The Session - The Best Thing since 2018?

Oo-er missus, look at that..."The Session" logo makes a return to the top of a post on Fuggled, and to be honest it makes my heart glad to see the project being revived. The host for this relaunch is Alan McLeod over at A Good Beer Blog, and as with any relaunch the scope is naturally neat and tidy, with a pretty little bow on it...oh wait, no it's not, it's:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018?"

There are so many avenues this question could be taken, he says channeling his inner James Burke from the Connections series of many moons ago. 

I could look at the big picture, though to be honest that picture is something of a grim one at the moment, with regular closings and well established breweries going to the wall in the face of economic headwinds. With such a curate's egg at the macro scale, perhaps the continued existence of Sierra Nevada, New Belgium, Allagash, and the other national scale craft breweries is the best thing.

However, I don't want to think about the macro, I want to ground my response in my day to day, so I am going to augment the question a little and make it:

"What is the best thing to happen to good beer for me since 2018?"

With that framing, the question becomes infinitely easier to consider and to answer, especially when I take a look at my annual review of beer in 2018 and compare it to 2019.

A very quick glance and the runners and riders for the the various categories I review each year show that of the 25 beers I name-checked only 9 were lagers, making up 36%. One year later though and that number jumps to 34 from 57 beers across the review posts, which is 59.6%. Now, admittedly in 2019 I went to Czechia and Germany, which could skew the numbers, so let's look at 2020 when nobody really went anywhere...Well, that was 37 lagers from a possible 51, or 72.5%. I would like to think you are getting the point by now.

When Mrs V and I first moved to Virginia back in 2009, finding good Central European lagers was difficult. There was no Port City Downright Pilsner, there was nobody making authentic Czech style dark lagers, as far as I am aware there was a single brewery that even considered decoction mashing...shout out to the still awesome Jason at Devils Backbone! Even a few years later, when we bought our house in 2012, readily available excellent lager was difficult, at a meetup in our house with Czech and Slovak friends, someone bought a six pack of Lagunitas' allegedly Czech pilsner to which an older gentleman who had fled Czechoslovakia (back when it still existed!) in 1969 commented, "this is simply not Czech". Well made beer it might well be, taste like a Czech pilsner it did not - haven't had it in many years so no idea what it is like these days.

Spring forward though to today, and just in the Charlottesville area I have several reliable breweries making excellent lagers, in particular I will highlight Selvedge, whose range of decocted and extensively lagered bottom fermented beers formed the vast majority of my drinking last year. While I make no secret of my preference for lagers made with traditional techniques, I am not daft enough to cut my nose off to spite my face. As such, breweries like Patch Brewing (very much my local), Decipher, SuperFly, and Rockfish all make cracking pale lagers that I am happy to drink regularly.

This then is the best thing to happen to good beer since 2018, good lager has become a staple of the brewing scene, and long may it continue. And on that note, I am excited for my first beer of 2025 tomorrow...it will be a lager, that is for sure, something from Bierkeller in Columbia SC as we are headed down that way for a family get together. Even getting good beer at all in Columbia was a challenge when we moved over here, that they have a brewery smashing great lagers borders on the miraculous.

Dej Bůh Štěstí!

2025 Homebrew Project

I mentioned in a recent post that I decided to make 2024 the year when I finally started making homebrew lagers properly. As such, I bought a chest freezer to be my fermentation and lagering chamber, I got to grips with rudimentary decoction mashing, and I learnt an awful lot about the importance of getting your beer off the trub if you don't want your lager to have a soapy character. As a result of all this, some of the best beers I have ever made were lagers I brewed last year, brews that looked like this:

Overall, last year I brewed 2 batches each of pale kellerbier and Vienna lager, and single batch each of a German pilsner and a 14° Světlý Speciál. Mostly I used a single decoction approach, where the decoction raises the temperature from a saccharification rest to mash out, and they were my favourite brewdays.

Now that lager brewing is a regular part of my homebrew world, I have decided that I want to make my main brewing project for this year to be starting to develop a house lager that will be brewed to the same recipe multiple times a year. I already have a house best bitter that I brew several times each year with a nailed down recipe, and now I want to do the same with a lager.

Where to start though. Being a "house" lager, it could be something a little stronger than I normally drink in the pub - after all, I will be drinking it at home, and if I ever get it in my head to drive home from home, well I need help then. At the same time, in 2023 I wrote a post about how the notion of a "house" beverage being the highest expression of those making it, so I wanted to make my perfect lager.

It would have been all too easy for me to just say that my perfect beer is a Czech style 10° pale lager, but that wouldn't be a fully honest reflection of my tastes. Yes I love Saaz, but I love Tettnang, Hallertauer Mittelfrüh, and Perle just as much. I also love styles like Vienna lager, Helles, and Dunkel, oh and I have made a personal commitment to use my local maltster's, Murphy & Rude, products as much as possible.

So when it come to recipe development, I worked backwards from a starting gravity of 11° and knowing I wanted between 25 and 30 IBUs to the iteration of the beer I brewed on Sunday:

• 88% Virginia Pils
• 12% Vienna
• 20.2 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 60 minutes
• 7.5 IBUs of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 15 minutes
• 0.7 IBU of Hallertauer Mittelfrüh at 1 minute
• Saflager W-34/70

Beyond the 11° starting gravity, which I hit bang on, this should give me a beer which is 4.2% abv with a colour of 3.7 SRM, putting it in the straw end of the spectrum, though I am not sure how the brewing software accounts for the Maillard reactions of a decoction mash.

My plan is to brew variants of this beer on the first weekend of each quarter this year, and for 2025 at least to swap out the yeast strain for each brew before tinkering with grain and hops next year in order to really nail down my recipe. Hopefully I will be able to source some TUM-35 for one of those brewdays, but I am planning to at least try S-189 in one of the batches, and maybe the fabled Pilsner Urquell H strain as well.

Each batch will be lagered for 4 weeks before being slowly carbed for a couple of weeks ahead of tapping, which may mean I need another CO2 bottle and regulator to do that in the chest freezer.

My gut feeling is that this batch will be good, but my goal is to have a house lager that I can brew as consistently as I do with my house best bitter.

Decocting an Idea

At the beginning of this year, I made myself a couple of promises when is comes to my homebrew. Firstly I committing to brewing with Murphy & Rude malts as much as possible, partly because I want to support a local business, but also partly because I think fresher malt leads to better beer, and you can't get fresher than locally grown and malted grains. It also helps that Jeff and co now sell direct to homebrewers, so I can support Jeff's business directly, a fact that I very much like. My second promise to myself was that this would be the year when I finally start brewing lagers regularly, which meant buying a small chest freezer to be my fermentation and lagering chamber, and a desire to get to grips with the ins and outs of decoction mashing.

I know there are some who hold to the idea that decoction mashing is an un-necessary relic from the past, when malting technology wasn't at the level it is today, specifically when it comes to the levels of modification in the malt itself. The argument basically goes that since modern malts are more highly modified that in the distant past, then decoction mashing has become redundant as a way to maximise extract from the grains. I don't want to get into the weeds of Kolbach, Lintner, FAN, and all the other elements of malt - I am not being facetious there, malt is endlessly fascinating, from barley varieties to the levers a maltster has at hand to great unique products.

My biggest issue with the "decoction is not necessary" argument is that it makes a tacit assumption that the entire point of the mash is to extract as much fermentable sugar as possible from the grain and that it you really want some decoction character then just chuck in some Melanoidin malt - because most people won't tell the difference anyway. performing a decoction though is about more than just increasing the temperature in the mash from one rest to the next. If that were the sole aim of decoction, then just do a step mash. There is, however, magic in the boiling of the decoction...

The picture here is from my first stab at decoction mashing, the left hand side having just taken a third of the mash from the mash tun, and the right hand side, the same decoction after 30 minutes boiling. The boiling process creates a load of Maillard reactions, caramelising the sugars in the grain, adding depth of malt character. There is more to the mash than just getting your hands on sugars to pass on to the yeast for fermentation. The character might be elusive, it might be hard to nail down, and really define, but that doesn't mean negate its impact and value.

How then to do decoction mashing when your homebrew setup is basically brew in a bag? It helps to remember that the bag side of things, at least for me, is a cheaper and easier to use false bottom in a fairly traditional 5 gallon water cooler mash tun. I will admit that I was intimidated by the idea of trying decoction mashing, and my first couple of attempts were all over the place with learning about the properties of thermal mass and temperature loss in my mash tun, oh and it definitely helps to remember that the various rest temperatures are ranges rather than absolutes. 

My first time trying a decoction mash was a good lesson, I mashed in to give my grain a protein rest at 125°/51.6° and naively thought that my first decoction would spike the temperature to a saccharification rest of about 150°/65.5°. I was crestfallen when it "only" hit 144°/62.2°. Having drained the first runnings of my mash, I added my first load of sparge water, which only raised the temperature to 149°/65°, and even my second sparge only ever got the mash to 161°/71.6°.

As I have continued to learn, both through reading and by brewing, I have come to a couple of processes that seem to work for me, depending largely on the amount of time I have to commit to my brew day. If time is short, then I will do a single decoction, if plentiful then a double. My single decoction looks basically like this:

• Mash in for a saccharification rest at about 150°/65.5°
• Pull a third of thick mash after 30 minutes, and boil that for 30 minutes
• Returning boiling decoction hits mash out temperature of 160°/71.1°
• Let full mash sit for 30 minutes before draining and batch sparging, twice

A double decoction goes more like this:

• Mash in for beta-amylase saccharification rest at about 143°/61.6°
• Pull a third of thick mash after 30 minutes, and boil that for 30 minutes
• Return decoction to hit alpha amylase saccharification rest of 150°/65.5°, rest for 30 minutes
• Pull a third of thick mash, boil that for 30 minutes
• Return decoction to hit mash out at 160°/71.1°
• Let full mash rest for 30 minutes before draining and batch sparging, twice

So a 90 minute mash versus 150 minutes.

This may sound odd to some, but my lager brew days have by far been my favourites this year, and doing the decoction process makes for a more engaging day than the standard single infusion for my top fermented beers. It does help that when it is time to tap my lagers they look like these...

Get Your Coat Love

I have said it plenty of times on here as well as my various socials, I am an abysmal beer tourist. You see, I have this tendency to find a place that I like, that does the kind of beer I like, and I am then a happy camper and a loyal customer. Nearly two years ago I got my act together to visit a few local Charlottesville area breweries that I had heard glowing reviews of, including Selvedge Brewing in their old Woolen Mills location.

The driving force behind that first visit was that they had recently hired a new brewer, who had previously worked at Champion Brewing (remember them?) and was a fellow fan of central European lagers. Naturally then, Josh and I talked at length that visit about decoction mashing, extended lagering, and the joys of doing things the old school way. Oh, and the beer was good too. That first beer was their Oktoberfest style beer, Tracht, and it became a regular tipple that autumn, as did the first iteration of their Munich Dunkel, Tweed.

About a year ago, I think, Josh mentioned to me that Selvedge would be moving to the other side of Charlottesville, to a venue in Ivy, and that they would be shut over a chunk of the winter and early spring. When they opened the new spot a couple of months ago, I knew I would be getting over there on opening weekend, that had after all put an ordinary bitter on their new beer engine - yes you read that right, a central Virginia brewery with a functioning, and being used, beer engine!! Speaking of dispense methods, the majority of the taps are standard flow control faucets, while they also have a pair of Lukr taps.

Since they re-opened, Selvedge has become a regular haunt of mine, especially as Josh is now able to do decoction mashing on his central European lagers, the first being Loden, his recent Vienna Lager...

Just look at the glorious pint, topped with a veritable fountain of foam! Oh and willibechers are my favourite glass by a country mile. Not only did it 100% look the part of a classic 100% Vienna malt lager, it tasted on the money as well, redolent with toasted malt and a lovely spicy Saaz finish that made it simply moreish, and more and more and more. Simply put, it was delicious, and my go to pint for as long as it was available.

From time to time though I would change things up a little, with their Italian pilsner above, Poplin, or sometimes more of the dunkel, or maybe even the remnants of the ordinary bitter, Houndstooth, served through the Lukr tap - serving top fermented beers through a Lukr tap is becoming something of a thing in Central Virginia, with Decipher Brewing also pouring their 80/- through it now as well.

It was then, with no little excitement that last Friday came around. A few weeks back Josh did a double decoction with Moravian malt, chucked some Bohemian hops into the boil, and even got hands on the lauded H strain of yeast from Pilsner Urquell to make Coat Czech, his version of a 12° světlý ležák (pale lager to you). Josh was recently in Czechia, visiting many of the best pubs and breweries in both Prague and Plzeň - I may have given him several pointers - and this beer was the outcome of drinking in the home of great pale lagers.

Straight from the Lukr tap, in the hladinka style pour - while I have your attention, please, please, please can we stop bastardising the Czech language by asking for multiple hladinkas? Hladinka is singular, hladinky is plural for between 2 and 4, and if I remember my grammar correctly, more than 5 would be hladinek. Facts matter people.

Anyway, what a storming, storming 12° Coat Czech is. 4.8%, 40 IBUs, this is the most on the money Czech style pale lager I have had since getting back from my last trip to Prague. All of that Saaziness is there, lemongrass, a spiciness that initially had me thinking cinnamon, but also perhaps a kind of coriander thing, but maybe that is the lemoniness messing with my head. Oh and it's bitter, proper bitter, like proper beer should be, bracing without being overpowering, I could happily drink this beer all day, every day, and that would stand if I were in Czechia with all the options available there. Yes, it is that good.

I think I was on my third, and chatting to Josh at the bar, when I commented that it reminded me most of the gorgeous 12° at Únětický Pivovar, to which Josh responded with "that's because that was the inspiration". Inspired, for sure.

As long as it is on tap, I know exactly what I will be drinking for the next few weekends, and if it is still on tap when it is time to head for the annual holiday in Florida, then I might just load on crowlers too.

Cohesion Brewing...dokonalost

I first heard about Cohesion Brewing through an Instagram post, which showed an attempted pronunciation guide for several Czech beer words which I described at the time as "iffy". One of the founders of the brewery, Eric Larkin, reached out to me to see if I could give some pointers, which I was more than happy to do. My conversation with Eric so impressed me that I knew if I ever got to Denver then Cohesion would be an absolute must visit brewery. I absolutely visited last night, though unfortunately Eric was unable to be there, hopefully next time.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am over in Denver for work and yesterday several of my colleagues, including Jerry Fagerberg, arrived in town for our company retreat in the next few days. We bundled into an Uber and made our way to the brewery, which is in an industrial area, past many over workshops and businesses, that actually reminded of getting to Caboose Brewing in Vienna on a previous company night out.

Walking through the door my heart leapt for joy at the site of horizontal lagering tanks, and a chalkboard list of beers where everything included the °P, mostly 10 and 12, as well the Czech style designation, including diacritics! We weren't expecting to see the name of one of Jerry's local breweries from Minnesota though, Utepils have done a collaboration 10° pale lager with Cohesion, of which more later.

I actually wish I had taken a picture of the bar itself, as it was a delightful setup, with a pale green tile bar back, a pair of beer towers which housed the 6 Lukr taps, gleaming brass, an unexpected British beer engine, and all manner of Czech paraphernalia - nice to see you again Private Švejk. We started with the Cohesion 10° pale lager.

Look at that lovely cap of frothy wet foam...and what a gorgeous beer this is, as good a desítka as I have had in many a moon. Had I been served this in a pub in Prague, I would be a very happy camper. Much in the same spirit as Bierstadt, tradition is an honored thing at Cohesion, they decoction mash for example, which is always a good sign to me with lager breweries - yes, you can make good lagers with infusion mashing, but decoction just adds things to the beer that no amount of carapils can. Four mouthfuls and I was ready for a second beer...so I popped things up a degree or 2 and went for the Ovce 12°.

Again a wonderful beer, I was back to not bothering with notes, I was just enjoying really good examples of some of my favourite types of beer. Absolutely dripping with Saaz, this is a beer that would delight any fan of noble hops, I was delighted. Eventually we moved on to the Utepils collaboration, again a 10° beer, a bit paler than Cohesion's own desítka, and noticeably bitter, with a long lingering dry finish, another absolute banger of a beer.

By this point I had noticed a corner of the taproom that was set up in such a way that it reminded me of many a Czech boozer I have frequented, places like u Slovanské lipy or Hostomická nelévárna...maybe it was the wooden paneled wainscoting, sure still a bit clean in its newness, but I insisted our group abandon our table so I could create some hospoda nostalgia for myself.

By this point I had settled on another collaboration beer as my go to, Herald 12° brewed in conjunction with Brewery Novalis in New York and using Saaz hops grown in New York state as well as Premiant hops. Another delightful brew that would more than pass muster in Czechia. With closing time approaching and swag having been bought, new brewery hats for the twins, the barman brought us over taster glasses poured in the mlíko manner, and it was actually the first time I had ever tried beer in this way - yeah I know, boring me for sticking to a regular pour. I don't recall which beer he brought over, but that foam was sweet and malty, and delicious. I am not sure I will ever become a devotee of mlíko but it was fun to try it.

I am sure plenty of others have waxed lyrical about Cohesion, and so I can only add to that chorus, what a fantastic brewery and taproom it is. Every beer we had was on point, the venue itself was a delight, and that little hospoda corner just capped the night to perfection. I also loved the fact that not a single beer was over 4.8%, and in the case of the 10° lagers, Cohesion's own was 3.9% and the Utepils collab 4.1%.

When it comes to Czech beer, it is easy to get snared into 14° and high dark lagers, but the 10° has been the go to beer for generations, it is the beer you drink in the hospoda with your mates, you maybe have 5 or 6 in a night and get up for work the next day none the worse for it, Czech beer culture is ultimately a drinking culture, and Cohesion seem to get that.

What a fantastic place and if you are ever in Denver and only want to visit one brewery, make sure it is Cohesion.

The Full Schilling - Part 1

Let's go for a drive...

It's raining in Jamestown, Rhode Island, where the VelkyAl family was staying with my best mate Dave and his brood. It was a Wednesday morning, and backing out of their drive way, I was excited at the thought of the 240 mile drive north ahead. According to my weather app on my phone, our destination was going to be warm and sunny. Our destination, mostly up I-93 north, going through Boston  to New Hampshire, through the simply majestic White Mountains, including past a still frozen lake, was the little town of Littleton.

Apparently a little over 6000 souls call Littleton, New Hampshire, home and they live in possibly one of the most scenic places I have visited in the US so far. Pulling into the town, crossing the Ammonoosuc River, eventually parking up next to the river, we had just a few hundred feet, and a kids bashing of public gongs session for the boys, to our destination, the Schilling Beer Company.

If you follow any of my social media then you will know that I am a dedicated fan of Schilling Beer Co. We don't get many of their beers down here in central Virginia, but whenever one of them shows up on tap at either Beer Run or Kardinal Hall then I know what I will be drinking when I am there. My first ever Schilling beer was indeed the Alexandr, on tap at Kardinal Hall, back in September 2020, and with a pleasing coincidence it was with Dave back when he and his family lived in this neck of the woods. Again if you are a follower of Fuggled/VelkyAl world, then you will also know that I am an abysmal "beer tourist". I don't plan holidays around breweries I would be interested in visiting, let's be honest here, once you have seen a couple of brewing setups there really isn't much to see that would make a difference. Being a 4 hour drive from Schilling though simply demanded a day trip, yes that's right, we drove 4 hours to Littleton, stayed for a few hours, and then drove back to Rhode Island. Admittedly we didn't spend all those hours safely ensconced in the beery bosom of Schilling, we also discovered that Littleton is a delightful town that is pretty much perfect for the kind of folks that constitute the VelkyAl family, did I mention the gorgeous river yet, on go on then, have another picture of it.

Schilling itself consists of both a brewpub and a taproom in separate buildings, it being lunchtime and with 3 toddlers of 4 years old in tow, we parked on the screened in deck of the brewpub and ordered beer and pizza. Choosing the pizzas was simplicity in itself, my boys can be picky eaters, so Margherita minus tomato sauce was in order. Choosing my first beer was torture, just look at this menu:

A brace of Czech style pilsners that would more than stand up in Czechia, a keller pils, a kellerbier, a Helles, a schwarzbier, an Altbier, a tmavé, a polotmavé, a landbier....how does a lagerboy make a decision when finally presented with a beer menu that doesn't make him groan? Obviously you get the Alexandr, drink it in four mouthfuls and forget to take a picture, but make sure you follow it up with a Palmovka 12° that you do remember to take a picture.

Just look at that thing of beauty, that walloping great cap of foam that would not look out of place in any of my old haunts in Prague, that near total lack of fizz - there is a difference between condition and fizziness, and by god every beer I had hit the nail squarely on the head. Being with family and friends, I didn't bother with many more photos, but I tried every pale lager they had on tap, as well as the Rennsteig schwarzbier and Kaiserpfalz altbier. Each beer was excellent, not just good, not even plain old very good, but excellent, and in the Seidla kellerbier, downright fucking fantastic. Fed and watered we wandered off on to Main Street to do some shopping, knowing that the tap room was still to come, I had a date with a beer that I knew was there...

As well as being an abysmal beer tourist I am not much of one for traipsing around shops, but I had the happy glow of a satisfied lager drinker on, and Littleton's book shop that doubles as a toy shop was a veritable Aladdin's cave of delights. Better yet, at least for this greedy guts, was the White Mountains Canning Company, that stocks all manner of locally made jams jellies, pickles, and perhaps the best, bar none, American cheddar cheese I have ever had, Harman's Really Aged Cheddar. Our good lady wives had another shop they wanted to get to, so Dave and I corralled our boys and headed to the Schilling taproom, across the way from the brewpub, straight into the embrace of an osmička...

Going by the name Malý 8°, what you have here is a 3.1% abv, double decocted (if I remember rightly), Czech style pale lager that has more flavour, more presence, and exhibits a far higher level of technical brewing skill than basically any other lager being brewed in the US today. Bold claims I know, but if ever there was a gravity that shows the difference decoction makes it is 8°. There are some out there that claim decoction is not necessary because malts are more modified these days, well sorry, they are simply wrong. A decoction mash is not just about getting the right amount of sugar out of the grain, decoction adds flavour, mouthfeel, and character that a simple infusion mash will never give you. Think of it this way, at least for pale lagers, decoction is a 3D beer to infusion's 2D, it adds depth. Malý 8° might be small, but goodness me it is a mighty, mighty fine beer. So I bought a case of cans to bring  home to Virginia with me, and a selection of other beers to make up another case.

Is it evident yet that I love Schilling Beer Company? More than that, I want to go back to Littleton and spend more time there, I want to spend an evening drinking great beer overlooking that covered bridge over the river, and bimble back to a tent or hotel with a happily distended belly full of great lager. I am sure that Littleton will be visited again in the future, and hopefully not too far into that future.

After the Fest

In 2018 I had this notion to try all the Virginian Oktoberfest lagers I could lay my hands on at the time, a grand total of 6 beers, 4 of which have featured in every iteration of the project. In 2019 there were 18, 2020 had 24, and this year, I may have mentioned already, a staggering 46 beers.

I have written posts about Minnesotan, Virginian, and German representatives, but to break it down a bit further I had:

• 13 from Germany
• 11 from Virginia
• 7 from Minnesota
• 3 each from New York and Pennsylvania
• 2 from North Carolina
• 1 each from Texas, Vermont, Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, and California (or maybe a third from North Carolina depending on how you list Sierra Nevada).

From the beers that I haven't already posted about there were a few standouts, and if you've been following Fuggled for much more than a nanosecond they are names you will recognise.

August 1st is one of the most anticipated dates in my beer calendar, as it is on this most august of days that Sierra Nevada release their annual Oktoberfest. I guess the pandemic has put the annual collaboration on hiatus for the time being as both last year and this have been just SN beers, and both have been absolute delights. This year's version was marketed as an "amber märzen" and it hit all the right notes. It did however break with Fuggled tradition by not being a beer I drank a 12 pack of each weekend, unlike in years passim.

For the first time ever I have managed to get my hands of all of Olde Mecklenburg's seasonal beers, and I was really keen to include Mecktoberfest in the tasting to see how it stacked up. The answer that question really shouldn't be a massive surprise, it stacks up very well. A delicate balance of malt and hop, with the clean, crisp lager fermentation finish you expect from such masters of the bottom fermented arts. I also learnt this week that they also do CO2 capture at the brewery, which just makes me love them even more.

It is an incontrovertible truth that the brewery whose products most regularly show up in my fridge is Vermont's Von Trapp. In common with my favourite breweries they are masters of lager, and their commitment to quality, authenticity, and just making great beer shone through in their Oktoberfest this year. Von Trapp's Oktoberfest has probably been my single most regularly drunk märzen this year, again getting a lovely richness to dance gracefully with slightly spicy hops, and a moreishness that could seriously jeopardise plans to try other beers in a session.

With those special honorable mentions out of the way, here is the final ranking of all 46 Oktoberfest beers I have tried this year. Where beers have the same overall score, I have made no attempt to disambiguate them.

1. Ayinger Oktober Fest-Märzen - 36/40
2. Beltway Fest - 34/40
3. Port City Oktoberfest - 33/40
3. Sierra Nevada Oktoberfest - 33/40
4. Rothaus Eiszäpfle - 32/40
4. Von Trapp Oktoberfest - 32/40
4. Utepils Receptional Festbier - 32/40
4. Summit Oktoberfest - 32/40
4. Interboro Festbier - 32/40
4. Blue Mountain 13.Five Oktoberfest - 32/40
5. Olde Mecklenburg Mecktoberfest - 31/40
5. Great Lakes Oktoberfest - 31/40
5. Indeed Oktoberfest - 31/40
5. Fair State Coop Festbier - 31/40
5. Erdinger Oktoberfest - 31/40
5. Spaten Ur-Märzen - 31/40
5. Beale's Fest - 31/40
6. Warsteiner Oktoberfest - 30/40
6. Shiner Okotberfest - 30/40
6. Devils Backbone O'Fest - 30/40
6. Starr Hill Festie - 30/40
6. Bell's Oktoberfest - 30/40
6. Schell's Oktoberfest - 30/40
6. Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest Märzen - 30/40
7. Tucher Festbier - 29/40
7. Benediktiner Festbier - 29/40
7. Schlafly Oktoberfest - 29/40
7. Reason Märzen - 29/40
8. Bitburger Festbier - 28/40
8. Sam Adams Oktoberfest - 28/40
8. Brooklyn Brewing Oktoberfest - 28/40
8. Beaver Island Oktoberfest - 28/40
8. Paulaner Oktoberfest Bier - 28/40
9. Weihenstephaner Festbier - 27/40
9. Smartmouth The Princess - 27/40
10. Bauhaus Schwandtoberfest - 26/40
10. Barrier Märs Zen - 26/40
10. Hofbräu Oktoberfestbier - 26/40
11. New Realm Bavarian Prince - 24/40
12. Paulaner Oktoberfest Märzen - 23/40
12. Yeungling Oktoberfest - 23/40
13. Hi-Wire Zirktoberfest - 22/40
13. Victory Festbier - 22/40
14. Brothers Festbier - 21/40
14. Genesee Oktoberfest - 21/40
15. Solace Gute Nacht - 19/40

Ayinger then take not just the title of best German Festbier/Märzen of 2021 but also the overall title of the Fuggled Oktoberfest Beer of the Year!

So now the time has come to move on to something different...schwarzbier for example

After a month of märzen and festbier, time for something different this weekend...

— Alistair Reece (@Fuggled) October 5, 2021

The Bauhaus Brauhaus

New England has become something of a theme in my drinking of late. I refer not to the murky swill that is all the rage among drinkers of IPA, a beer trend that I find simply baffling. If I want my fruit juice to be alcoholic, I'll bung in some vodka. Nope, I refer to the gratifying number of breweries from those northern climes who make quality lager, you know, the kind of beers I love.

The current object of my affection is New Hampshire's Schilling Brewing Company, makers of the delightful Alexandr 10° and Palmovka 12° Czech style pale lagers. I recently also had their Augustin 13° polotmavé, which was a very respectable drop, though not one that will take the place of its pale stable mates. The same can not be said for their tmavý ležák, Modernism...

Modernism has a relatively modest abv for most American made Czech style dark lagers, at 4.8%, which if I were back in Czechia I would assume a starting gravity of 12° Plato. This is however no shrinking violet of a beer, packed as it is with the classic flavours and aromas of Czech dark lagers. Yes coffee, yes some cocoa, also hints of cola, and even some sweet Munich notes. Being very much in the modern vein of dark lagers, a hefty wallop of floral, spicy noble hops. Complexity without overdoing it, I approve. Goodness me I like this beer muchly, thank goodness I still have some cans in the fridge, alongside which now reside a 4 pack of Schilling's Landbier Dunkel...

Schilling, in common with that other New England staple in my beer life, Von Trapp Brewing, just don't seem to put a foot wrong at the moment, and this lager boy is most assuredly not complaining.

Head Turning Folks

I created a variant on a popular meme this week, you may have seen it on my Instagram and Twitter accounts if you follow me there, and if you don't the feel free to do so. The meme was this:

It has been a mere 28 days since I wrote a post about a couple of porters that were supposed to be harbingers of a mass porter tasting that I have plans to do. In that post I claimed to be "tasting my way through a rag bag collection of this style over the next few weeks". Needless to say, given the meme and the absolute absence of shock it garnered, that tasting is yet to happen.

Blame Central Europeans, or at least blame lagers brewed in the US that are inspired by the traditional Central European styles that I am an unashamed fan of. Lager boy? Me? Yes, absolutely. Hmmm, do I pick out the Anchor Porter from the fridge or...oh what's that...Olde Mecklenburg Captain Jack Pilsner? You know who's going to win that little battle don't you? That's right, the pilsner, or the dunkel, or the helles, ah heck, good lager is just always going to win for me.

This last weekend I resolved to at least have a couple of porters to get the tasting back on track...oh what's that at Beer Run...?

Folksbier Brauerei from, erm, Brooklyn, were a new brewery to me a few weeks back when I spent some time imbibing their pilsner at Kardinal Hall, and boy did I like it. On a recent trip in to Beer Run they had it in cans, as well as the one above, "Old Bavarian Lager", a helles. As a style, helles is becoming an ever increasingly common sight in the fridge, so I was keen to given OBL a bash..

Definitely looks the part, pouring a nice light golden yellow with a voluminous white head that you could also call rocky. Fighting their way through that resolute cap of foam were aromas of a classic pilsner malt graininess, bordering on a light breadiness, also flitting about were hints of lemon and, perhaps I was imagining it, very subtle melon notes. Tastewise, the bread character came through, offset by a solid though unobtrusive pithy bitterness and that floral character that goes hand in hand with noble hops. Take all that and make sure your carbonation isn't prickly, the body is medium, and the mouthfeel is smooth without feeling cloying, and you have a damned fine helles lager. 

Hmmm...I think when Olde Meck and Port City bring out their summer helles specials, I'll have to get some more of this, and the Von Trapp Helles, for a mass tasting that might actually happen.

Book Review: Vienna Lager

 A few months ago I bought "Historic German and Austrian Beers for the Home Brewer" by Andreas Krennmair and have thoroughly enjoyed dipping and and out of the book for inspiration and plans for the upcoming winter lager brewing season. It was on the basis of having enjoyed it so much that I ordered his latest book, "Vienna Lager", from Amazon within moments of him announcing it's release on Twitter.

Today, I'm publishing my new book "Vienna Lager".https://t.co/atvDZqfq4x #beerhistory

— Andreas Krennmair (@der_ak) July 9, 2020

A few days later it dropped through the door (figuratively speaking), and just last night I finished it. Sure it is not a weighty tomb, but I have read it in snatches as life allows, even so, a month is pretty good going by my standards these days.

What we have here is the life and story not just of the Vienna Lager style, but also a deep dive into the life of it's creator, Anton Dreher - he who went wandering around British breweries with Gabriel Sedlmayr, filching samples with Bondesque contraptions as they went. Scion of a family of innkeepers and brewers, Dreher built the largest brewing company on mainland Europe in the 19th century, at its height boasting 4 breweries, one each in Austria, Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy.

Andreas then follows Vienna Lager on its journey from its Austrian homeland to the New World, as it became an established part of the German brewing world in both the US and Mexico, and thence onward to its acceptance within craft beer.

While being focused on Dreher and Vienna Lager in particular, the book gives the reader an insight into the massive changes wrought on the European brewing industry in the second half of the 19th century. Not only are we talking about the introduction of three of the most influential beer styles, but also the introduction of English malting techniques that allowed maltsters to create consistent pale malt, and thus the world was set on the path of pale lager domination.

Andreas' book is full of fascinating technical detail, the kind of thing that very much appeals to the technical writer in me. At the same time he succeeds to keeping the technical details accessible and not overwhelming. An added bonus for homebrewers, and possibly commercial brewers looking to re-create history, is a selection of recipes for Vienna lager through the ages, naturally the early ones of just Vienna malt and Saaz hops appeal to me most of all, and perhaps this winter will finally see me take the plunge into decoction mashing.

What Andreas has done here is write the definitive guide to Dreher and his Vienna Lager, and made a valuable contribution to knowledge of the development of pale lager in general. It is an excellent read, go and buy it, now.

NoVA Franconia

Whether it is a trendy fad or something more lasting and meaningful, I love the fact that well made lager beers are enjoying a moment in the spotlight here in Virginia.

Sure, there have always been reliable go-to breweries and beers when the lager cravings hit, or as I like to call them, "the weekend", such as Devils Backbone or Port City, but it seems as though there are more options in the shop when it comes to Virginia brewed lager.

Right now I am drinking a lot of one particular beer from the ever reliable Port City Brewing of Alexandria up in Northern Virginia. They already make 2 of my favourite beers, the lovely Downright Pilsner, and an Oktoberfest that is a more than welcome sight in autumn, so when I heard they had brought out a beer called "Franconian Kellerbier", well you knew I would hunt it down.

I didn't really have to do much hunting as another of Charlottesville craft beer fixtures, Beer Run, had it available for curbside pickup about a week after I first heard about it. Minor aside, Beer Run have been an absolute lifesaver in the last few months with a steady supply of Von Trapp lagers.

This is not about the glorious wonders of Von Trapp, it is about this beer here...

Doesn't it just look lovely in my Port City half litre bierkrug, even if the can is slightly less than a full half litre. I love that rich, ever so slightly hazy, amber and the big cap of foam so befitting of a German style lager. To look at it kind of reminds me of my usual favourite German lager, the divine aU from Mahr's Brau. 

The aroma is dominated by a wonderful toasted malt character, sitting beneath the rustic earthiness and general spice that you get with Spalt hops. I have to admit that I don't spend an awful lot of time sticking my nose into the beer because it is just so damned tasty.

That toasted bread thing is there, as is the deep sweetness that I always associate with Munich malts (ie, not sugary), and again the earthy hops bring balance and some slightly floral notes to the party. All of this is rounded out with a clean finish, a medium body, and a touch of hop bitterness that makes it magnificently easy to drink, which at 4.7% means no hangover if you bash a few of these of a school night.

I like to think of these kind of beers as "country beers", the kind of thing you would find in a village Gasthaus, possibly the only beer on tap, served just metres from where it was brewed, and very much the local hero of beer. The kind of beer that you could imagine sitting in the sun, under the shade of a old tree, and just letting the world go by, while you engaged in something completely unrelated to beer, like shelling peas that you just picked from the garden.

I have drunk a fair old whack of Franconian Kellerbier, and it is more than fair to say that I am going to miss it when it is gone, being but a seasonal beer, rather than year round. Would I swap it for one of Port City's regular lineup to be a year round brew, you bet I would, the world is quite sufficiently stocked for IPAs these days, so one of those can go as far as I am concerned.

VPL - Virginian Pale Lagers

It took eight weeks, but by last Saturday I was actually getting a little bit of cabin fever, so I asked Mrs V if it would be ok if I went out to do the weekly shop. Generally Mrs V is our designated person for doing the shopping during these weird times as both myself and one of my boys are asthmatic, and so we want to minimise the possibility of either of us getting sick.

There were ulterior motives for wanting to get out of the house for a few hours, namely it was Mother's Day and I needed to get Mrs V a card, some fancy booze, and ingredients for dinner. I also wanted to pick up some different beer from Wegmans as they still do BYO six packs, and so ended up with a selection of 2 Czech style Pilsners, 2 German style Pilsners, and a pair of Munich Helles.

I started with the two Czech style beers, both of which I have drunk plenty of over the years but not really sat down and analysed them.

Champion Brewing Shower Beer

• Sight - pale golden, healthy quarter inch of foam with good retention, superb clarity
• Smell - Cereal grain, hay, touch of lemon, some floral hops
• Taste - Bready malt base, spicy hops, nice citrusy, clean, bitterness
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 3

In so many ways this is a wonderful Czech style pale lager. Only 4.5% abv, 100% Saaz hops, a really nice firm bitterness and a lingering clean finish pointing to good clean fermentation. If I were comparing to some of the pale lagers back in Czechia, I would put this in the same league as Herold, a good solid brewery with a devoted following.

Port City Brewing Downright Pilsner

• Sight - Slightly hazy pale gold, good firm white head, nice retention
• Smell - Lemony and lime citrus character, some breadiness, alpine meadow floral notes
• Taste - Bready malt character, some spice, bit lemony edging to pithy, clean fermentation
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 3.5/5

Medium bodied, with high carbonation, almost too bitter in some respects, citrus character borders of pithiness.

As I said, I have drunk plenty of both these beers of the years, and am of the opinion that they are dead certs for being in the top five pale lagers in Virginia. I am pretty sure that both would go down pretty well back in Czechia too, but they just don't reach the heights of something like Pivovar Hostomice's majestic Fabián 10°, Únětický's 12°, or the much missed Kout na Šumavě 10°. Making a not entirely unreasonable assumption that the ingredients are broadly similar, I do tend to think that the difference is in process, in particular the fact that Czech breweries still do decoction mashing, and that the Maillard reactions that causes brings something indefinable to the glass that focusing on ABV, IBUs, and other brewing by numbers stats simply cannot bring to the beer? I say it fairly often, but decoction really does matter if you want to make an authentic Czech style lager, regardless of colour or strength.

Moving from Czech style pale lagers over the border, so to say, to German style...

Basic City Our Daily Pils (unfiltered)

• Sight - Pale gold, slight haze from being unfiltered, thin white head, distinctly not fizzy
• Smell - Subtle malt sweetness, fresh bread crust, floral hops, some citrus like mandarin
• Taste - Bready malt with a touch of biscuity sweetness, slightly earthy, spicy hops and a trace of citrus
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2.5/5

This has actually become something a regular tipple for me. Back in open pub days, ah the memories, I enjoyed many pints of it at Beer Run, often sat at the bar of a Friday afternoon with work done and the boys yet to be picked up from school. At 4.8% it sits squarely in the ball park for a German pils and has all the refreshing drinkability you would expect from Germany's finest. Definitely a welcome addition to Virgini'a lager scene.

Lost Rhino Brewing Rhino Chaser

• Sight - Gold, thin white head, dissipates quickly, good clarity
• Smell - Mostly cereal and bread upfront, almost worty, with some subtle spice
• Taste - Sweet, sugary caramel notes, a little hop flavour with a spicy cinnamon finish
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2/5

This actually reminded me more of the modern Festbier than a pilsner. At 5.6% it is simply too strong to be authentic, but then the can does tout that the brewery has ""Americanized" the classic European Pilsner", a turn of phrase that strikes fear into my heart as it invariably leads to a disappointing drinking experience. If you want to make a pilsner, make a fucking pilsner. If you want to make a strong pale lager then make a strong pale lager. Just as decoction matters, so do styles when it comes to setting the drinker's expectations.

Ok let's leave the pilsners behind and venture into Helles.

Bingo Lager

• Sight - Yellow, excellent clarity, fizzy, lots of bubbles, no head at all (WTF?)
• Smell - Light floral hops, slightly grainy, generally indistinct
• Taste - Bready malt, clean citrus bitterness, touch of corn in the finish
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2.5/5

I want to give the brewery the benefit of the doubt here as there seemed to be a dink in the seam of the can lid, which may help explain the absolute absence of head. When I swirled the glass half way through drinking I did come some white foam but it disappeared quickly. The beer itself is well balanced and decent enough, I guess I will have to buy another one just to see if the can lid theory works out.

Stable Craft Helles

• Sight - Pale golden, think white head, fizzy, good clarity
• Smell - Crusty bread, spicy hops, earthy, some rather odd onion/garlic notes in the background
• Taste - Non-descript, some malt, some hops, prickly carbonation, lacking clean lager character
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 1.5/5

This one was a major let down. I was willing to give Stable Craft a try because I have enjoyed their brown ale from time to time, but this was dull and muddled rather than bright and zingy as I would expect from a Munich Helles.

We are lucky in some ways in Virginia that we have some decent pale lagers being brewed, but we also have some that are simply sub-par, and in this tasting we ran the gamut of what is out there in that regard. On the helles front it is safe to say that once South Street have some of their My Personal Helles back in stok I will be slaking my thirst with it.

Because We Can

Saturday was one of my favourite kind of days, a brewday with one of my local breweries.

In this case I was down at the Devils Backbone Basecamp once more. The plan, to brew Morana for the fifth time. Morana is, as a quick recap, a 14° tmavé speciální, or for the non-Czech speakers a 14° dark special lager, modeled on the sadly now departed Kout na Šumavě dark lager of the same strength.

From the very first time we brewed Morana, back in 2010, it has been double decocted as a nod to the traditional brewing practices of central Europe. It has also always undergone a long period of lagering, about 45 days. It has always used floor malted Bohemian pilsner malt, as well as CaraBohemian, Dark Munich, and de-bittered Carafa II, and it has always been hopped exclusively with Saaz hops. For this most recent brew none of these things have changed. At the end of the slightly longer than many a brewday, decoction does that, we had an on the nail wort that is going to make a simply fantastic beer.

From here on in though, Morana is in uncharted territory. You see, Devils Backbone have recently invested in some fun brewing equipment that we hope will bring Morana, a beer described in Jeff Alworth's Beer Bible as "the best New World effort to make an Old World beer", closer to her Old World antecedents.

Where in years past Morana would have undergone fermentation in a cylindrical conical tank, this time she is being fermented in Devils Backbone's new open fermenter, indeed she is the first lager to do so. As ever when Jason Oliver and I get together I learn shit tons of fun stuff about brewing, and naturally I asked what difference, if any, an open fermenter would make. Apparently the difference is less in the open nature of the vessel than it is in the geometry of it, being broader and shallower than a CCT. If I understand what Jason told me correctly, the CO2 generated by the yeast has a larger area in which to bubble to the surface, raising the yeast as it goes. This results is a fermentation with less circulation in the vessel, resulting in a more leisurely process, and thus the yeast is less stressed than it would be in the CCT. Again, assuming I understood correctly, this will impact the body and mouthfeel of the beer, making it even more luxuriant than previous iterations.

Having fermented for the requisite length of time, and once it is with about 1.5° Plato of target gravity, it will be moved over to a CCT to finish the fermentation with the CO2 valve firmly shut. With the natural carbonation achieved, it will be pumped over to another new toy that Jason gets to play with, one of the horizontal lagering tanks. There she will sit for 45 days at near freezing, and when the time comes to keg her up and drink, she will not be filtered.

During the brewday, Jason treated me to a couple of samples of German style beers sitting in the horizontal tanks. Currently lagering and soon to be on tap at Basecamp are Ein Kölsch and Alt Bier, no prizes for guessing the styles based on the names. Whenever they have been on tap in the past, Mrs V and I have made a point of getting to the brewpub for a few jars and to fill several growlers, based on the samples taken from the zwickel, we'll definitely be heading down in the not too distant future.

I remember once Jason being asked for an article in some brewing magazine about why he does decoction mashes for his lagers, to which he responded "because I can". What better reason to decoct, open ferment, and lager horizontally a Czech style tmavé for authenticity than simply that, because we can?