Füchschen Alt - The craft alt

Dear beer enthusiasts,

Continuing the Düsseldorf/Altbier post series, I introduce to you the Füchschen Alt. I have purposely moving from bigger breweries to smaller ones, and after passing through Gatz and Schumacher, we arrive at the one which is considered to be the craft beer of the Altbiers.

I don't mean to go into cliche fallacies and say that all craft beers are excellent, but when you combine old tradition with the smaller scale production - which allows better quality control of your raw materials - you usually get good results, and the Füchschen Alt is a good example of that.

Füchschen Alt - The craft Altbier

This 500ml bottle contains a very good quality Altbier with 4,5% alcohol content, the main product of Füchschen Brewery. But, as Schumacher, they are not limited to producing altbier, nor are they afraid to try new variations of their old recipes, generating quite some interesting limited-edition brews.

In their website, they claim that even those recipe variations abide to the Reinheitsgebot (German Purity Law). Now, I have mixed feelings about this... if they mean the newest German regulations, then it is alright, that's their obligation to follow the rule and offer the consumers beer which is appropriated and certified for consumption. But if they mean the old and outdated 1516 Reinheitsgebot, then I really think they should rethink that policy...

The old regulation made sense then, in 1516, but today it limits the creativity of the brewer, mainly when we are talking about a brewery with small scale production that could produce quite some innovative brews if it would be audacious and break away a little from the cast that has been paralising German brewers for quite a long time.

A beer does not have to follow the Reinheitsgebot to be tasty, and, independent of abiding to it or not, the Füchschen Alt is a tasty beer, definitely worth to try.

This bottle was acquired, as the others mentioned in this post series, during my backpack trip in 2008... maybe it's time I pay Düsseldorf another visit and have a go at this years special editions...

Cheers!