got our hands on a recipe for Younger's No. 3 clone. We brewed it, but had no idea how much it resembled the original. Younger's hadn't brewed No.3 for several years. I can remember taking a bottle of it along to Martin Young's birthday party. I wonder where he is now? His mother's shop, Jane Young, is still there on Chain Lane in Newark. Who owns it now?

(Digressing slightly, Martin was also a CAMRA member. We travelled down to London together to the first national CAMRA estival, held in Covent Garden market in 1975. This was between its closure as a flower market and its transformation into a posh shopping centre. I can only remember one beer I drank there - Yorkshire Clubs Dark Mild. It was pitch black and rather good. Shortly afterwards the brewery was bought by Federation and closed.)

The next step was to go all grain. We got hold of an old Burco boiler to use as a mash tun. Our batch size jumped up to 10 gallons or more. Initially we used second-hand plastic barrels, of the type used to dispense cider or sherry in off-licences. It was one of these that held the iced Mild I drank in Leeds in the summer of 1976.

My brother heard that John Smiths were selling off their stock of wooden barrels to gardeners. They chopped them in half and used them as plantpots. Philistines. They were still in working order. After Barnsley closed in 1976, they had no use for casks of any kind. They'd gone all bright. A brewery dray delivered the 6 wooden firkins he ordered to our house at 48 Wilfred Avenue. (I still think of it as "our house" despite not having there for more than 30 years.) The casks were a mixed bunch. Some Barnsley, some John Smiths and some Hole's. A couple still even had dry hops in them.

Newark wasn't just a brewing town. It was a centre of malting, too. In the 1970's there were still active matings in the town. My brother took advantage of this to buy his malt in bulk and direct. He purchased a sack of pale and a sack of mild malt. We now had everything we needed to brew on quite a grand scale. Or rather my brother did, because by this time I was away at University in Leeds.

My brother brewed the odd firkin of Bitter or Mild, but I think he had trouble getting through it quickly enough by himself. He brewed off and on until 1979. That year he found a job accountanting in Jamaica. The last beer he brewed before leaving was Jamaica Barley Wine, an incredibly strong beer he hoped would be ready on his return a couple of years later.

Just before my brother left for Jamaica, he drove up to Leeds in a van, bringing the burco boiler, firkins and malt. I hadn't asked him to. In reality, I didn't want all that stuff. I was living in a rented room and didn't really have anywhere to put it.

I was in 97 Brudenell Road at the time. Not the most hygienic of environments, what with the 8 single men, mice and cat. I only brewed there twice. The first brew, a firkin of Mild , was infected, but some of it got drunk. The second was stinking before I even got it out of the mash tun. Not worth fermenting. I called it a day after that. But for the following three years I dragged all the equipment along with through a succession of rental accommodation. When I left Leeds for London in January 1983, I dropped it off in Newark on the way South. It was such a relief to be rid of it.

There followed a long hiatus in my brewing career. Until 1992 or 1993. Dolores and I we were back in Amsterdam and had bought our first flat, on Willem de Zwijgerlaan in De Baarsjes. Finally the space and hygiene to brew again.

I can't remember what prompted it. Maybe I'd noticed the place selling home brew supplies in De Pijp. That could have been it. I bought a monster saucepan, bags of malt and hops and set to it. Oh, and a thermometer and hydrometer. It's hard to brew without those, too.

My first brew was a Mild - what else? Now, down the homebrew shop, I hadn't been quite sure of the Dutch names for all the malts. I thought I'd bought pale and black malt. In fact it was amber and chocolate. My recipe was 95% of the former 5% of the latter. What I got wasn't a Mild, but quite a nice Porter. It was all downhill from there.

I tried about another half dozen brews. None was as good as my first accident and I started having infection problems. That's when I realised that a kitchen stove in a small flat isn't the best place for sterile brewing. So I stopped.

I still have the giant saucepan, hydrometer and thermometer. (I think, buried in the depths of my beer cupboard, there are even still a few bottles of my beer.) It would be possible to brew again. But with the kids, the internet and all the other crap that fills my life there really isn't the time. Not to do it properly. And I've found a much better way of getting the beer I want made: I get Menno to brew it for me. He has a professional brewery and knows what he's doing. That's why I no longer brew.

repetitive, nonsensical text

I had a surprise when I first posted today. I had to type in word verification to prove I was human . . . I've just checked and I'm pretty sure I'm human. Not much body hair and opposable thumbs. Is that enough?

This the explanation:

"As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site."

I suppose I'm guilty of many of those sins. Repetitive and nonsensical. That sounds like me. Lots of links? Could also be true. All to one site? That's probably my European Beer Guide. I'm always trying to drum up more business for that.

Lager Mild

It's still May. Time for another of my Mild series.

Or should that be Mild Lager? Whatever. I've always tried to recreate the Mild experience, whether it meant mixing beers or just looking for the one that most resembled Mild.

Prague
My first encounter with dark lager was in Prague. This was back in 1983. My train arrived at 08:00 and I was in U Fleků by 09:00. At the time, Fleků was still a classic pub. In the summer it did tend to fill up with Germans (both flavours, East and West), but there were usually a good few Czechs in, too. They still used proper 0.5l mugs, not the joke .04l ones they now use. The waiters weren't perpetually trying to con you, either. They just thunked beer down in front of you when your glass was almost empty. Proper service. It saddens me whenever I go there now. The idiots that own it have destroyed its soul for short-term gain. And it is short-term, because the place used to be packed. I'm certain they could generate more income by lowering the prices, serving proper measures and having waiters who behave normally. It's a sobering reminder of how even the greatest pub can be destroyed overnight by poor management.

I'd never tasted anything like Fleků 's dark lager before. Rich, complex, dark, strong, a lager. It didn't make sense. This wasn't lager as I knew it. It was a surprise, but a pleasant one. I spent many a happy hour sitting at one of its enormous tables, slurping down the delicious stuff. That it was stupidly cheap (somewhere between 3 and 4 crowns) was just extra encouragement.

Back in the 1980's the beers available in Prague pubs were more limited than they are now. Virtually everywhere sold just one, usually either 10º or 12º pale. After the war most pubs had sold both pale and dark lager, but, I think for ease of service more than anything, most had cut back to just one during the 1960's. It left dark beer pretty rare in Prague city centre. There was U Fleků , of course. Finding the dark lagers from the other Prague breweries was trickier.

Měšťan brewed an 11º Tmavé that was available in a few places. It was OK, but not my favourite. Sweetish and a bit thin. A bit like Bass Mild from Tadcaster. Acceptable if nothing better was on offer, but not a beer you would seek out.

Then I stumbled on U Malvaze (Karlova 10). It's not difficult to find, being just 50 meters from Charles Bridge, on the road that leads to it from the Staré Mesto. It's not a huge pub. Just a single square room. Ah, but the beer. It sold Braník 12º Tmavé, the queen of Prague beers. So much better than the Měšťan, drier, better balanced, but still malty. After the first sip it was one of my favourites. I'd liken it to Shippo's Mild. A beer I actively hunted down.

When the Czech government started selling off its breweries after 1990, it did it in the stupidest way possible. In the communist days, the breweries had been grouped together by location. The new capitalist government decided to sell off these regional groups as single entities. As a result was that the new owners would have half a dozen or more breweries withing a 50 km radius. Unsurprisingly, they then preceded to close most of them.

Thus all the Prague brewereies, with the exception of U Fleku, ended up in the hands of Bass. Staropramen, Měšťan and Braník, all had a single owner. Almost immediately they started baring down each breweries range. Braník's flagship 13º pale disappeared almost immediately. Soon the only Měšťan beer you ever saw was the unexciting 11º Tmavé. The brand that Bass pushed was Staropramen. Staropramen 10º and 12º pale, to be specific.

I drank plenty of Czech beer before 1989. The quality was incredibly high. I never had a bad one and most were pretty good, no matter what size brewery it came from. Staropramen was about my least favourite. A bit bland. So it should come as no surprise that it was Staropramen that Bass chose to push.

Then came disaster. In another bout of rationalisation, the wonderful Braník 12º Tmavé was dropped in favour of the unspectacular Měšťan 11º Tmavé. The classic Prague beer was gone. Did drinkers complain? I'd like to hope that they did.

The classic Prague beer a dark lager? Yes. Around 1900, dark lager was the standard beer in Prague, just as it was in Munich. And Braník was, in my opinion, the pick of the bunch.

Perversely, there's a lot more dark lager in Prague pubs that there was 20 years ago. Staropramen have their own crappy 10º Tmavé. Budvar's 12º dark is a bit better, though still on the bland side. Pilsner Urquell pubs sell Velkepopovické 10º Tmavé. It's sweet and thinnish, but serves well as a Mild substitute. Ten years back it was Purkmistr Tmavé. An excellent beer. Then they closed the brewery (too near to the one in Pilsen). Typical. Given a choice between a good and a crap brewery, large companies will always pick the good one to close.


Munich
It wasn't until the early 1990's that I first made it to Munich. Knowing Dunkles was the traditional local favourite, I was pretty excited.

First stop was the massive Löwenbräu brewery tap. It's a typical chunk of sturdy and ornate Gründerzeit architecture. That's the period when Germany was united and undergoing rapid industrialisation. There's a self-confidence about the buildings of that time that you don't see after WW I.

Löwenbräu did their reputation a deal of harm with substandard versions brewed under licence outside Germany. That's why my expectations of their beer were so low. Their Dunkles was a very pleasant surprise: sweetish, but nutty and full-flavoured. Sinking a few pints of it was no problem.

I had the opportunity to try their rivals dark lagers in the centre of Munich. Augustiner Grossgaststätte has several things going for it. It's on the main shopping street, which is pretty handy. It's beautiful. It's on the original site of the Augustiner brewery. It sells beer straight from the wood. And they have Augustiner Dunkles. The pick of the Munich Dunkles.

Like Mild, Munich Dunkles isn't about extreme flavours. Harmony, subtlety and a nutty maltiness are its distinguishing features. Easy to see why neither are brewed much in the USA. They aren't beers to grab tou by the throat or strip your tastebuds. No, they're for drinking by the pint. Preferably at least four of five at a sitting. Beer to promote conversation, not club you into silence.

Back to Munich. Further along the main drag, about halfway to Weisses Brauhaus, is a Paulane house. I can't remember the name. It's not a particularly great pub, but it's pleasant enough sitting outside. Here I had my first taste of Paulaner Dunkles. Like the pub, it's pleasant enough, under the right circumstances. Like all Paulaner's beers, it's gone down in quality over the last ten years.

Hofbräu is available in the Hofbräuhaus, also right in the centre of town. I don't know if it's my subconscious at work, but I've never cared for the beer or the pub. My first time there, I can remember sitting close to a group of Japanese. They were staring at the huge piles of pork on their plates with a mixture of shock and horror. Funnily enough, that just about summed up my emotions, too.

It's not only Dark Lager Mild on sale in Munich pubs. Even more common is Light Lager Mild, or Helles as they insist on calling it. Gradually as the 20th century progressed Helles eased out Dunkles as the local favourite. Malt-accented and lightly-hopped, Light Mild isn't such a bad way of describing it. Augustiner is again the best of the bunch. Good old Augustiner. I'd be so upset if some globalist got their paws on them.

With almost universal availability of pale and dark versions, I can unhesitatingly call Munich the Lager Mild capital of the world.

Berliner Weissbier - the long version (part 10)

It's so long since I started this series that I've forgotten the first half dozen posts. Not to worry. This is the final installment from "Die Herstellung Obergähriger Biere". You should - if you've been paying attention - now know everything you need to about Berliner Weisse.

Transporting Weissbier
Special has to be taken when transporting Weissbier.

The Spunde has to be loosened before transport by rail, to prevent the barrels bursting.

If the beer is transported long distances, in warm weather the secondary conditioning can go so far that all the sugars have been fermented. In such cases, 1 to 1.5 pounds of sugar per tonne should be added before bottling.

In summer, to prevent too strong a fermentation, the beer is cooled before filling into barrels.


Bottled Weissbier
The yeast should stick to the bottom of the bottle Possible reasons why it doesn’t are:

1. an unusually high protein haze
2. an infection with coccus or sarcina bacteria
3. too much lactic acid bacteria which destroys the yeast cells
4. Verfetzung of the yeast through a too long and too warm bottle-conditioning
5. Badly nourished yeast

3-4 week old Weissbier has an acid content of 0.25-0.35%. If infected with acetic acid bacteria, this can be aas much as 0.5-0.6%.


Märzenbier
The equivalent of bottom-fermenting Bockbier is Märzen-Weisse.

Brewed to 12-14º Balling and filled into bottles without the addition of water.

Because it needs to ripen for months, the bottles are often buried in earth or sand to keep the temperature steady and stop the cork from drying out. However, many bottles burst due to the high pressure.

A several-month old Märzen-Weisse is very valued because of its wine-like sour taste and aroma.