#375: Leikeim? I Hardly Know 'em!

 I don't know what a landbier is. In fact, a landbier might be nothing at all. A quick click around Google tells us it's simply - predictably - land beer or beer of the land or country beer. Essentially, a marketing name for any beer from a (presumably rural) German brewer that doesn't fit neatly into an established category of its own. As vague as that may be, I'm happy to roll with it. 

Leikeim Landbier tastes every bit a lager, more of a helles than a pils and with a lovely fullsome grain to it. It's not particularly hoppy but it is well balanced, with just a pale suggestion of grass. At 5.4% it's a bit chewy, dare I say even flabby, its full strength not quite delivering much value. A perfectly nice lager then, but the most distinctive thing about this is its landbier 'designation'. 

We're on much firmer ground with Leikeim Pils. This one is a more standard 4.9% and pours a wonderfully crystal pale straw. It's enticingly fresh and grassy, perhaps not as much as Jever (my personal benchmark for a German pils) but after the relative non-event of the Landbier its nice to have more assertive nobles on show. Leikeim are a Franconian outfit and there's something distinctly Franconian to be found in the malt profile here - not the clean grain nothings of the nordsee, nor the pillowy marshmallow of Bohemia, but just as in its geography it is closer to the latter than the former. This gently sweet biscuit wouldn't be out of place in a Helles but it's certainly lighter, paler and cleaner than most of its Bavarian cousins. Malt is fun! The beer is fun too, a perfectly pleasant pils, if not the bitter noble skunk of my heart's desire.

We round out the trio with the Steinbier, a word that exists in my mind mainly as a segment in an episode of Michael Jackson's Beer Hunter TV series. I watched those six episodes to death in the very earliest days of my beer obsession, fascinated by the styles and traditions described but more infatuated with this glimpse of a world, a culture that was (at my time of viewing) already old and changed immeasurably.

Tasting a beer like a Steinbier is exciting for the same reason - here is a living relic, a thing that is done not because it is easy or convenient but because this is how it's done, we like it this way. To my mind, the hot stones added to the mash of a steinbier are supposed to caramelise some malt sugars and impart some wisp of smoke. There's not much of either going on in this one. OK, it is sweet, but not excessively or unusually so. Its mildly raisiny malt and toffeeish stuff is about is distinct as it gets. Like the Landbier, this one doesn't achieve great value for its ABV either, in this case 5.8%. The body is about right, being 'medium' or so, but you'll have had fuller bodies in weaker helles'.

Maybe I'm nitpicking - and missing the point - but this modern drinker was hoping for more novelty from this novel tradition. 

A decent set, but the pils is clearly going to be my pick if I'm ever back among the Leikeims.

#374: Lussssshhh

In the last few years most of my beer buying has been taken up with pils, saison, gueuze, kolsch, pils again or whatever else occupies that queer twilight in the venn diagram intersect of austere and fun. 

But then, every now and again, a homo heidelbergensis such as myself craves the sweet juice of life and nothing will do but a modern soupy IPA. 

The one I've been returning to the most of late is Dot Brew's Lush DIPA. Seemingly first released in mid/late 2024, cans of this still survive in my local and yes, I still buy it and yes, I know it's not fresh and yes, I too waste a massive fucking amount of my life miserably checking the infuriatingly indecipherable 'canned-on' dates of the Northern Hemisphere's canned IPAs but yes, even if you're not sucking the beer straight from the samplecock of a BBT it will still be very nice if it's a very nice beer. 

And Lush is a very nice beer indeed. It's soft and sweet in the main but with a burst of overripe citrus intensity. Crucially it avoids all common DIPA pitfalls; the finish is clean and swift, like a flat Lilt (in a good way). It's definitely sweet but it's definitely not sticky, and even more definitely moreish and approachable. Grapefruit abounds, orange marmalade supports, vanilla recedes, and the body is not as thick and creamy as expected - there's a gentle but essential little sparkle of life in there. 

I don't know how regular Dot keeps their beers, I suspect this might be a one and done situation. And what harm, there are a quintillion iterations of this exact beer to be iterated and all are deserving of their glimmer of life from the immense void of the brewers' subconcious. That said, if you see this one around, it's still got it. 

#373: Flussssshh

De Glazen Toren's Saison d'Erpe-Mere is a longtime favourite of mine and I've also been impressed by their wonderful tripel. As such, when I stumbled across a sole, tired Autumn seasonal back in October just days shy of its best before date - a veritable shelf turd of old - languishing sadly beside beers brewed a full two years more recently I decided that bringing him home was the most humane thing to do. 

Cuvée Angelique (brewed 2022) is a slow gusher that creeps ominously up the neck of the bottle once opened but pours quite wonderfully, if carefully decanted. Its appropriately autumnal brown shade is matched by an aroma of raisin. There's suprisingly little yeast on show here, allowing the beer to present basically like a doppelbock. Milk chocolate, more raisin and real warmth appear on the palate, almost enough to suggest an ABV higher than its stated 8.3%. Most surprising of all is the swift dry finish, possibly suggesting diastatic yeast, but producing shocklingly little in terms of an ester profile. 

In all it's very enjoyable but is practically begging for food, ideally some fat sweet salty cheese (I don't know I haven't had real cheese in years. For fellow losers, Koko cheddar block is the one to go for). Whether it has always been this way is anyone's guess, but if and when a fresh version appears on the shelves I'll be very interested to find out.

#372: Dead Reckoning

In the earlier days of my beer obsession the appearance of an American craft classic like Left Hand's Wake Up Dead would have been enough to pull me into town for the tick, though to be fair, I'm pretty sure that in those days in the early to mid 2010s it was readily available even here. 

In any case I've never had it and when I spotted it in my local recently it looked quaint and nostalgic and was an immediate pick. 

There is something nostalgic about Wake Up Dead. This is the antithesis of a pastry stout, seemingly hailing from a more innocent time. It is bitter, resplendant with cold coffee, dark chocolate and a hint of fruit. That fruit isn't raisiny like you'd expect but more bitter and tart red berries, although this is very much an undercurrent. The main flavour is dominated entirely by that bitter coffee and chocolate. It is robust and bracing, a true anti-pastry stout, and wonderful for it. 

#371: Biére du Jour

Predictably, the new house consumes the vast majority of my spare time, but, crucially, the consumption of beer does and indeed must go on.

I consider this my biére du jour because I've found myself returning to the well again and again as the days begin to stay longer, brighter and warmer. 

I still don't know exactly what it is that makes a cold IPA a cold IPA and not an IPL (remember them?) but Galway Bay have put out a cracker.

 

I Hear You Like IPA is aptly named; it is, to me, a modern recreation of the exact type of hoppy beer that I fell madly in love with around ten or so years ago. Oh, is it juicy? Kind of, but not really. Is it citrusy? Yeah it is a bit, mainly grapefruit but that's not the main event. Is it a dank sweaty savoury sweatball that oozes lupulin and therefore must be considered good even though it basically tastes foul? No, not at all.

It's dreamy, an elegy to pine tree resin and grapefruit peel and makes me think I'm having my first ever sip of Sierra Nevada Something Or Other. Cold fermentation and lagery malts has cleaned it up, making it a straight and true hop forward expression unclouded by esters and unbothered by crystal malt clamminess; no, this is pure nostalgia without the wonky bad bits. 

I love it, I want it, and I still buy it when I see it.

#370: Happy Landings

This week, my family and I moved into our own home. With possessions and plans in the air, I'm sticking my head back into the blog to briefly consider a beer I've consumed quite a bit of recently, Ayinger Bairisch Pils. 

Brilliant gold and frothy as you'd like, it looks resplendant even with its gentle haze. I'm not entirely sure what sets a Bairisch pils apart from other German pils', except for the fact that it is made in Bavaria. There's every chance that that is the only meaning behind the name, because there's nothing especially novel about the beer itself. You're greeted with a mild and pleasant sweet-floral aroma, suggesting honey and grain.

To taste, there's a fairly robust bitterness, not nearly so assertive as a Jever or the like but more than you'd be likely to find in your average helles from the region. Speaking of helles, there is some of the same green pepper crunchiness to the hop profile I find in fresher helles, but the malt (which I'm only assuming comprises pilsner and no Munich) contributes only soft sweetnesses, expressing in turns as marshmallow, digestive biscuit and cereal. The effect is of a clean and well balanced pils that leans a tad more heavily to the bitter side of things, being relatively dry and, to my mind, slicker and thinner in body than a Czech example.

It's delicious, moreish, quaffable, and probably deserves a bigger bottle. However, I can't deny that I'm a devotee of the 330ml bottled format; upending and sucking the neck of one of these at the end of a long and busy moving day will make it disappear in about 5 minutes if you're not careful, but there's also more than enough here to sit with and think about if, like me, you are a pain the hole. 

#369: Tripel Take

More tripels today. That is, a tripel and a beer I think might be a tripel. Both are relatively later additions to Trappist brewing lineups that are, to put it mildly, well-established, and the latter is where we will start.

The naming of Chimay's Cent Cinquant celebrates the brewery's 150th anniversary way back in 2012, but I have not seen it commonly available until quitre recently. It's billed rather vaguely as a strong blonde, though the naming convention does suggest a close connection with its little brother, the undeniable tripel Cinq Cents. 

However, tripel credentials fade soon after pouring. The aroma is fairly mild and sort of sweet, suggesting a bit of honey, but the palate is, well, weird. There's honey here too, but with lemon and thyme streaked throughout, or even herbal lemon balm leaf and mint. It threatens to become medicinal at this point but remains just on the right side of pleasant, easing back into fresh, floral citrus and accomplished Trappist digestibility. 

In the end my assumptions were proven wrong; strong blonde is about the most appropriate name I can think of for this beer, vague as it is, because tripel it ain't. 

Much more of a tripel is Rochefort Tripel Extra - they even put it right in the name. Golden with a light haze, you get all the caramel, cereal and pepper that your tripely heart desires, but the palate is a pleasant surprise. It's bittersweet, potentially leaning more towards the bitter, with genuine leafy hop greens alongside more gentle spice. If that sounds austere, don't worry; all is washed away leaving practially none of that leafiness or spice in the aftertaste, just a streak of honest to goodness caramel malt sweetness and then nothing. 

All this makes for a very pleasant nightcap with perhaps more interest that your usual, sweeter Westmalle or Karmeliet, but both of those beers might be more faithful, contemporary archetypes for the style.