Tag: holidays

Advent Beer #11: Grandl by Ankerbräu Nördlingen

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Eleven days in, I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I don’t really know much about beer, and that I most certainly judge books by their covers.  That said, I had optimistic hopes for tonight’s beer as I’ve been not having the greatest time with job these days and drinking on Fridays always seems like a good idea after a long week of work, and I was wondering if whomever put together this advent calendar had the wherewithal to put some quality beers on the Fridays of the calendar, because it’s not like they wouldn’t be able to look at a calendar to know when they are.

So when I pulled Grandl out of the fridge, I was pleased to see a fairly traditional, nondescript beer can design that reminded me of a throwback style like a Miller High Life can or like the Milwaukee Brewers typeface, which are kind of the same things considering Miller’s influence with the Brew Crew.

But anyway it’s almost like this can was a metaphor for the beer itself, because out of the can came a clean, golden lager with not a lot of aroma.  The first sips were positive, but not really blown away; everything about this beer seemed pretty no-nonsense, nothing special, but at the same time not at all bad, and very drinkable.

The fact that BeerAdvocate lists this as simply “lager” and not like “festlager” or “alleybier” or “kellerbrau” or some other weird classification I’d never heard of until embarking on this journey, brings everything back to earth for something simple, basic, yet perfectly adequate.

Sure, it’s not bursting with flavor like Turbo Prop (#6) or has the explosive characteristics of a good dunkel like Kirta (#5), but it’s still a classic, smooth beer that goes down smooth, doesn’t overstimulate my novice pallet, and is something I know I could drink 2-3 of without breaking a sweat.

Either way, I’m gassed.  I found myself already beginning to fall asleep at 8:45, while trying to watch Scrooge virtually with some friends, but such shouldn’t be a surprise considering I’m raising an infant that’s up by 6:30 every morning.  And I thought I was all ahead of the curve by knocking out all of my daily chores and running earlier in the day that I’d be able to have a ton of time to myself to wind down the evening, but now all I want to do is go to bed before 11 pm and actually feel like I can get some sleep, so this review is about as long as most of the other beer reviews but is in fact full of fluff and talking about how I’m wrapping this up but overall, Grandl was solid, refreshing, and it’s general position in the rankings don’t do it justice as much as it shows where it stands to other beers with stronger gimmicks and more memorability.

Current Rankings:

  1. First Coral (#2)
  2. Kirta (#5)
  3. Turbo Prop (#6)
  4. Perlenzauber (#9)
  5. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  6. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  7. Grandl (#11)
  8. Hell (#1)
  9. Tannen Hell (#8)
  10. Tradition (#10)
  11. Käuzle (#3)

 

Advent Beer #10: Tradition by Herrnbräu

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Ten days in, two weeks left until Christmas, and that many more beers to go.  So far, so good.  I’m at that point in my Christmas shopping where I’ve gotten almost my entire list taken care of, but now I’m where I feel like I haven’t gotten enough for some people, and am kind of scrambling on trying to think of more things to get without breaking my back or my wallet.

I also want to go out to some stores, but I hardly have time because of baby and pandemic, so I have to show some restraint.  Besides, if I go to some stores, they’re likely to be full of people who don’t seem to grasp that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, but then again I’m also wanting to go out and get some fairly frivolous things myself.

Speaking of pandemic, you’d think the world were completely normal, based on how many fucking people were outside my home today.  Surveyors from the county were in my neighborhood, my next door neighbor had landscapers tending to their neglected property for like two fucking hours, and then I had UPS, FedEx and the always last USPS coming and going all throughout the day, and whenever they’re near my house, my fucking dog loses her shit, and this especially sucks when my child is down for her second nap of the day.

Why the fuck aren’t people staying the fuck inside??

I digress, because at this point it’s pointless to even speculate, despite the fact that everyone already knows the answer to such redundant questions: because America sucks, and it makes me sad to acknowledge that, but it couldn’t possibly be any truer to state.

SO, I result in drinking in the evenings, not just because I have a goal in mind, working my way through 24 days of this advent calendar of beer, but because on days like today, it just seems appropriate to wind down the day with a nice cold one.

Unfortunately, Tradition by Herrnbräu, is about as forgettable as they come.  Classified as yet another new category, festbier, it makes me think it’s supposedly supposed to mean “festival beer” in which I guess it’s not an inaccurate description of Tradition, because it is the kind of light-bodied, sort of short on flavor swill that would be made in huge batches to be enjoyed at festivals, but when the day is over, really is kind of forgettable.

It tastes like a generic lager with a slightly metallic taste at the very end that I find a little off-putting, but because it’s so light-bodied and not that over-flavored, it’s easy to drink in heavy pulls, and finish fairly quickly and set myself up for a refill.  This is an easy bier to get buzzed on as a result, and I drank mine fairly quickly because I started later than I normally like, and that it was easy to drink.

Anyway, I do not rate it very high because it’s pretty forgettable in the grand spectrum of the beers that I’ve drank so far, and I’m hoping as the weekend approaches, there are some really good ones in the cache, and I would really tip my cap off to Costco or whomever put this together, if they actually paid attention to the calendar when establishing the lineup for this advent calendar.

Current Rankings:

  1. First Coral (#2)
  2. Kirta (#5)
  3. Turbo Prop (#6)
  4. Perlenzauber (#9)
  5. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  6. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  7. Hell (#1)
  8. Tannen Hell (#8)
  9. Tradition (#10)
  10. Käuzle (#3)

Advent Beer #9: Perlenzauber by Privatbrauerei

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I first pulled the can out of the fridge, I immediately noticed the design of what appeared to be a woman looking in through a porthole, presumably underwater. My first thought was mermaid, but the rest of the can subtly looks like a barrel, and now it’s kind of fucked up, because a woman is trapped inside of a barrel that just so also happens to have a porthole.

Either way, it’s an eye-catching design, and as someone who judges books by their covers, it’s admittedly one that would make stop and examine if I were to come across this kind of can or bottle in a store.

As for the beer itself, I had a moment of pause when I saw that it was classified as “German Pale Ale,” because like I’ve said numerous times, I don’t know that much about the world of beer outside of drinking what I like to drink, so I see German pale ale and am really hoping that it’s nothing like an India pale ale, because if there’s one thing for sure is that I’m not really a fan of IPAs at all because they’re basically piss, so I’m hoping that a GPA is nothing like them.

Fortunately, after pouring it into a glass and taking the first sip, it’s definitely nowhere near the flavor or profile of an IPA. Honestly, I would’ve imagined that this was a lager if I didn’t look it up on BeerAdvocate for the proper name and source, and reading some of the cursory comments, I’m clearly not the only one.

Not sure if this is common for other German pale ales, but I certainly like them way better than IPAs.

Overall, nine days in, woman in barrel bier fares well. It definitely lives on the upper half of my now-rankings, and it’s got a pretty non-descript but light taste and body that was easy to drink, and I could easily envision myself drinking a couple of these if I were in an evening of drinking.

I guess it also doesn’t hurt that I had a particularly shitty work day, having been in meetings for six of the eight hours in my work day, some of them a little more invasive than others. But really that’s where drinking really steps up into the routines of life.

Current Rankings:
1. First Coral (#2)
2. Kirta (#5)
3. Turbo Prop (#6)
4. Perlenzauber (#9)
5. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
6. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
7. Hell (#1)
8. Tannen Hell (#8)
9. Käuzle (#3)

Advent Beer #8: Tannen Hell by Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t start drinking until I was 24.  I was admittedly one of those snooty 21-year olds with a stick up my butt that felt that he didn’t really need to drink at all in order to have a good time in life.  Eventually there were some changes in my life, and my sister was one of the people who really told me that I needed to loosen up and simply figure out how to have fun.  And among the changes I tried to make with my life then was that I figured that I should remove the stick out of my butt about drinking and just give it a shot.

So for the next few years I was making up for a lot of lost time, and I was basically trying everything.  Pretty early on, I realized that hard shit wasn’t really for me, wine was only on special occasions, and that when the day was over, beer was probably my jam.  And one of the things I learned early on, was that Asian beers, were pretty tame in terms of ABV, flavor, and other criteria that are popularly utilized to measure a beer.

Well, Tannen Hell, in spite of being a German bier, is basically an Asian beer.  My eyebrow furrowed after I popped the can, gave it a sniff, and poured it into my glass, and it was as bright and clear as lemonade.  Immediately, I began to hypothesize that this was going to be a fairly weak flavor, and it was confirmed seconds later with the first sip.

Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t terrible.  According to the snobs at BeerAdvocate, it’s classified as a lager, but this is an instance where I’d wonder if there’s some sort of subclass that this could be categorized in instead, because I’ve had my share of lagers, and few of them have been as light-bodied and as tame tasting as this one was.

It almost had like a cherry, fruity note somewhere in the flavoring, but that was about as much flavor as this beer had.  As I said, it was kind of bland, very light, and in spite of the 4.9% ABV, this is one of those times where I call bullshit because it’s almost like the closest thing to a Miller Lite I feel like I’ve had from a brand outside of ‘Murica.

Don’t really have much else to say about this one, and the fact that I’m itching to wrap this up because I have some 90 Day Fiancé to catch up on says everything that really needs to be said about Tannen Hell.  It’s not the worst of the bunch, but barely.

Current Rankings:

  1. First Coral (#2)
  2. Kirta (#5)
  3. Turbo Prop (#6)
  4. Jubiläumsbier 333 (#7)
  5. Zwönitzer Steinbier (#4)
  6. Hell (#1)
  7. Tannen Hell (#8)
  8. Käuzle (#3)

Advent Beer #7: Jubiläumsbier 333 by Schloßbrauerei Rheder

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Full disclosure: I copied and pasted all that shit in the headline from Untappd.  Like hell was I going to bother to try and typeset all of those special characters.

While I was drinking this beer, one of my friends and I were texting about the state of the Washington Redskins Football Team and Pittsburgh Steelers game.  The Steelers were 11-0 undefeated going into this game while Football Team was a woeful 4-7 but still were still basically in playoff contention because they happened to be in the worst division in the history of the NFL apparently.

Naturally, this had every recipe of a classic trap game; the undefeated juggernaut, versus the team with literally no name who was slogging through the season, and the Steelers were undoubtedly thinking about next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills.

Of course, Football Team would upset the Steelers, and despite the fact that I really don’t give two shits about the NFL much less most other sports this year during a pandemic while I’m raising a baby, I can still take satisfaction at a historically overhyped franchise like the Steelers meeting their demise against a woeful franchise like Football Team, and this is where I hope Football Team wins the division with a 6-10 record, gets a home game against like the Wild Card Seahawks who have maybe 10 wins and then embarrasses them, as well as everyone else en route to a Super Bowl where a team called “Football Team” is Super Bowl champions.

Anyway, all the while my friend and I were bullshitting, I was enjoying today’s bier, which I have no earthly idea on how to pronounce nor do I really even feel like trying.  One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing every day is ritualizing the pour into the pint glass, and taking stock of what color comes out of each can.  333 is a nice red color, that didn’t have a tremendous amount of aroma to it, and I found it to be quite delightful to drink.

There’s a kind of a smoky flavor at the end, and overall it kind of reminds me of a Killian’s Irish Red, but that is a beer that I like, so that is meant to be a positive comparison.  As has been the case over the last few beers, it was kind of medium bodied, and I’m not sure if I’d have the desire to drink more than 2-3 of these if I were ever in a night of drinking, but it’s still a decent beer.

If I’m ranking these, this falls into #4 out of 7, which is dead middle of the pack.  If I’m a betting man, I have to wonder what my chances are that I’ll actually be able to accurately maintain a ranking order of my picks, unless I start tabulating them onto the tail ends of every single one of these posts?  I feel like I’m already starting to lose track, and am forced to go refer back to my older posts to refresh myself already.

Advent Beer #6: Turbo Prop by Propeller Bier

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few days, what I’ve been doing is that I pull the can from its respective day’s spot in the box, and without actually looking at the can, I place it into the fridge, so that it’s nice and cold by the time it’s time to drink it the next day.  I want the whole thing to be a fresh and new experience, encapsulated in a single evening, with no time to anticipate or know what’s coming.  I’m weird like that.

When I pulled what’s called Turbo Prop out of the fridge, and saw that it was a design with a lot of green, I didn’t need to read anything to know that this was going to be some sort of pilsner, and probably contain some bitterness.  I kind of grimaced because I typically tend to shy away from bitter beers, as I think IPAs especially are basically like piss in cans, but I know enough about pilsners to know that they too often times can carry some bitter notes.

Pouring it into a pint, I’m met with a hoppy aroma from the onset, and I’m kind of wincing at the thought of having to drink a bitter beer, especially when all the five before it were mostly lagers or keller or dunkel classifications.  But regardless, the journey must continue and I wasn’t about to be derailed by anything other than simply forgetting to do it.

Taking the first sip, I’m actually pleasantly surprised to find that it’s actually quite good.  Kind of sweet, not nearly as bitter as I thought it would be, and the hops not nearly as intense as I would’ve imagined a can with so much green to be.

And I say this entirely intentioned to be a compliment, but it reminds me a lot of Sam Adams’ Noble Pils, which is one of the few exceptions to hoppy bitter pilsners that I actually like.  I will disclaim that such should also be served from a tap, as the canned equivalents did not bring me the same enjoyment that my first exposure to it was, at an old college pub near my dad’s house.

But overall, Turbo Prop was pretty good and enjoyable, and wasn’t disappointing at all, contrary to the belief that it might be based on the can design alone.  Admittedly the artwork wouldn’t be nearly enough to catch my attention if I were to come across it in a store, but now knowing what it’s actually like, I might actually suggest this as a suitable substitution for a Noble Pils whenever my one friend who also was a huge fan of Noble Pils and I ever have a discussion about how we both miss Noble Pils so much.

A good enough beer to keep me on topic tonight, because I was also watching NXT War Games, and was also considering writing about how belching could be akin to martial arts.  But there are still 18 more days to go, so that latter topic might just come up yet.

Knee-jerk rating so far: #3 out of 6

Advent Beer #3: Käuzle by Kauzen-Bräu

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Man, that episode of AEW Dynamite sure was whack.  A 61-year old Sting showing back up, and then that turrible finish to the main event where it turns out that there’s some cross-promotion going on with Impact wrestling?  I thought AEW was serious about trying to compete, but by intertwining themselves with Impact, they’re a few weeks away from doing some bullshit cup tournaments with no meaning, and having battle royales where eliminations occur when a guy is thrown into the ring.

AEW doing business with AAA and the NWA is kind of cool.  The few guys they have that are allowed to do dates with NJPW make it seem like they’re crossing over.  But working with Impact, which is the hollowed out bones of what used to be TNA, feels like when Sears merged with K-Mart, and it was a pretender with a modicum of reputation, teaming up with a dying animal and in the end both start to sink as a result of the union.

Somewhere, I suspect that the impetus of this joint venture is to ultimately bring together some of the core members of Bullet Club, since Omega and the Bucks are AEW, but Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows are in Impact.

Either way, it’s going to be lame, and whatever equity that AEW might have built up over the last year might seem to be on its way out, and considering the entire promotion loves to use gambling lingo in their ppv names, they’re definitely on the path of cashing out, especially now that that the first year has passed, so the Bucks and Omega are now booking themselves as the promotion’s champions, and they’re getting into bed with a jobber fed like Impact.

Oh wait, this was a supposed to be a post about my German beer advent calendar, right?  Yeah, so today’s brew was Käuzle, a pilsner with a cute little owl on the can.  Because what I do for a living is visual, I most certainly judge books by their covers, and if I were at the store, I’d probably pick a beer like Käuzle, because I like minimalistic designs with animals on them, especially when I can’t make out the German text on it one iota.

However, pictures and can designs don’t always have much bearing on the contents of said cans, and Käuzle, wasn’t necessarily terrible, but of the three beers I’ve had over the three days, this was most definitely the weakest of them all.  Untappd classifies it as a pilsner, and it apparently only has a 3/5 rating, which I’d say is pretty accurate to how I felt about it, if not a little generous.  The flavor is weak, abruptly ends, and is pretty forgettable.  At 4.8% ABV, it’s a little on the weak side, and I liken this to like a German equivalent to PBR or some low-end beer that is mostly good for keeping your buzz going once some other beer has gotten the party started.

Anyway, there’s no way there were not going to be any stinkers in a case of 24 different beers.  And I’m not saying that this Käuzle is that big of a stinker, but it’s definitely the bottom of the rankings after just three days.