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Browsing Tags pilsners

Pilsner Madness Round 1: Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz (13) -VS- Great Divide Nomad Pilsner (14)

May 1, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

Today New York faces off against Colorado with Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz versus Great Divide Nomad Pilsner!

Pilsner Madness Bracket RD1 - 6

The Contenders:

Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz (13) – Southern Tier, an eponymous nod to the southern most counties in New York, was started using the equipment from the (sadly now defunct) Old Saddleback Brewing Co. in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Non-East Coasters might know ST for their more novelty beers, like the excellent fall seasonal Pumking or the desert-like “Blackwater” series that includes Chokolat Stout, Creme Brulee Stout, and Plum Noir Imperial Porter. Their primary line-up is nothing to shake a proverbial dead workhorse at, made up of a nicely balanced IPA (comparable to Brooklyn IPA or Harpoon IPA) and my personal favorite, 422 Wheat Ale.

As I was searching high and low for Pilsners, my wife spotted this one, tucked away as a single near the back of the seasonal shelf at Total Wine in Laurel, MD. It’s labeling makes it look sort of like an edgy unicorn who spells his name with a totally hip “z” who was playing chess fell into the label printer, but it’s appropriately refreshing garb for this crisp pilsner.

Great Divide Nomad Pilser (14) – Great Divide is particularly decorated, having won twelve Great American Beer Festival awards and four World Beer Cup awards. Their original mission was to brew “strong” beer, both in ABV and flavor. To that end, they’ve succeeded, powerfully. I’ve only had two of their other beers – Titan IPA and the Bronco’s Pride, Denver Pale Ale – but they are undeniably, unquestionably, unforgivingly, bold.

Nomad Pilsner was the last beer I found for the tournament, but certainly not the least. The mission for strong beer carried over into the body of this malt-strong and abundantly hopped pilsner. Lagered for five weeks, it has the weight of an ale, but the tickling effervescence and refreshment of a Rhineland lager.

The Fight:

eurotrashvsnomad

We’ve got two completely different beers clinking glasses here. The EuroTrash is so light, its bubbles whispering through my tongue to my brain, telling me to go outside and drink this while playing mandolin in the Spring sun. The Nomad is the opposite, its heavy malten-spine and powerful upfront, slightly alcoholic flavor demands I sit down on the couch, put on a bad SciFi movie and just chill the eff out.

The head on the EuroTrash froths enthusiastically during the pour, but settles to just a few puddles of bubbles within minutes. The Nomad retains a meaty, creamy pure-white head until the beer is about halfway gone. Both smell delightfully hoppy; notes of citrus and grass waft from the tops of the thin glasses.

The EuroTrash is clean, but unembroidered. It makes no pretenses about who it is, or why it’s here. It wants to be consumed, probably in large amounts, probably to stymie relentless summer heat. The Nomad is full of pretenses. It’s a pilsner that seems to want to be an ale, that wants to echo its IPA and PA and Stout brethren. It don’t take no guff about being a “light” beer.

While I really appreciate the simplicity of the SouthernTier offering, I have to give this one to Great Divide. This is the first pilser I’ve had that had the audacity to try and keep up with the regime established by the ales, and I think it did a mighty fine job. It’s not quite on the level of Victory Prima or Sam Adams Noble, but it’s damn close.

Winner: Great Divide Nomad Pilsner!

nomadwinner

Pilsner Madness Round 1: Laguintas Pils (9) -VS- North Coast Scrimshaw Pilsner (10)

April 10, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

(Yes, I am aware that the basketball tournament is over. The pilsners are still fighting it out anyway!)

Today, Northern California’s Laguintas Pils throws some ‘bows at its slightly northern neighbor, North Coast Scrimshaw Pilsner.

Pilsner Madness Bracket RD1 - 4

The Contenders:

Laguintas Pils (9) – Laguintas brewing has been on non-literal fire since it was founded in 1993. Led by the presumably pretty quirky Tony Magee (who wanted to open the Languintas Chicago Brew Pub early so that patrons and beer lovers could watch the adjacent brewery being built in near-real-time), Languintas is now in the top 20 Craft Beer Club with a yearly distribution of about 106,000 barrels.

As anyone who has ever held a bottle of their brew knows, Laguintas likes eye-catching names, labels, and flavor text. Their pilsner, brewed in the traditional Czech style like a few of our other competitors, has this blurb on its label: “…Ales and Lagers are as different as can be. Still, we must love each for who they are, separately but equally, with liberty, and justice, for all. Cheers!”

I agree.

North Coast Scrimshaw Pilsner (10) – Most beer enthusiasts only know North Coast Brewing for their incredibly well crafted (and incredibly well reviewed and tasted) Old Rasputin Imperial Stout. If you’ve never had it, if you’re not really a stout person, or an imperial person, or a dark beer person, even if you’re really into depriving yourself of good things, you should go try this beer. It’s one of those benchmark beers; once you’ve had it, your perception of the very beer universe (beerniverse?) might change.

But in the shadow of Old Rasputin, North Coast has 18 other beers in its lineup. That’s like, Sam Adams level of variety. The Scrimshaw Pilsner shows their technical expertise, it is perfectly clear, well balanced, and spiced right up with a little bit of Hallertauer and Tettnang.

The Fight:

laguinvsscrimshaw

These two middle seeds are not messing around. They might not have the per-year barrel volume to compete with some of the craft beer giants, but their skill in brewing is practiced, professional, and mouth watering.

Both pour nearly the same color, pale golden yellow, like a late-season wheat field catching the final rays of a lounging summer sun. Both produce a small head that leaves popped bubble residue hugging the top rim of the glass. If I took the bottles away, it would be nearly impossible to decide which beer was which on appearance alone.

Scrimshaw hits hard with a much stronger (and more pleasant) hop aroma, reminding me a gently hopped ale more than a pilsner. Laguintas by no means smells bad but it has a significantly more malt forward smell to it, like some of our contenders in the previous few match ups.

And then beer hits lips and angels sing and the world finds peace. Scrimshaw bites at the tongues a little bit, but is relatively simple in the depth of its flavor. Laguintas is significantly more complex (the extra malt zing works well here) and it finishes so crisp and refreshing that I find myself cracking another one before I’m even finished with the first one.

Behind the scenes, I score these beers (or should say, scored, past tense, when I drank them) based on presentation, smell, and taste. These two tied. I didn’t think I’d have a tie. I have no tie-breaker. Oops.

I did the only thing I know how to do: I left it up to Google. It’s like flipping a coin that has been silver-plated with the weight of the analytics hive-mind.

Laguintas Pils: 22700 results
North Coast Scrimshaw Pils: 2080 results

The Googles have spoken. Winner: Laguintas Pils. These are both great beers though, highly recommend either (or both!) for Spring and Summer time outdoorsy type things.

laguintaswinner

Pilsner Madness!

March 8, 2013 · by Oliver Gray

I am the worst basketball player in the United States of America.

I can’t do a lay-up. I have mastered the air-ball. I am incapable of dribbling with any sort of rhythm.

As a result, I never partake of any March Madness madness. When coworkers ask me to participate in the pool or fantasy league or just fill out a bracket for fun, I stand awkwardly in my cubicle, not entirely sure basketball is a safe thing for me to be around.

I like to stick to what I know: words, games, beer.

If you can’t beat ‘um, join ‘um. Or reinvent the whole thing so that it fits your specific interests and fields of expertise.

Literature and Libation presents an Oliver Gray production of: Pilsner Madness!

Through painstaking field work, sampling, and research, I have located and consumed 16 different Pilsner style lagers and pitted them against each other in a fierce battle for crisp, refreshing supremacy.

I only chose Pilsners because I had recently brewed one. I specifically tried to find beers labeled as “pilsner” or “pils” or “pilsener” and avoided any other pale or golden lager. The name, for anyone interested, comes from city of Pilsen in the Czech Republic where the style was first brewed in 1842.

Finding 16 Pilsners out of season was not an easy task. It took tens of minutes to scour the shelves of local beer stores to find what I needed. That’s commitment.

Without further ado, here are your contenders. They are seeded by the size of the brewery’s distribution (in barrels, converted from hectoliters for international brands):

  1. Sam Adams Noble Pils
  2. EFES
  3. Pilsner Urquell
  4. KonigPilsner
  5. Jever Pilsner
  6. Red Hook Pilsner
  7. Weihenstephaner Pilsner
  8. Brooklyn Pilsner
  9. Laguintas Pils
  10. North Coast Scrimshaw Pilsner
  11. Victory Prima Pils
  12. Gordon Biersch Czech Pilsner
  13. Southern Tier EuroTrash Pilz
  14. Great Divide Nomad Pilsner
  15. Heavy Seas Small Craft Warning Uber Pils
  16. Gunpowder Falls Pilsner

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting dueling reviews of these beers, in a bracketed, single elimination style tournament. I’m using my wildly subjective opinion of each beer to determine the winners, so don’t be offended if your favorite gets knocked out in the early rounds.

16 beers go in, only 1 beer comes out.

16 beers go in, only 1 beer comes out.

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