Beer Advent Calendar - December 8th
When you try a variety of beers in random fashion, prepare for a roller coaster ride. The advent calendar hit some pretty good highs the last couple of days, so let's see if that continues today.
Grandl Helles Lagerbier
I wasn’t too familiar with the helles style before today. It’s a lager developed in 1894 by German brewers to answer the golden, clean Czechian pilsners that were becoming very popular at the time. The German version provides a touch more malt and less-pronounced hops. Although the Czechs created the pilsner style, Germany’s reaction with the helles began the spread of the style’s popularity around the world.
This beer built a moderate head with low retention. As to be expected, the glass was a light straw color. At first the flavor comes across as simple, but the more I examine it with my tastebuds the more I realize all I detect are undesirable traits.
The malts are bready, which is good, but initially resinous hops have a sweaty finish. The beer has a drying body and lacks complexity, so the objectionable flavors really take over. It’s not undrinkable, but I’d avoid this one. The helles style can be enjoyable and there’s certainly better representatives out there.
Nördlingen, Germany
We’ve got a good brewery profile today to make up where the beer fell short! For a little over four hundred years Ankerbrauerei has been producing beer on the same grounds. In 1897 the brewery was purchased by a married couple along with a stable, barn, agricultural land, a horse and cow. Since then, it has remained in the family and has been the only brewery in Nördlingen since 1990.
When researching the Bavarian town of Nördlingen I had to ask myself, “is this place real?” It was like reading the description of a fairy tale land, and it looks like one too.
This 1,120 year old town of around 20,000 residents is built inside a crater. A crater caused by a meteor approximately one mile across that is believed to have impacted the Earth 14.5 million years ago. This impact resulted in minuscule diamonds embedded in the stone used to construct the buildings. My imagination would do well to come up with something so fascinating.
However, to take just a little fantasy away from this amazing town: the ring around the city is not the ancient crater. The impact was much, much larger. The truth is, Nördlingen is one of three cities in Germany to still have an intact city wall and that's the cause of the bold perimeter. That's still a fascinating explaination and I'm left dreaming of visiting this place some day.
Beer photographs by me. Pictures of Germany sources: 1 - 2 - 3
Previous Advent Calendar entries: Intro - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7
That looks fantastic! I'll have to write down all these names for next time I'm at the import shop. Imported beer costs an arm and a leg in Japan, but I treat myself once in a while.
I'd be curious to hear what you find for German beers at your local import shop, especially if you find any from this series. I am disconnected from the rest of the US in Alaska, but I havent found any of these at my local import beer stores. I do think there is maybe one of the breweries present with another beer, but that's all.
That is such a cool looking little town. It's amazing how many cool little towns there are that I wish I could explore or just walk through on my way to get a beer. Maybe not the Helles from your review (although I do like a good Helles).
Nördlingen is definitely one of my favorite locations in the series. Even better, a friend of mine has a vacation to Germany coming up and he'll be about an hour from there. It sounds like he'll be visiting Nördlingen now on his trip because of hearing about it in my advent calendar. I'm jealous and can't wait to see his photos. If only he was on Steemit to post them and earn some crypto... I know you're reading this!
You're right @negativer, there are good helles, and thankfully some better examples will be coming up.