Schumacher Alt - German numbers

Dear beer enthusiast,

giving sequence to the series of altbier/Düsseldorf related posts, I bring you Düsseldorf's oldest Altbier - Schümacher Alt

The Schumacher brewery has been producing this 4,6% dark beer since 1838. It produces also other two variants that I still haven't had the chance to try, but are definitely on my "to drink" list. The Schumacher Alt is produced in a smaller scale than the Gatz and it doesn't belong to a big beer conglomerate, standing proud as a "home-brew tradition". It is served in four points inside the city, including at the brewery itself.

Schumacher Alt - Düsseldorf's oldest Altbier

And it was at the brewery that I acquired this 1 liter bottle, in the year of 2008, while backpacking through the region.

When buying your beer directly at the brewery, you'll always have some advantages. The biggest thing in favor is that the prices are cheaper than in a supermarket or regular bar/pub, mainly if you are buying in quantity. If you are not buying in quantity, though, you might see some confused faces as you kindly ask the gentleman loading 50 crates of beer in a truck for a single bottle...

Another issue for me in 2008 was the language barrier... my lack of German at that time caused the communication in between me and the aforementioned gentleman to be a bit faulty.

Most germans can speak english, but not all of them are confident about their skills. Nevetheless, they try their best to communicate and that guy loading the truck was no exception, he mustered the words and told me in quite good english that the single 1 Liter bottle costed "two euros fifty eight cents"

The price struck me as a bit odd... quite a broken number, but I had already seen people in supermarkets counting every penny of their change, so I gatherred the coins I had and gave him exactly 2 euros and 58 cents... and he shook his head saying "no no no... fifty eight cents!"

For a few seconds we looked at each other, I looked confused and he was probably thinking something like "who's this crazy foreigner who comes here to buy ONE bottle and can't even pay for it properly"

Let me tell you, dear readers, one thing about the German language... on top of all the grammar rules and declinations which make this a quite hard language to learn, they also count their numbers in a bit odd fashion... they don't say twenty one... it's one and twenty.

Don't ask me why, I think the British used to say it like that also in an older form of the English language, all I know is that a small silence was in the air until I could gather my scarce knowledge of German and say something like "Sie meinen 'zwei Euro fünf und achtzig?'" (you mean 'two euros five and eighty').

A positive shook of his head showed me that the language barrier had been broken and that I could take my beer with me now...

That is not my only story with language barriers and numbers... if you think the Germans say their numbers in a bizarre manner, then you should hear how the French do it... but that's for another post

Cheers!!

Gatz Alt - A short introduction to Altbiers

Fellow beer enthusiasts,

today I will go a little bit into the world of altbiers. I will do that by posting a very common altbier - Gatz Alt. With this, I intend to open a series of posts related to other Altbiers and to the city of Düsseldorf.

The Gatz Altbier is, since 1999, a part of the Carlsberg Brewery, it contains 4,8% alcohol and is sold mostly in 500ml bottles, such as the one I acquired in 2008 when backpacking through the region of North-Rhein Westphalia.

Gatz Alt - a part of the Carlsberg Empire in Düsseldorf

This region contains two rival cities, Cologne and Düsseldorf, each one with their very own kind of beer: Altbier for Düsseldorf and Kölsch for Cologne. Both use top fermentation yeasts (ales) and are fermented in warm temperatures (but still not as warm as the british ales). But the similarities stop there, the color and taste of the beers are completely different, making for two beer styles that are usually loved in their home town and despised at the other. Order a Kölsch in Düsseldorf, and you'll be sent straight to Cologne...

As much as I like the city of Cologne and do enjoy an occasional Kölsch, I have to say that I prefer the stronger taste of the Altbier.

Altbiers are dark in color and bitter in taste, and although they are produced mostly in Düsseldorf, there are brands of Altbier produced also in other cities, like Münster, Krefeld, Warstein and even in Cologne!! (More on that one later...)

This kind of beer is a surviving tradition... back in the time of the German unification, Bavaria imposed their purity law (Rheinheitsgebot) as a condition to join the forming country, which put an end to many spiced beers produced in the other regions. The Altbier survived this imposition, being nowadays one of the few traditional beer types with its origins in the northern portion of Germany.

When observing a map of the German breweries, one can notice the huge concentration of breweries in the southern portion (Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) when compared to the northern states.

Beer map of Germany - Augmented area corresponds to Franconia (no surprise there)

That's it for this week my friends, in the next weeks I will be bringing some curious stories around Düsseldorf and some lower-scale produced Altbiers.

Cheers!

Homestead Lager

Dear fellow beer enthusiasts,

we all had already one of those days... those days when all turns out wrong, nothing goes your way and by the end of it, all you want to do is sit back on your favorite chair, relax and indulge in a beer.

Don't get me wrong, beer is for enjoying and not blanking out, and I don't believe any problems will ever be solved in the bottom of a bottle. As someone who truly enjoys the taste of beer and savours the moment and ambient created around it, I am aversed to binge-drinking and drinking for the pure sake of getting drunk is definitely not on my to-do list. I actually believe it is quite a waste.

Nevertheless, one glass, in good company, at the end of a stressful day can help you relax and improve your mood...

That is what I was going for after a particularly bad day in the beginning of 2007... it was a not-so-nice Sunday, definitely one of THOSE days I described in the first paragraph of this post, I went with a few friends to the stadium to watch the semi-finals of the regional football (soccer) championship.

I should've stayed home... the weather took a turn to the worst, the rain washed us completely and we were standing there, cold and miserable for almost 2 hours in a very empty stadium... meanwhile we were watching our team being beaten senselessly by 4x1. We were wet, cold and had no reason whatsoever to celebrate, our team had been eliminated from the championship.

After that, we decided that the best we could do was to just relax a bit and have a beer. We headed home and in my fridge there were only 3 bottles. They all were a gift from Mario Pedroni, a friend from university who worked on a ski station in the US during winter, and brought me the local beverages produced by the hotel at which he had worked.

The options were a Lager, an Ale and another one simply labeled "Beer". Being a good host, I let my guest, Henrique Strobl, choose first... he chose the Lager which names this post. A very simple lager, with undisclosed alcohol content, served in a 330ml brown bottle.

Homestead Lager: 1 out of 3 is not a proportion you want in a bad day

I chose the Ale, but once I poured the said "Ale" into the glass, I noted that something was very weird... there was no foam forming, and little gas bubbles were all over the glass... I took a sip, and it tasted like lemonade...

What I had in my hands, ladies and gentlemen, was a Ginger Ale... for those of you who, like me at that time, don't know what a ginger ale is, it is soda. Soda which for some reason carries the misleading word "Ale" in its name.

I was disappointed, as good as it could taste, it didn't fit the expectations for that rainy and cold afternoon. So I finished it quickly and went with high hopes for the third bottle, that one labeled "Beer".

As I poured it into the glass, the sensation of Dejà-vu filled me... again no foam, again the taste of soda and again the surprise provided by a very misleading product name... this time I was tasting a Root Beer.

While for me this was something completely new (I had never been to the US or heard of those sodas), it was not unkown to Strobl... he knew it all along and couldn't stop laughing at each one of my surprises.

That dayt I learned a very important lesson on international sodas and we ended up sharing the lager...

Now I can remember this story and laugh about it, but up to this day I wonder if Mário's intentions were honest or if he intended to play a prank on me...

Nevertheless, I thank him for the beer and for the story  :)

Cheers

Antarctica Original - The Old Companion

Dear friends and readers,

from all the beers I've tried in my life, this one is most likely the one I've consumed the most.

You see, some beers have a fine selection of malts and hops; some beers have exotic ingredients in their recipe; others rely on showing semi-naked women in their TV advertisements; and some print creative and colourful labels or use oddly shaped/coloured bottles to call the consumers attention.

Not this one.

This beer doesn't feature in expensive commercials (Antarctica barely advertises "Original"), it doesn't have anything exotic or special in its formulation and had held the same traditional old-fashioned lable for ages! Also the brown, 600ml bottle is the most regular bottle one can find in Brazil.

                                                 

Antarctica Original - Good ol' college companion

Its taste is, in my opinion, only slightly better than the other InBev-produced Brazilian beers (like Skol, Brahma, etc...) and it is not (much) more expensive than the other brands either... but this beer STILL holds a special place in my collection and in my memories...

I mentioned in my last post that the taste of a beer has a strong relation with the occasion in which you consume the beer, and that's what makes this beer so special to me. It is enough to say that this is the beer that was sold at the students center, Centro Moraes Rego (or simply CMR), during my university years.

I usually try to tell a story for each beer that I post here, but this one has simply too many stories... a good one is maybe how it was used by the CMR's administration as leverage on a negotiation with the veteran students: It would be sold at cost-price as long as there was no smoking indoors in the common area - a rather weird deal, but good for all parts involved :)

Many strong friendships were built while sipping from these bottles, many good parties were fueled by it and many calm and enjoyable evenings went by while playing pool, cards and/or just talking and clinging bottles at CMR

Living away from my home country, sometimes I feel nostalgic, and when I do, not even the finest IPA will help.

Too many "beer connouisseurs" get too full of themselves and snobish from the top of their refined ales and craft beers and end up forgetting that, in the end, the most important thing is not what you are drinking.

But with whom you are drinking...

Cheers.