This is yet another entry I wrote notes for while in Germany that I am just now getting around to posting. Enjoy.
In the giftshop of the Chocolate Museum in Köln I picked up a bottle of Strubbes Chocolat, a beer brewed with cocoa. It’s made by Brouwerij Strubbe, who also produce Ichtegem’s Flemish beers and a few others.
The Chocolat pours a deep golden color bordering on amber, brilliantly clear. The white head is thick, creamy, and dense. The aroma is sweetly malty, with caramel and bread notes. The hints of cocoa and wheat have the sense of a breakfast cereal.
The flavor continues the cereal theme, lightly chocolatey and wheaty. It is a bit sweet with caramel and malt. The carbonation is a bit flat, making the sweetness more prominent and the body seem fuller than it would be otherwise. The Chocolat would be much better if it were livelier.
Strubbes Chocolat
3.3 (3-7-6-3-14)
The Session is a beer blog carnival. Many beer writers all around the Tubes come together the first Friday of every month to talk about a particular topic. August was hosted by The Beer Runner, Derrick Peterman, who implored us to “write about a special place in your life”. The prompt is located 
One of the best parts about the Delirium is their cellar. There are several vintages available of a number of beers. The menu is rarely current, though, so tip your bartender and they may feel like telling you about some secret bottle they have stashed away.
I didn’t start writing about the Delirium out of the blue: just days prior to The Session I had the opportunity to bring two of my good friends there. I was lucky enough to be able to share some of my favorite sours and other Belgians with them, as fresh as can be.
Felix Speciaal Oudenaards
On one side of the building, directly facing the old city wall, and beyond it the Rhein, there is a patio under the canopy of an old carousel and a fence made of barrel staves.
Oh, and their cat is ridiculously friendly.
The flavor of Loreley is barely dry, but still has a strong malt richness. The high quality malt used clearly shows through, so the beer tastes quite fresh. The palate is full and round without intruding. It is not bitter, but rather remarkably balanced.
which grows more prominent through the taste. The palate is full but still drinkable, but the 1689 would benefit from a bit more carbonation.
Verlies is the German word for “dungeon”. They properly serve this strong beer in a hefty stone mug.
Loreley
Altbier is the competitor of kölsch, traditionally brewed in Düsseldorf. Together with kölsch it is one of the only top-fermented beers in Germany (other than wheat beer). While a great kölsch is pale, clean, and fresh almost like water, the best alts have a deep amber color and a strong, flavorful malt presence. Altbier literally means “old beer”, recognizing the fact that prior to the invention of pilsner malt all beer was dark. Düsseldorf was proud of their ale brewing tradition and refused to switch to the pale lagers that the rest of the world is inordinately obsessed with. Köln I guess took the middle path?
There is a caramel malt aroma that gets somewhat confused in the fruit. Unfortunately there is a bit of a papery character that disrupts the otherwise interesting aroma.
The greasy cardboard flavor leaves quite a bit to be desired. Some earthy hops come through, and a bit of caramel and toast from the malt. The palate is full and sweet, but still refreshing. This one says it will be good till next May, so there’s no excuse for age.
A few folks from my program and I went on a brewery tour in Köln last weekend. To me ‘brewery tour’ implies a tour through a brewery, but instead it was a tour around Köln with stops at beer halls. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was a very good time anyway. The guide was named Frank Möhlenkamp and he was quite entertaining. He had plenty of anecdotes about the history of Köln and a unique manner. He even gave a decent (if somewhat simplified) description of the brewing process. Not as much information about the beer as I would have hoped, but an entertaining evening nonetheless.
He observed that one may elsewhere inside find a date of 1511, or if one were to dig a little deeper find the year 1912. I have noticed that this temporal confusion is a problem endemic with German breweries.
However, the statues here are important figures in the history of Köln. Perhaps the most interesting aspect is the figures underneath the statues, intended to represent what the person would see when they look in a mirror. The heroes of Köln would see angels and flowers and such, but the bottom row of statues holds the more infamous characters of Köln’s history, along with the Kölners’ impression of their true character.
The Gaffel Kölsch is a brilliant deep gold. There was some big-bubbled head but it went away quickly. It has some light and refreshing malt aroma.
Each of the Moritz Fiege beers has a pithy description beneath the name. The Moritz Fiege Alt says “the traditionally brewed altbier”. The alt pours with a thick, creamy beige head atop a beer that is either a dark honey color or a light caramel. The aroma is strong and also could be caramel, but there is a rich character of dried green herb and winter spice to it as well. There is the lightest hint of sulfur and a bit of alcohol noticeable.
This one reminds me of the monolith from 2001. There is a fair amount of coffee-tinted head,
which isn’t lasting, yet forms a lacing on the glass. There is hardly any aroma at all. The malt and yeast make some sort of chestnut character and the hops and perhaps the color produce the sensation of being in the woods.
Last but not least, the Moritz Fiege Pils, “the characterful pils”. A bright straw, brilliantly clear, with a lasting creamy white head. The nose is mostly spicy hops, a mixture of pine and exotic spices. There is some pale malt aroma but not much.
I was in Berlin this weekend for a day and a half. The only beer I had a chance to write notes about was the Berliner Kindl Jubiläums Pilsener, from the brewery now named 
Tonight I will taste three beers brewed in Köln (that’s Cologne to the uninitiated). Beer from Köln is called kölsch, and it is a strong, pale lager with a particular fresh taste. Köln and Düsseldorf are two cities on the river Rhine with a long history of competition, particularly on the beer front. This is my first in a series of posts that will attempt to answer the age-old question: which beer is better, kölsch or alt?
The flavor is immediately rich with an herbal hop flavor. Some bitterness is present but is overtaken by a cloying sweetness. There is some malt flavor that comes through as bread, but mostly just the corny sweetness. The flavor lingers far too long, and the carbonation is not nearly active enough.
The flavor is also cleaner: it is almost tasteless. Some pure pilsner malt comes out, and a hint of sweetness. Just a bit of herbal hops peek through. The body is certainly thick and full, but unlike the Früh, not at all cloying.
It has been quite a while since the last post. I have something of an excuse, though! I have been in Germany. Dortmund, to be exact, and I’ve been quite busy, apparently too busy to write.
but there is malt like bread and a bit of citrus. There is a hint of pine as well.
Dortmund Brewery Museum
Sunday, October 24th, 2010This is the last post I took notes for while in Germany, and it seems an appropriate retrospective. Look forward to my forthcoming first post back in the United States, a cross-section of the newest and weirdest stuff coming out of New Glarus.
It was entirely by accident that I ended up spending the summer in Dortmund, onetime brewery capital of the world. I wasn’t even planning on going abroad, until my German teacher told our class about a summer program through her alma mater, the Technische Universität Dortmund, and I cannot thank her enough for encouraging me to apply.
So perhaps it is appropriate that it was only my very last day in Germany that I finally got around to visiting the Dortmund Brewery Museum.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the international popularity of Dortmund’s stronger version of the originally-southern pale lager, combined with the relative accessibility of its port, caused it to grow into the biggest beer producing city in Germany. Beer and Dortmund were synonymous (and still are, literally, in some parts of the Netherlands). Dortmund had more breweries per capita than anywhere else in the world, an erstwhile Portland.
On an unassuming side street in the north side of Dortmund sits one of the biggest breweries in northeastern Germany, Dortmunder Actien-Brauerei. Walking by it you might not even notice, save the smell of barley in the air.
But there is one welcoming stucco building with large windows on the south end of the complex that was once called the Hansa Brewery, and later the Kronen Brewery. Here is the home of the Brauerei-Museum Dortmund.
The museum is located in a former machine house, so while there are no big tanks or kettles to see, there is a big steam engine, and they’ve moved in a period bottling line as well as one of the original Union delivery trucks.
There is a large collection of memorabilia of the various Dortmund breweries: mugs and glassware, beer mats, bottles, labels, signs, and advertisements. This last bit especially allows the visitor to immerse oneself in another era. There is a fair amount of equipment, and numerous placards that explain the process of the production of beer. Unfortunately the signs are only in German, so an English speaker might wish to arrange for a guide.
The Museum may very well be a bit slanted towards the brands currently owned by the museum’s owner. That point notwithstanding, it provides a valuable look at the history of the beverage that made the city great. It would be all too easy to lose the stories of the people and places that drove Dortmund’s breweries’ growth, and with it the growth of export beer, especially given today’s high-speed merger-happy international beer market. Fortunately the existence of the Dortmund Brewery Museum ensures that won’t happen anytime soon.
A delightful antique. Every day each brewery worker was given a token that this machine would redeem for a free shift drink.
The large, shallow vessel is called a kuhlschip, at one time used to cool hot wort to fermenting temperatures (and it is still used for lambic). The device in back is a convoluted-flow chiller. The hot wort runs back and forth through the tubes, and cold water cascades down the outside.
A photograph of open fermenters at the former Hansa Brewery, proof that even high lager brewers have humble origins.
There is no better brand.
Tags: beer history, Brauerei Museum Dortmund, brewing museum, Dortmund, Dortmund Brewery Museum
Posted in Aus Deutschland, Brewery Visit, Commentary | 5 Comments »