Sweet Sixteen Matches - Helles and Pils

We started this round on a cold night, with all the happy beers lined up outside waiting for the games. The best thing about winter - outside of skiing - is that your balcony is magically transformed into a giant drink refrigerator for at least 5 months per year. We took fuuuuull advantage of this during the beer tournament.

We decided to follow wine tasting procedure and move from lighter to stronger, so we began with two classic Bavarian helles, Löwenbräu Original and Tegernseer Hell.  You'll recall from the first round matches that Löwenbräu shocked us by winning a blind tasting against Munich favorite Augustiner. (Theories abound as to why:  the difference between keg and bottle?  The Augustiner beer gardens somehow bring additional magic to the maß?  Who knows.)  Tegernseer, however, predictably demolished the competition, though we did discover the surprisngly good cheap beer (39 cents per half liter!) Hubauer Urhell.

We had around 9 people voting most of the night. As expected, the Tegernseer was really much lighter and smoother than the Löwenbräu... but that ironically was it's downfall here.  We prefered the more complex Löwenbräu to the silky smooth Tegernseer.  Other were surprised to find that they preferred the Löwenbräu too -- again a prejudice shattered. The Tegernseer was crisp and refreshing, but perhaps a little too light for a winter evening.  However, it did reinforce the experience of seeing people bringing cases of Tegernseer to the Isar river, leaving it in the water to cool, and grilling wursts.  It's a great summer beer, but lost 6 to 3 with the temperature hovering around 0 degrees.

Next up were Hacker-Pschorr's Münchener Kellerbier (beer made the way they made it in 1490) and Andechs' wonderfully caramelly but light Bergbock Hell. 

As in the prior round, the Andechs' Bergbock Hell trounced the competition (basically unanimous).  At this point, it probably has the most votes and widest margin of victory of any beer in the tournament.  It just has a great mix of sweet maltiness, a balance of hoppy bitterness, and the extra alcohol just works.  Ironically, this surprised our Bavarian tasters too because they always knew they liked Andechs, but by default the regular Helles.  Many think they now prefer the Bergbock Hell!

So those two matches leave use with a Helles Regional Final between Löwenbräu Original and Andechs Bergbock Hell.

Moving down to the Pils/Export region, we start off with Paulaner Premium Pils vs Hasseröder Premium Pils. Neither prior round match was particularly close, with Paulaner plowing through the Beck's and Hasseröder clearly beating down the bitter beers with its malty take on the pilsner tradition.  We had been really surprised by the Paulaner Pils, enjoying its flavor that was like a Pils for Bavarian palates. (You could argue that it is halfway to being a Munich Helles because it is a little sweeter and less hoppy, but it does use "noble" hops like a pils should.)

When the Paulaner Pils then went against the Hasseröder, a similar thing happened as with Tegernseer.  Despite the advantage of being like a smooth helles, the Paulaner goes home while Hasseröder was voted through to the next round.  The tasters thought Hasseröder had a better overall blend with that extra hoppiness; in this case, the crowd wanted a little more bite to the beer. The voting was pretty close though (5 to 4).  On this evening, we're seeing some tasters consistently wanting a more "forward" beer that is on equal footing with any food on the table, and other tasters consistently looking for the biergarden/refreshing/ahhhh type beer.  This evening, the testers wanting complexity had the majority.

And finally, we had Krombacher Pils vs Augustiner Edelstoff Exportbier. Krombacher was fresh off a victory in the Power Pils Round, while Augustiner beat out Veltins and the other two Munich exportbiers to move on to this matchup.  Krombacher is a prototypical pils:  light golden color, crisp taste with noticable hoppiness.  The Augustiner Exportbier is more like a helles but with significantly more hoppiness than their regular Helles.  Think of it as coming to a similar place as the Paulaner Pils (sweeter/less hoppy than a pils, more hoppy than a helles) but from the other direction.  That was the difference:  the hops balanced with a more malty complexion gave the game to Augustiner Exportbier.  It was a solid victory, with 2/3 choosing the Augustiner.

This night leaves us with happy memories (and headaches the next morning), as well as two regional final matchups:

Helles Region - Andechs Bergbock Hell vs Löwenbräu Original
Pils/Export Region - Hasseröder Premium Pils vs Augustiner Edelstoff Export

March Madness

As the NCAA tournament has moved beyond its first rounds, so has the Schnitzelbahn German Beer Tournament.

After many tastings and experiments with food and beer, we find ourselves with 16 teams beers remaining (sorry, my mind is overcome with basketball...Go Heels!). We've had a lot of winners so far, and I guess Herr J and I have been the biggest winners of all, getting to try so many new beers and say hello again to our old favorites.

At this point, the bracket looks like this (click to enlarge):

In our four "regions"we have remaining beers from 10 breweries:
Hacker-Pschorr
2x Löwenbräu
2x Andechs
Tegernseer
Hasseröder
Krombacher
Augustiner
Hofbräu
2x Erdinger
and a record FOUR entries from Paulaner!!!

8 of the 10 are in or around Munich, though Tegernsee and Andechs are special places meriting their own mention!

This is where we bring our friends into the fun...Most of our first round matches pitted similar beer types against each other. In the later rounds, however, personal preference really becomes the deciding factor. So we thought we'd solicit the opinions of our trusted friends and get more votes...well, and any excuse to have a party....

We have some favorites, of course, but there's not a beer in the Sweet Sixteen that we wouldn't gladly order. And since the field is dominated by Bavarian beers, it would be pretty easy for us to order one fresh out of the tap!

The Good Side of German Customer Service

As previously mentioned, customer service in Germany sometimes can surprise you...on the postive side, a service person's incredible knowledge in his or her area of expertise is shocking. And you will often come across people in stores who take great pride in their department.

Herr J's neighborhood grocery store is a great example of this. The man who runs the wine section spent 7 years in New Zealand, and therefore is always on the lookout for good NZ wines to include in the store's selection. The wine section of the store is "his" section, and he takes great pride in it. He holds wine tastings in the store every few months and likes to interact with customers to find out what they enjoy and how he can improve the selection.

One of the butchers there has a similar approach. In addition to the normal meat selection, they offer a variety of pre-marinated or pre-assembled meat dishes (think kebabs, roulade, etc.). We've found the marinades to be exceptionally good, and he explained to Herr J that he enjoys experimenting and making new creations to sell to customers.

His thinly sliced bacon-wrapped pork spirals on a stick were pretty amazing, so when we saw this unusual looking thing in the meat counter, we had to try it:

It looked like raw hamburger braided with strips of puff pastry, so I expected it would taste similar to the beer and beef pies I usually have on hand in the fridge...just in a different shape.

We still don't know what these are called, but we're going to experiment with making them. The taste was wonderful - the ground beef (a very lean beef, as is typical here) was mixed with onion, garlic, and spices, sandwiched between strips of puff pastry, then braided. You cook around 150°C for 15-25 minutes, and then we turned it up a little at the end.

The results were so great! We're looking forward to seeing what else the butcher creates.  

Observations from the US

Usually my trips to the US are vacation trips, and we all know vacation has little relation to reality. But this is the first time in a while I've been to the US and spent some "normal" time there. You know....getting up in the morning and going to work everyday, having a routine, etc...

For the record, it's been WONDERFUL! Except that I get really confused sometimes - at my level of German speaking, I'm used to planning in my what I'm going to say before any interaction with others. I find myself doing this, and then realizing how useless my German sentence will be to anyone here

A few random observations on life compared to Germany:

• The food portions are huge, but the beers are small
• Everyone walks to and from the train station, but few walk to lunch (maybe in summer??)
• Due to construction this morning the walk/don't walk lights were out of service for most of the walk.  I think a lot of city-dwelling Germans would have been lost when the lights stayed red forever. I wonder what's the longest someone would wait before giving up and jaywalking?
• Interestingly, everything at Starbucks has a calorie count on all its baked goods now!

The Last of the First Round Matches

And here we are, finally, after many nights of tasting beers. We'll finish up with a last round of four Pilsners.

First up, we have Hasseröder Premium Pils and Bitburger Premium Pils. Hasseröder has been brewing beer since 1872, but was a relatively small and not widely-known brewery until the 1990 German reunification. It had been a highly successful regional beer, but was not often available outside of the Magdeburg district (now part of Sachsen-Anhalt) of the DDR. However, it's been one of the big success stories after reunification - becoming one of the top three consumed pils nationwide, and one of the favorite beers in the former DDR states.  They invested heavily in technological improvements and marketing, ultimately became part of InBev and was chosen as the brand used for beer ads during the German World Cup matches in South Africa. Though Budweiser through InBev owns the rights to the beer advertising in the World Cup, the Budvar-Budweiser dispute prohibited them from using the Budweiser name. Instead, they chose Hasseröder, which generally focuses its marketing efforts on sporting teams and events.

Bitburger is one we see often on commercials, especially during televised sports. Everyone knows their slogan "Bitte ein Bit" ("Ask for a Bit" or "A Bit, Please")...their commercials are everywhere! Bitburg is located in the Eifel mountain area of Rhineland-Palatinate, near the Luxembourg border. Though pretty much every Geman brewery uses only the best ingredients, Bitbuger claims that its water source (drawn from the Bitburg Triassic Trough) gives it a superior, crisp Pilsner taste. Whether or not the water filtered through million-year old shell and sandstone makes a better beer or not, Bitburger is doing something right and is one of the top 3 selling beers across Germany.

In our contest, we preferred the Hasseröder, however. The Bit lived up to its word association and was a bit bitter compared to the crisp Hasseröder.  And in addition to a preferable taste, the Hasseröder had a really pleasing, crisp fizziness to it.  

Then we have Wernesgrüner's "Legendary Pils" vs König Pilsener, Germany's "King of Beer." Wernesgrüner has been brewing beer since 1436, which they make sure to point out was a good 50 years "before Columbus discovered America."  It's available these days in the US and Canada, and you'll definitely find it in any US Aldi that sells beer. (American friends, if you have an Aldi in your town, give it a visit!) Wernesgrüner has a long tradition of export to North America, as it was served on Hapag-Lloyd's famous Hamburg-New York cruise line in the early 1900s and was also often taken to other countries as a gift by German travellers. Today, it's owned by the Bitburger Group, and is pitched as a brewery combining hundreds of years of experience with modern technology to produce a Legendary beer.

The König Pilsener today is also part of the Bitburger Group. In addition to the usual sports marketing, they use German celebrities Til Schweiger and Boris Becker (seriously, he and his ladies are always in the tabloids and social pages!!) in promotions. König Pilsener has been around since 1825, when Herr König began brewing his beer. The brewery focuses on Pils today, though also produces an Altbier and several other beer drinks (radler, malz, alcohol-free, etc). They've been making Pils since before it was popular, so why change? This one comes from Duisburg, an inland port and major steel producing area near Düsseldorf. 

Both of these beers were considerably lighter tasting than the other two, but we picked the Wernesgrüner to be the Bitburger Group's representative in the next round.  

 

Though it's one of the biggest brewery groups in Germany, Bitburger's three pils could not stand up to InBev's Hasseröder.  Most likely it's our Bavarian-trained palates...we don't favor the super hoppy beers. It was, of course, a Pils, but we really enjoyed that they added some maltiness to balance out the hops. A really great pilsner beer.

 

How Quickly Things Change...

Well, when things change, they change quickly... I'd thought I'd landed a job starting in May or June and had finally gotten into the immigrant language course after many months of dealing with the Arbeitsamt. Then I got a call late Saturday night when Herr J and were in Vienna. A "well, things have changed, can you start next week?" call that came as quite a surprise.  And while standing outside an après ski bar in Vienna, I accepted a job.

March very quickly became "travel month," as we used some train tickets I'd purchased last year. We made our tours of Vienna, Stuttgart, and Fulda-Eisenach-Point Alpha. Here I am in New York for a couple of weeks of training and leave Schnitzelbahn in Herr J's very capable hands.

Best of all, I'm finally wearing real shoes - not boots, which is all I've worn for months now! Hello Spring, I'm so glad to see you again!

Time for Easter Eggs

It's possible that Germany outdoes the US in the holiday candy area - Easter candy seems to come out on February 15th. Though I can't really complain...the holiday chocolate here is top quality!

Similar to the Christmas ones, Kinder has giant Kinder Surprise Eggs for Easter.

Inside the milky, chocolatey shell, we find a cute little chick. He's supposed to hold your pen, but he also will hug the neck of a wine bottle...we found a similar stuffed penguin in the Christmas giant eggs.