Dark Island Reserve - The 1000th Beer Bottle

The year was 2000 when I first tried a beer which was not a regular Brazilian Pilsner... and by the beginning of 2001 I had a few bottles decorating my shelf. In 2008, with some 250 bottles in my collection, I set a goal... I wanted to try and collect one thousand different beers before I die.

At the time, it sounded like a reasonable goal... not impossible to achieve, but still hard enough to keep it interesting. In 2009 I moved to Germany, and realized that my goal might had actually been set too low... in 2012 I had 800 bottles and in June, 2014, it finally happened...

It was not like other milestones like the 700th, 800th or 900th bottle, which passed unnoticed... no, the 1000th bottle required some preparation, and it was a hard choice to decide which beer would fill in that symbolic but most important post.

In April 2014 I came across this quite uncommon 750ml bottle in a specialized shop in Caen, France. The label itself called my attention at first, and when I read the specifications of this 10% orcadian ale, I realized I had in my hands a strong candidate for such a special occasion.

It is brewed by the Orkney Brewery in small batches and aged in oak casks which were formerly used for the production of fine malt whiskeys. It is a very exclusive beer and the price paid for it reflects this fact very well...

I am a firm believer that the taste of a beer is much more related to the occasion in which you drink it than to its price... the cheapest, most watered down pilsen in the world can taste amazing if drank in a hot summer afternoon in the company of good ol' friends, and the fanciest sparkling ale can prove to be a quite boring experience if the occasion just doesn't fit...

But when you combine a great beer with a great moment, you can generate a once-in-a-lifetime experience...

The occasion was very well planned, I had friends from different places visiting, the celebration party went from the early afternoon well into the next day's morning and in that meantime we opened the 998th, the 999th and finally, the Dark Island Reserve.

The choice I made for my 1000th beer bottle proved to be a wise one... this is a beer for great moments, and I say that having tried only a small volume of it, after all, sharing it with good ol' friends was part of the experience.

I still haven't defined a number for my new "life goal", but I definitely want to find and drink this beer again. I am just afraid it will never taste as good as it did on that rainy but amazing late June afternoon....

Maybe when I reach 2000... :-)

Cheers!

Faust brewery - Auswandererbier

Dear readers and beer enthusiasts,

as I told you, during the 3 years gap in this blog, my collection went over 1000 beers... This event didn't go without notice! It was celebrated in June 2014, among friends from several different nationalities, several of them, immigrants.

With the exeption of a Brazilian who came from London, all of them have immigrated to Germany... we had an Italian and an Ucranian coming from Munich, a Mexican coming from Berlin, a Turkish who lives in Frankfurt, a Croatian who built her life in Karlsruhe, a Chinese who now holds German nationality and, finally, me, a Brazilian host who had been in Germany for almost 5 years at that point.

But why the hell I am telling you about this whole mess of immigrants gathered in a house, drinking beer and celebrating? Isn't this the story of the 1000th beer bottle?

No, it isn't.

My German-speaking readers might have already realized where I am going with this... the name of this beer - Auswandererbier - translates to "The emigrant beer" and the numbers printed below it - 1849 - represent a very specific year in Germany.

1849 was a hard year in Baden

It is the year when a Democratic revolution was supressed by the Prussian Monarchy, in events that later led to the creation of Germany in 1871.

Due to the monarchy persecution, in between the years of 1850 and 1891, around 4 million Germans emigrated to the USA, in between those emigrants, was August Krug, whose father owned the brewery "Zum Weissen Löwen", today known as Faust brewery.

His father, Anton Georg Krug, created this high alcoholic beer for his son, adding extra hops so it would last the ship trip to America. Later on that year, Anton sold the brewery and followed his son to the USA.

Nowadays, Faust brewery pays tribute to its previous owner and his son through this 8,0% alcohol ale, made with both American and German hops.

Auswandererbeer - Emigrant beer

Today, less than one and a half centuries after the revolution and the german emigrating movement, Germany is one of the preferred destination of emigrants and the 3rd country in number of foreign students. It is not weird if it was then drank by a multinational bunch, in a celebration in Karlsruhe, less than 40km away from where one of the last revolutionary fortresses (Rastatt) fell in 1849...

I have quite some simpaty towards this ale, once I am myself an emigrant (one that happens to love extra hoppy beers!) and I can just imagine how hard a German emigrant would miss good beer in the USA at those times...

Just as a follow up, this was the 999th bottle of my collection, the story of the 1000th comes next week...

Cheers!!!

Rothaus Tannen Zäpfle - Crossing the Atlantic

It is common for governments to own businesses.

There are state owned power plants, state owned oil companies, telecommunications and so on.

But in Germany (oh, Germany...) there are state owned BREWERIES! A very good example of such wonder is the Tannen Zäpfle Rothaus Pils, product of the Badische Staatsbrauerei Rothaus AG

Tannen Zäpfle - "Karlsruher gold"

Owned by the state of Baden-Württemberg, this beer is very easy to find in the city where I currently live, Karlsruhe. The metallic golden wrap which covers the neck and cap of this bottle can (sadly enough) be found spread around apartments, squares, train stations, universities or whatever place which has hosted a party or a "small social gathering" the day before.

That gave this beer the local nickname of "Karlsruhe's gold"... and by the price that a few clubs charge you for a 330 ml Rothaus bottle, the idea that there is some gold in it starts sounding actually quite reasonable...

It is a German pils, light and easy to drink, slightly more alcoholic than a regular pils (5.1%) and usually served in 330ml bottles as the one above

But although I've lived in Karlsruhe for some time already, this bottle was acquired years before, in Munich. At that time, I was not really sure about staying in Germany, and had to go back to Brazil to solve a few issues before making my decision.

So this bottle, together with approximately another 200 I had gathered in my two years of Munich, crossed the ocean to Brazil. It was not a smooth ride, the careless treatment from part of the mail companies and a strike of the Brazilian post offices contributed for the loss of around 20 of the bottles.

Moving continents is never easy... but I did it again in 2012, and came back to Germany. The bottles didn't come with me right away, my sister gently kept them at her place for a few years.

When it came the time to bring them, in January of 2015, I opted for a moving company to do the transport. This time, it was over 800 bottles being shipped to my new home in Karlsruhe.

The transport took months and I got to admit that, having the loss rate of 10% from the last time still in mind, I was scared about losing rare bottles in the process. When the packages finally arrived, I immediately started checking for broken bottles. After going over hundreds of bottles, I found a single broken one.

800 bottles, and only one was broken... not a bad number one would say, but if that was a rare bottle, the loss would still haunt me. I unwrapped it carefully, trying hard not to cut myself, and facing the dreadful possibility of losing yet another rare bottle...

But this is what I found inside the bubble wrap: 

A tragic loss... or maybe not

I didn't even remember that this bottle was in the moving, but I was so relieved to see the golden metallic sheet and the green lable emergin from the protective plastic...

Did I say relieved? No, no ,no... I meant DEVASTATED! So utterly devastated I walked 15 meters to the next bar and washed my sorrow away... with a Tannen Zäpfle  :-)

Cheers!

New beers, new stories, small changes - The Retake!

Dear casual reader / follower,

you most likely noticed that this blog has been left aside for the last three years (!!!)

After so much neglect from my part, I finally gathered the inspiration and courage to retake writting the blog.

There are no excuses for not writting for this long, after all, in these three years my collection went over a thousand bottles, I moved continents (twice) carrying hundreds of bottles with me, I came across interesting lables, tasty beers (from regular stuff like coffee or chocolate to really different ones like sauerkraut, chestnuts or manioc), I had friends bringing me beer from aborad, not only from close by countries, like Croatia, Denmark and Sweden, but also from more distant lands like India, Japan, Kenya and Israel.

In summation: I have so many stories to share and so many people to acknowledge and thank that I had no choice but reviving this blog.

This time I decided to put some more energy and dedication into it, to make the blog more entertaining and better looking.

Along with my new posts, I'll be experimenting with small changes in the design, background pictures, colors and ad placements... every feedback that I get from you in order to make this blog more pleasant to the eye and the mind will be very welcome!

My idea is to bring you weekly posts, but depending on the popularity I reach, new posts will come more often.

I will start this Wednesday, the 15th of July, with a story of an international move and a state-owned brewery in Baden-Württemberg. For now, I leave you all with an inspirational message

Such beautiful and motivating words...

To finish this post/announcement, I want to thank all the viewers that have visited the blog even in the absence of new posts, and ask you to help me increase the reach of this blog.

For all of you who help making my weird habit of collecting bottles look like a sofisticated hobby, thank you very much!!

Cheers!!!