International Beer Appreciation topic

[BinnZ]

Hello fellow beer drinkers

Beer isn't a frequently discussed item on this forum, however through the years I learnt most of us have a distinctive taste for beers. We all have our experiences tasting and loving the barley beverages and we are usually happy to share them. Let this be the place to do so.

We don't pretend to be pros, we enjoy and share. That's the basis of this. We tell each other stories and we do pretend to say something about taste and finesse in our own language of (alcoholic) enjoyers of life

I will start this topic with the beer that made me want to start this threat, the Delirium Tremens:

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What you see is a Belgian beer that is called Zwaar Blond (heavy blonde). I discovered this beer when I visited Antwerp a while ago with the misses. We went there to have a weekend for ourselves. The little missy stayed with my parents so we could enjoy what brought us together
Antwerp is a beautiful mid size town in the Dutch speaking part of Belgium called Vlaanderen. Belgium is known for their beers of high fermentation and the Belgians are known for their love of the Barley Beverage. I remember when I first visited Antwerp that I saw all kind of people enjoy beers; youngsters, oldies, men and women, even grandma would happily sit on a terrace in the sunshine to enjoy a Kriek or any type of double or triple fermented brew.
The first beer I drank when we arrived, in a local hipster hamburger bar, was this Delirium Tremens. It's a strong beer; it contains 8.5% of alcohol. Perfect for a lazy sunny afternoon but be warned, after 2 of these you are upside down stumpling through the darker parts of the bar if you happen to feel the urge of taking a pee.
The flavour is soft though. Unlike most strong beers it doesn't bite. It gently slides down the throat giving you the time to fully enjoy the rich flavour and slowly carries you to the holy land of spirit.

Imagine visiting a place like that local hamburger bar, preparing to discover the beauty of Antwerp and of course, taking care of that howling hunger in the stomach because you didn't have lunch until 3 pm ( ) making plans what to visit and see...
When we stepped out of that establishment we had long forgotten what the exact plan was and we ended up exploring without a certain gold but heavily enjoying ourselves

I can strongly recommend the experience, but the beer would guarantee any kind of good time wherever you are. If you come along a specialized dealer that has this funny looking bottle on the shelves with the pink elephant ogling at you, don't hesitate and arrange some time to taste it. 

[PZ]

Good post BinnZ 

I like dark beers, malty not hoppy, like this one:

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[BinnZ]

Haha, great contribution PZ! I checked the brewer's website, it's a feast for the eye:

Modelo Negra

I think it's much like Cusqueña Negra, which is a Peruvian beer. When I first tasted it, it reminded me of a seasonal beer we are very common with in our part of Europe, we call it Bock Beer. Dark, rich and often a bit sweet. However, in Holland it's only permitted to sell these brews between October and March. You won't find any of that "Negra" beer in the shops until Autumn hits again

This is my favourite Dutch Bock brew:

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[BinnZ]

Almost forgot; those sandwiches look delicious PZ. Is it pulled pork?

[PZ]

mmmm, that looks good, BinnZ!

I believe those are roast beef sandwiches - the pic is on a food web site that I sometimes visit 

[Art Blade]

reading here as well as admiring those pics is a joy. However, I rarely drink any alcohol. But if I do, it's either dry red wine or beer. Doesn't affect my brains and system that hard. I just can't stand alcohol, makes me sick to the bones. It's OK when enjoyed in small doses for special occasions, though. A beer or two, a glass of wine or two..

[LowPolyOWG]

For me, beer isn't good tasting to be honest. I guess I have to get a little older first 

I prefer stuff like Smirnoff ice/Breezer. Contains 4.5% alcohol so it's not that strong. Also have a fruity taste (orange/lime) to it. We have the so-called "russetid/russefeiring" in Norway. Lots of drinking/partying in the weekends after the easter holiday until 17th May. A popular thing to do is to mix 40% drinks with soda.

A friend of mine had a housewarming party and we decided to play video games while drunk.

[Art Blade]

"I'm not cut out for drinking. I can't stomach vodka, for example. After eleven bottles, I just fall over and pass out."

[fragger]

lol I assume that's a quote from something?

Good topic BinnZ, and a subject close to my heart Well heck, I am Australian after all, it's in the blood...

"Down" here, we certainly love our beers. You blokes in Europe are better qualified to report on European beers than I. Not that you can't get them here, it's just that we make so many fine brews ourselves that I've never felt the need to experiment much outside of Oz - there are literally hundreds of brews to sample here. Most people outside of Australia seem to think "Fosters" when they think of Aussie beer, but I hate the stuff and so do most Aussies. I've never known anybody who liked it. It's tasteless slop and is about as representative of a good Aussie beer as Heineken is of a European one (actually, that's unfair to Heineken, which I don't mind ). One could spend a lifetime sampling local beers. There are some with unlikely names (and some pretty hefty alcohol-by-volume contents) such as Boatrocker Banshee Barleywine (14.2% abv), Feral Boris The Russian Imperial Stout (9.1% abv), Murray's Wild Thing Imperial Stout (10% abv) and Mountain Goat Barrel Breed Barley Wine (12.9% abv). I haven't gotten around to trying any of those as many are only obtainable in small or specific areas of the country to which I haven't been - yet.

There's also the fact that imported beers are freaking expensive in this country, and with so many local brands to sample, there doesn't seem to be a lot of point paying through the nose for imported exotics.

So I'll restrict my contributions here to local brews. Among the country's most popular beers, some of the ones I like (in no particular order) are:

XXXX, brewed in Queensland (referred to as "Four-ex"). This is a smooth-flavoured low-to-medium strength beer (3.5% alcohol). The XXXX company make a range of beers, XXXX Gold is my fave out of their line. Same alcohol content, but with a richer taste.

Toohey's Old, a dark beer brewed using an "old-fashioned" brewing method. A bit like Guiness but without the bitterness. However I only like this one when it comes out of a pub tap - the packaged variety doesn't have the same robust taste, in fact it's a bit pissy. 4.4% alcohol, a mid-ranger.

Victoria Bitter (commonly known as "VB") is a classic offering from Melbourne's Carlton & United Breweries. One of the country's most popular beers. It's not super-outstanding yet it's everything a decent beer should be - robust taste, good colour, and a reasonable body. At 4.9% alcohol, it's medium-to-strong. Certainly not my first beer of choice, but a good one to throw down on a stinking hot day.

Carlton Draught, another one from Carlton & United. A malty lager, with a sharper flavour than VB. Tiny little bit of bitterness, full-bodied, goes down very smoothly. Slightly lower alcohol level than VB, at 4.6%. Another good summer beer.

I stress, the above are my faves out of the country's most popular and widely consumed beers. If nothing else is available, I'll go for one of those. But my preferred poisons by far are actually several varieties from Cooper's Brewery, South Australia. Their trademark brewing technique is secondary fermentation, where the beer continues to be brewed once inside its bottle. Thus, they don't do cans. Which is as it should be - God never intended beer to be drunk from cans!

There are three Cooper's beers that I enjoy:

Best Extra Stout
As the name suggests, this is a Stout, and thus dark. Very dark, like nearly black. Very strong, malty taste, probably a little too bitter for most regular beer drinkers. 6.3%.

Extra Strong Vintage Ale
Another "old-fashioned" beer, reddish-amber, slightly bitter and rather "hoppy" taste. In fact, the taste borders on being fruity. An English-style brew, and fairly strong alcohol content at 7.5%.

Sparkling Ale
This is my favourite of theirs and about the only beer I drink in quantity these days. Dark amber colour with a dense head, full-bodied taste, and similar to Extra Strong Vintage in terms of the almost fruity flavour. No bitterness to speak of. And at 5.8% alcohol, it's reasonably strong yet I can knock back a good few of these without falling on my *bleep*. This brew is characterized by a unique opacity and cloudy appearance, with a small amount of fine yeast sediment which remains in the bottom of the bottle, a consequence of the in-bottle brewing technique. There are two schools of thought regarding the sediment. One holds that the beer should be rolled to allow the sediment to mix with the liquid before drinking. The second is that the beer should be decanted into a glass with the sediment left behind in the bottle. I tend to side with the first group and let the sediment do its thing. There's not a huge amount of it or anything.

As you can see here, the company doesn't go in for flashy packaging. The plainness of the labelling belies the quality of the product. Their emphasis is on fine brewing, not fancy marketing. This is my pic, not an advertising one, and I decanted the beer (into a genuine Coopers glass, at least ) to show the colour and opacity. As noted above, I like to roll it first, then drink it out of the bottle. I then gentle swirl the bottle around a little bit before each sip to reposition the sediment.

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I actually have a pretty high tolerance of alcohol - I was the reigning chug-a-lug champion at my local pub back in my younger days. I used to be able to drink anybody under the table Alas, I am not the young hell-raising proletariat that I once was and if I drink too much these days I just wind up with a splitting headache. This is one of the other attractions of Cooper's beers for me - I can drink quite a few of these without getting a throbbing head or feeling nauseous. I think it's to do with their all-natural, nothing-fancy brewing technique, and the fact that their beers contain no additives nor preservatives.

The strongest beer I've ever tried was the legendary "Dogbolter". It was commercially released quite a few years ago and is a pale shadow of its former glory (it also costs an arm and a leg now, way overpriced for what nowadays is a pretty ordinary, albeit "trendy", beer). Originally, this jet-fuel beer was brewed on the premises of just one pub in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. At 14-15% alcohol, it was not to be taken lightly. A mate and I went there once to try it out. As tolerant of alcohol as I am, after three of these I had a very distinct case of the wobbles After a couple more, I don't remember much else until I woke up to find myself curled up on a bench in Sydney's inner-city Hyde Park at about 3 in the morning...

Well, it's just after lunch on a Saturday, which makes it beer o'clock by my reckoning, so I'm off to the groggery for my customary Saturday six-pack of Coops

[Art Blade]

nice post, fragger 

and no, it wasn't exactly a quote (I suppose you were thinking about some film or book) but a line I picked up in a pub long ago and it was way shorter. The original line was, "I can't stand wine. After eleven bottles I fall over."

[fragger]

Still a good quote

[Art Blade]

it was meant to crack someone up and it certainly does 


Bloody hell, this is my 24,000th post. 

[fragger]

Holey moley I haven't even cracked five figures yet That's a shipload of keystrokes! Here's a +1 for achievement

Back on track for a moment, I was just over in the bottle shop and had a look around to see f they had any of those crazy-name beers I mentioned, but no. I wasn't expecting them to. They did have Redback, which is another one I like, but I stuck to my Coopers. Besides, being a bit of an arachnophobe, I'm not crazy about products named after poisonous spiders (there is also a very good quality line of workboots called "Redback", but I'd be afraid to own a pair of those in case I pulled one on and one of its namesakes was hiding inside. Irrational, but there it is )

I should have pointed out that "Boatrocker", "Feral", "Murray's" and "Mountain Goat" are company names, not part of the actual beer names, so the one from Feral is "Boris The Russian", i.e. Boris isn't feral The Feral company also make other brews, among them, "Karma Citra", "Hop Hog", and my personal favourite, "Barrique O'Karma"

If you want to see some more wacky names for Aussie beers, here's a list:

https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/country/australia/14/

[Art Blade]

thank you 

and a +1 for you and your massive and entertaining post.

BinnZ, also +1 for yours and the idea 

[BinnZ]

Thanks Art, and agreed, interesting read Fragger! +1 from my end, and a +1 for Art's 24k achievement... 24k heheh

I never knew there was such a large brewing tradition in Australia Fragger, but now that you mention it I realise it was just me never thinking of the subject rather than assuming there wasn't. Where people are, there's beer. And Australia's beer tradition probably comes from the English brewing tradition. I do recognize some similarities in the names at least

I think I would heavily enjoy these Cooper beers Fragger, from what you tell me about it, the taste is perfect to what I like and the colour looks excellent as well. Over here were have brews with the sediment of bottle fermentation as well. I was taught to treat the bottle carefully to make sure not to stir the sediment up, since you don't want to drink it; it will cause acid attacks in the stomach, is what I was told. I don't really mind the sediment, but do try to leave it in the bottle, since I like the beer to look clear in the glass.

The strongest beer you can get in Holland (Dutch brew) is called "Het Kanon" from the Grolsch brewery. Grolsch is known for its pilsner, being the biggest concurrent of Heineken in Holland. You either drink Heineken or Grolsch, might even pick the pub that serves the right beer of your belief as well. I think the rivalry has to do with intercity rivalries probably farther stimulated by soccer rivalries. Anyway, besides its most commonly drunken pilsner it's also known for its seasonal brews. They do experiment a lot with different brewing recipes (the experiment has probably more to do with which of these flavours sells the best to their customers than with true brewing experimenting) and one of their 'new tastes' was Het Kanon containing 11.6% alc. I don't like the taste, since it's very strong. It reminds me a bit of these strong herbal liquors. Anyway, when I drink that beer, every vain in my body screems "too much!!!" so I just leave it where it is.
Grolsch pilsner is a nice tasting beer though. I think you can indeed compare Fosters best with Heineken; tastes like nothing in particular. Grolsch does taste. It has a nice bitter and among the most popular beers it's one of my favourites.

When I was little (eighties) these yellow trucks would always brighten up the street view:
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