Monday, April 16, 2012

Bière - That Other Drink From The Alsace



Most people ignore France when they think of beer.  Good reason, but not because of quality.  France trails most of the known world in beer consumption, well behind such powerhouses as Venezuela (9), Panama (16), and Angola (33).  France, meanwhile, has a solid lock on 64th.    What are the top five per capita beer swillers?  Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Ireland, and Estonia.

Nevertheless, France has some very nice beers, which differ greatly depending on the region in France you’re in when you belly up to the bar and smack down your Euros.  Let’s take The Alsace for example.  While big brewers dominate (and the proximity of Germany is not lost on them), their pils lean all the way from cousins of the heavy German style, to the much lighter, almost elegant varieties.   Astounding how the combinations of four simple ingredients: hops, barley, yeast, and water, can lead to such variances in flavor.

I confess I’m not a constant beer drinker, but I do like the occasional glass, especially on a hot, sunny day, when I’m seated in an outdoor café in The Alsace, wearing a scarf and blending almost as well as a baby in a saggy diaper.  But, in my well-organized blind beer tasting, we needed someone who is more refined than the typical beer guzzler. After a careful search, I chose myself.

Two other volunteers rounded out this scientific survey of Alsatian beers, a young man who only stops drinking beer when he’s sleeping and the straw falls out of his mouth, and a woman whose eyes lit up, but looked confused until I pressed a glass in her hand and uttered the magic words:  Taste this!

So, here we had a thoughtfully educated man (TEM), a younger man who thought high school was a travel experience (YM), and a female (F), representing the full range of the fairer sex.

As to the beers, I could have gone for some Alsatian, micro-brewed-never-gonna-find-it beers.  Instead I went for selections from large brewers, which the average, yet diligent consumer may well find around the world.  Meteor.  Fischer.  Kronenbourg.  Although each of these brewers makes a number of styles, I chose to stick with the universally known style, pils.

The device for the blind tasting was simple.  Each of us took turns marking glasses A, B, and C. Only the one doing the marking for a particular round knew which beer was which.  So, three tasting rounds, two of them blind for each of us.

Here is the compendium of the blind tasting results:

Fischer:           -  TEM - light aroma, slightly sweet taste, soft finish
   -  YM -  Light, crap, watery finish
-  F -  not very beer-like, like wine on a summer day, nice easy to swallow, no real aftertaste, just warmth


Kronenbourg:  - TEM – nice, light aroma, smooth and even taste, slight bite
-  YM – light aroma, light taste, smooth finish
-   F – almost no aroma, more of a beer taste, but not strong, a little beer aftertaste and watery

Meteor:            - TEM – slightly sour smell, nice hops taste, heavy German finish
- YM – light aroma, a lot of taste, smooth finish
-       F – light, but beery aroma, strong taste, harder to swallow, strong aftertaste

So from that can you guess who like which beer?  Here’s how it came out.  YM said the Meteor really kicked some nasty ass, but thought the devil had probably brewed the other two to make us hate beer.  F like Fischer because it flowed as softly as a summer day, when the birds were singing and everyone dressed up and had a happy time. But, she was willing to like one of the others if it would make us feel happy, too.  TEM also liked the Fischer best, but for different reasons:  It had a refined flavor, without such a boorish aftertaste, and rested easily on the palate.

As a side note, please notice the photo has four bottles, the fourth being Picon (pee-COn).  Picon is an orange aperitif often added to beer in France.  Makes the beer sweeter and has an orange-thirst-quenching flavor.  Nice in the summer.  If you can’t find Picon in your liquor store, grocery store, or stingy neighbor’s pantry, substitute a couple of spoonfuls of any orange based liquor to an eight ounce glass of beer.  Just be sure to wear a scarf and pull a small round table and a couple of chairs onto your front lawn. Voilà!

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