Fuggled Beers of the Year: Pale

It's that time of the year, the Winter Solstice is upon us, and what better to do than to review a year's worth of drinking? As has become my own tradition, I will break this down into multiple posts, one for pale beer, one for BOAB ("between orange and brown", and dark, and then an overall beer of the year, as well as one for Virginia cider of the year.

As I have done for several years now, I will highlight beers from Virginia, the rest of the US, and the rest of the world before crowning each category winner, so on with the show...

Virginia

• Spoolboy 10° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Chain Stitch Helles - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Coat Czech 12° Czech pale lager - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Honorable mentions: Ten - Sojourn Fermentory, Suffolk; Pylon Pilsner - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Voda Czech style Pilsner - Caboose Brewing, Vienna; Vested Interest - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville.

A clean sweep for the brewery I visit far more than any other, but in my defense, Josh makes beers that are simply delightful and would grace any kneipe, keller, hospoda, or hostinec throughout Central Europe. I didn't write my annual Top 10 Virginian Beers this summer, but it would have been overwhelmingly Selvedge Brewing products. All that said, even choosing one from the three mentioned is a monumentally difficult task as on any given time I am at Selvedge at the moment it is pretty much a given that I will be rotating through the three of them. Even so...I can only choose one, and that is the one that both Mrs V and I pretty much immediately order when we sit down, the one that both of us have raved about to friends, acquaintances, and anyone within earshot willing to listen, the one that takes both of us back to our spiritual home in Czechia. Spoolboy, the most perfect desítka imaginable, and one that I wish I could sit and drink with Evan, Max, and co back in Prague.

Rest of the USA

• Notch Pils - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA
• Gold - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX
• Urhell - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC

Honorable mentions: Bavarian Pilsner - Von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT; Pilsner - New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, CO; Captain Jack Pilsner - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC; Pilz - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX; Kirkland Lager - Deschutes Brewing, OR

Despite being an abysmal beer tourist, as I have mentioned many a time in the past, when I do get to travel for work, I always make sure to find some time to unwind in a local brewery with a decent lager selection. I am sorry folks, but if you haven't worked out that pale lagers are my go-to beer style, and have been for many years, you simply haven't been paying attention. Probably my favourite annual trip to to a conference in Austin, Texas, that gives me the opportunity to get to Live Oak Brewing. So it was this spring, myself and colleagues rolled up and spent an excellent few hours in the tap room enjoying the many fine beers on offer. It was much to my delight that they had just tapped this year's batch of Gold, a Bavarian style pilsner that is, in my as ever unhumble opinion, the best pilsner that Live Oak brews. Yes I love Pilz, but Gold is just a nose ahead in my mind, and so I enjoyed plenty of it.

Rest of the World

• La Fin du Monde - Unibroue, Canada
• Jura - Pivovar Chroust, Czechia
• Tannenzäpfle - Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus, Germany

Sadly no foreign trips this year for me, so my international drinking has been limited to whatever I could find in the store, or in the case of the winner, something new and exciting that I hadn't expected to see at ChurchKey on a business trip to DC. Also, a fun fact, the beer in question comes from a part of Prague that many, many moons ago, I actually very close to, as in just one metro stop away. Obviously then the international pale beer of the year is Jura from Pivovar Chroust in Prague. As I say, I was sitting in ChurchKey, perusing the beer list and my eyes were drawn to the word "Jura" partly because I had just bought a couple of bottles of Jura whisky and was surprised to see that collection of letters in a beer list. What followed was a fantastically bracing, bitter 12° Czech pale lager that was an exceedingly happy surprise.

Three fantastic examples of Central European pale lagers in the Plzeň tradition, but obviously I can choose but one. That one will come as no surprise to anyone that knows me, or follows my Instagram, it is the one that come the end of this week I will be drinking having finished work for the year. Yes, then the Fuggled Pale Beer of 2025, a prize still unencumbered with the grubbiness of filthy lucre and commercial considerations is Selvedge's magnificent Spoolboy 10° Czech Pale Lager, a beer I will miss deeply when this batch is gone, and then I will begin my campaign to bring it back as soon as possible.

Fuggled Beers of the Year: Pale

I know, I know, I haven't posted anything in a while on here. In my defense I have been out and about promoting my book, "Virginia Cider: A Scrumptious History", and life has had a way of late of getting in the way of me writing much. As the year is drawing to its end though, the traditional reviews are in order, and while that won't save 2024 from being the complete year with the fewest number of posts in Fuggled history, it will at least be an outlet for some thoughts...and as ever, we begin with pale beers, as in those that aren't noticeably too amber or orange, a nice subjective line there for sure.

As has become my tradition, I will pick beers from Virginia, the rest of the US, and the rest of the world, eventually leading to a best in category beer which will go forward for the overall beer of the year. That said, let's go...

Virginia

• Coat Czech - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville
• Krypto Pilsner - Decipher Brewing, Charlottesville
• Found Artifacts - Wheatland Spring Brewery, Waterford

Honorable mentions: Pylon Pilsner - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; Export Golden Lager - Devils Backbone Brewing, Lexington; Das Gut German Pilsner - Caboose Brewing, Vienna; Wharf Hill 1906 Pre-Prohibition Lager - Wharf Hill Brewing, Smithfield

Every year, this category gets harder and harder, mainly because more and more breweries in Virginia are stepping up their pale lager game, and that is, as you well know if you have followed me for a while, is my sweet spot. Said sweet spot particularly hones in on Czech style pale lagers, I absolutely love them, especially if said lagers are brewed to 12° Plato or less - personal bugbear is seeing breweries putting out beers labeled as "Czech Pilsner" or "Bohemian Pilsner" and it turns out to be a 14°, or more, lager. The vast majority of lager brewed and drunk in Czechia is 10° or 12°, so please can we have something akin to what your average Jan or Jana would drink in the pub?  Anyway, gripe aside, Selvedge Brewing brought out a 12°, double decocted, extensively lagered Czech style pale lager earlier this year that was right up there with the very best in Czechia, no that is not hyperbole, it was simply superb - I waxed lyrical here.

Rest of the USA

• Notch Pils - Notch Brewing, Salem, MA
• Central Artery Helles - Trillium Brewing, Boston, MA
• Urhell - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC

Honorable Mentions: Captain Jack Pilsner - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC; Sunshine Pils - Tröegs Brewing, Hershey, PA; Bavarian Pilsner - Von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT; Kellerbier - Bierkeller Brewing, Columbia, SC; Lollihop IPA - Tröegs Brewing, Hershey, PA.

Everything I just said about 10° Czech style pale lagers obviously points to winner for pale beers from outside of Virginia. I have had Notch Pils many times in cans, usually muled down to VA from friends in New England, but in May I was up in Boston for work and so took the opportunity to get to their Brighton venue to try out their wares on tap, and fresh from the Lukr, topped with a cap of glorious wet foam, it was an absolutely delight. Had it been closer to my hotel and conference venue I would have gone every night for more, and now I keep half a sneaky eye on Boston for work related stuff...in the interests of science I am sure you are aware.

Rest of the World

• Kaltenecker 11° - Pivovar Kaltenecker, SK
• Icelandic White Ale - Einstök Ölgerð, IS
• Martins 10° - Pivovar Martins, SK

A combination of having not had a work trip outside of the US this year, and the continuing improvement in pale lagers, ahem beers, in the US has meant that the international pale beers of the year are from really slim pickings. That's not to say they are second rate beers, just I have mostly been drinking American this year. That said, it is to Central Europe that we head for the international pale beer of 2024, and so obviously it is Slovakia, and in this case a brewery I had tried in Prague before heading across the ocean to live in Virginia. Kaltenecker 11° might not be the most well know beer on this side of the Pond - I only had it because my best friend effectively overloaded my suitcase with Slovak beer last year - but it is definitely an excellent pale lager in the pilsner vein. Beautifully bitter, using Premiant in addition to the classic Saaz, it is something that I wished I could bash pint after pint of. I only had one though and so I took it slow and savoured every drop.

Being an unreconstructed lover of all things Central European pale lager, this category is invariably the most challenging each year to settle on a winner. This year though, it is made a little easier by the fact that I can simply choose the beer I had the utter joy of caning for several weeks in a row, reveling, both in the tap room and at home, in some Czech based Ostalgia because the beer is that good...Selvedge's Coat Czech it is then, and it truly is not hyperbole when I say it is as good as anything in Czechia, including the sublime Únětické Pivo 12° that was its inspiration.

Fuggled Beers of the Year: Pale

Ah...the first day of two weeks of Yuletide holiday. Time to make mince pies, plan menus for the various festive days, and to wonder if I even bother buying beer given the amount of cider in the alcohol fridges. It is also time for the annual review of the year, which thanks to having managed to get out of the country a couple of times will include both a drinking den and a brewery of the year. As ever though, we start with pale beers, those that are yellow or golden, without veering too much into orange.

Each year I pick the top 3, plus any honorable mentions, in each category, from Virginia, the rest of the United States, and the rest of the world, culminating in an overall beer of the year for a given category. That said, let's crack on:

Virginia

• Kelheim Märzen - Tabol Brewing, Richmond
• Yourn Czech Lager - Devils Backbone Brewing, Nellysford
• Batiste - Selvedge Brewing, Charlottesville

Honorable mentions: Found Artifacts - Wheatland Spring Brewing, Waterford; Pylon Pilsner - Patch Brewing, Gordonsville; How Bout It - Black Narrows Brewing, Chincoteague.; Downright Pilsner - Port City Brewing, Alexandria.

This is always the hardest category to choose from as Virginia brewed pale beers, ok let's be honest, pale lagers, are my go to and so I drink far more of them than anything else. The winner though, and to be frank, choosing from among those three beers is a real challenge as I would happily only drink those beers all year if need be, is the beer that I having driven about 40 miles more than once for. Maybe it is his CEE heritage, maybe it is the well water that is basically an analogue for Plzeň, maybe it is decoction mashing, open fermentation, and extended horizontal lagering. Whatever it is, Jason Oliver at Devils Backbone simply knows how to knock it out of the park when making Czech style pale lagers, and Yourn, a 10° lager, was glorious. Simple as.

Rest of the USA

• Keller Pils - TRVE Brewing, Denver, CO
• Gold - Live Oak Brewing, Austin, TX
• Captain Jack Pilsner - Olde Mecklenburg Brewing, Charlotte, NC

Honorable mentions: Überholt - Jack's Abby Craft Lagers, Framingham, MA; Purge Under Pilsner - Savage Craft Brewing, West Columbia, SC; Helles - Von Trapp Brewing, Stowe, VT; Jakobus - Schilling Brewing, Littleton, NH.

I was sat in the winning brewery's tap room, escaping from the heat - being a child of the north Atlantic, I don't do great with hot weather, especially when there is the option of an air-conditioned tap room. I ordered the winning beer, sat at a long trestle style table, and watched as a single tremulous bubble wandered its merry way up the side of the Willibecher glass. I tweeted at the time something along the lines of "proper lager isn't fizzy", and this was a proper, proper lager. I fully expected to crush on Live Oak Pilz when I visited their beer garden and taproom out near Austin airport, but their German style pilsner, Gold, stole my heart, it was everything you could want from a Bavaria style pilsner, and a banger in every sense of the word.

Rest of the World

• Nr. 1 Bríó - Borg Brugghús, Reykjavik, IS
• Fabián 10° - Pivovar Hostomice, Hostomice, CZ
• Únětické Pivo 10° - Únětický Pivovar, Únětice, CZ

Honorable mentions: Tannenzäpfle - Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus, Grafenhausen-Rothaus, DE; Icelandic White Ale - Einstök Ölgerđ, Akureyri, IS.

Damn this is hard. While I was in Prague in November, Evan told me that for the first time in well over a century, 12° has overtaken 10° as the most regularly drunk strength of pale lager. My best friend Chris, who I met in Prague many, many years ago, and I though are devotees of the desítka and thus I guess old school. And it is old school that is the only way I can think to separate the pair of desítky, and even then it is decision between an old school village beer hall and an old school urban pivnice. It all comes down to intangibles I guess, and in my mind Hostomice's 10° has a certain rusticity that really appeals to me - I wish there was a better way to explain that, but I can't think of one off the top of my head.

Three absolutely world beating beers make the final three for the Fuggled Pale Beer of the Year, and I guess it will come as a surprise to precisely nobody as to which beer walks away with the plaudits and absence of monetary prize. Pivovar Hostomice make, in my as ever unhumble opinion, the best beers that I have ever had in Czechia. If I ever decided to upsticks again and move my family back to Czechia, having a local boozer that sold their beer would be a major plus in deciding where to live. Unfussy, uncomplicated (please don't confuse complicated with complex), and so moreish that day drinking could happily lead into all night drinking, Fabián 10° is beer at its best, not just Czech pale lager at its best.

Fuggled Review of the Year - Pale

For the 2011 iteration of my Fuggled Review, I have decided to stick with the nice, simple approach that I adopted last year. Rather than trawling through the various categories accepted by the Brewers Association for the Great American Beer Festival, I will have 3 beer awards, one each for pale, amber and dark, as well as a blog of the year selection. I will choose a "best of" from Virginia, the rest of the US and then the rest of the world for each category. So without further ado, let's see the nominations for the Fuggled Pale Beer of the Year:

• Virginia - St George IPA
• Rest of US - Bohemia Brewery 1842 Pilsener
• Rest of World - Sünner Kölsch

The St George IPA is that most rare of beasts, an American made, British style IPA. It is hopped exclusively with Fuggles and boasting a solid malty backbone, the combination of which reminds me a Seville orange marmalade. Unfortunately there are some who think Fuggles is a "boring" hop, personally I think they have just jumped on the grapefruit/pine resin bandwagon and fail to appreciate the flavours Fuggles brings to the table. Of the various pale beers from Virginia I have drunk this year, the St George IPA has been the most consistently enjoyable, and really what else is important?

Unless you have been cowering under a cyber rock at some dim and distant IP address, you will know that I love pilsner and will go out of my way to try beers availing themselves of that appellation. When a friend of Mrs V and I came to visit us from South Carolina, I asked her to bring me some beers that we couldn't get in Virginia, including the Bohemian Brewery 1842 Pilsener. Simply put, I was in heaven as I drank it. It very definitely hit the spot and ticked all the right boxes for a Czech style lager, decoction mash, Saaz hops, 5 weeks of lagering and easy drinking. Please, please, please would someone distribute them in Virginia!

Each summer, Mrs V and I buy season tickets to either Busch Gardens or Water Country USA in Williamsburg. This year we chose Busch Gardens, and when we went down for the day we stumbled across Sünner Kölsch in their Bavarian part of the park. We sat on a bench with a bratwurst wrapped in pretzel dough and shared the cold, clean, crisp beer between us - it was perfection.

I can choose but one of these three fine libations, and so the Fuggled Pale Beer of the Year is:

• Bohemian Brewery 1842 Pilsener

So, for the second year in a row a Czech style pilsner beer take the award, still unburdened by financial value though with a modicum of history I guess! As I said in the title of my post about the beer, Americans CAN make good pilsners, it is just a damned shame so few of them bother to do it properly.

Fuggled Review of the Year - Pale Beer

As I said on Friday, for this year's review posts I am sticking to three very broad categories of beer - pale, amber and dark. What I didn't mention though was how I planned to draw up my shortlist of three beers for each category, from which the over all winner would be selected. I thought long and hard about this question. Well, ok then, I decided to do the first thing that popped into my mind. The three beers will be as follows:

• best from Virginia
• best from the rest of the US
• best from the rest of the world

So, without further ado, the contenders for the Fuggled Pale Beer of the Year (a prize still unburdened by history or monetary value) are:

• Devils' Backbone Trukker Ur-Pils
• Sierra Nevada Torpedo 
• Unibroue La Fin du Monde

If you know me, you know that Bohemian Pilsner is one of my favourite styles of beer. It is a style of beer that is very easy to get wrong, and exceedingly difficult to right, despite the simplicity of the ingredients. I will continue to maintain that only a triple decocted, 100% Saaz hopped brew can be called a Pilsner, anything else is just pale lager. It might be very drinkable, it might even garner rave reviews, but it is not a Pilsner. When I read on the Devils' Backbone blog, written by the brewer, Jason, that he was planning to make a Pilsner based on a recreation of the 1842 recipe devised by Josef Groll, I was immediately intrigued. That Jason then invited me to come out and help brew the beer made it all the more special for me - I say "help" in the broadest possible sense, that sense being the helping by not getting in the way, as much as possible. When the beer was lagered and available, avail myself of it I did, with gusto. It was simply an excellent version of one of my favourite styles. As I have said before, if I had been served that in one of Prague's many fine watering holes, I would have been delighted. There really is no higher praise.

This is quite possibly the grossest heresy you will ever hear from a beer lover living in the USA. I am not a hop head. Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate hoppy beers, but I think that a lot of "craft" breweries focus too much on the little green cone to the detriment of the malt. For an IPA to get into my list of beers always in the cellar, it needs to have a good malty body to stand up to the hops. Enter, then, Sierra Nevada's quite simply gorgeous Torpedo. I think the thing I like most about Torpedo is that it isn't just another grapefruit bomb, the dry hopping with Citra lends it a more tropical fruit flavour which I find very appealing and a refreshing change from the Cascade/Amarillo dominated IPAs of this world. Balanced and yet nicely bitter, Torpedo achieves those three elements of good beer in my world, balanced, complex, drinkable.

For my best Rest of the World beer, I head over the border to Canada and Unibroue's wonderful La Fin du Monde. Admittedly there was a late charge in the form of Unibroue's Don de Dieu which I polished off last night, but I followed that up with another bottle of La Fin du Monde, and the winner was easy really. For a 9%abv beer, La Fin du Monde is very drinkable, smooth and laced with banana aromas - almost as though they had been soaked in spiced rum. I first had some Unibroue beers by chance a few years back in France, and still count it as one of my favourite beer discoveries.

Three excellent beers then, but in the immortal words of Connor MacLeod, there can be only one, and that one is:

• Devils' Backbone Trukker Ur-Pils

Authentic ingredients, traditional methods and a spectacular result. This is what craft brewing is about in my opinion, and the Trukker Ur-Pils hit the mark in every conceivable way and is thus the Fuggled Pale Beer of 2010.