Beer Advent Calendar - December 3rd

The calendar began with a great intro to German beer, started to get into a good stride on day two, but fell flat a little with this one. I felt the beer and "brewer" both left a little to be desired. Let’s get into it.

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Holzknecht hefeweisse dunkel

A cloudy, darker copper color pours into the glass accompanied by light carbonation and a weak head. The bubbles are few and rise slowly. I’ll be honest, this beer didn’t have much to be excited for. It holds some sweet characteristics in mild caramel malt and a honey, oxidative flavor in the background. The body is soft and velvety, but these positive qualities are cancelled out by resinous hops and mossy, musky finishing flavors.

My wife and I enjoy hefeweizens, but this isn’t a light, refreshing wheat beer. It also doesn’t capture the rich, bold malts of a dunkel either. I think my wife described this beer best: tastes like a murky swamp. I'm going to start a graph tracking my enjoyment of these beers; today the advent calendar took a dip on the tasty scale.

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Pilsting-Großköllnbach, Germany

Unlike our last two beers, I was unable to find the brewer for this one. Privatbrauerei Heinrich Egerer is a mineral water company in Pilsting that offers a wide range of beverages from juice, to sodas and beers. The region of Großköllnbach is made up of plain countryside. Beautiful, but not much for interesting info to share in this section today.

H. Egerer is listed on the other cans as "brewer" too, but they're just a link in the chain to get these beers imported to America. It was disappointing not finding the original brewer after the last two had an extensive history and obvious pride in their craft. Perhaps the lack of brewer information correlates to the disappointing flavor.

This one will be gladly forgotten, but I have a feeling we’ll discover more about Egerer in future posts.

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_{Beer photographs by me. Pictures of Germany sources: 1}

_{Previous Advent Calendar entries: Intro - 1 - 2}