The Bar Towel

So how would you bock fans classify the Mill Street Helles Bock? This is my favourite bock - I guess my palate is not that fond of the darker variety. Is it a true bock? A maibock?

midlife crisis wrote:...Mill Street Helles Bock?...Is it a true bock?

Bock:

Deep copper to dark brown in color. Medium to full-bodied flavor. Hop flavor and aroma can be light to non-existent.

Pretty loose definition, and in practice there seems to be a lot of style range for 'single' bock varieties, as there is with pale lagers. 'Helles' means light-coloured, as compared to 'dunkeles' (dark) - the adjectives. Dunkel is the proper noun for "Dark Beer" and Helles/Hell - "Light beer."

Doppels are interesting to me because the malt flavor is more concentrated. I put a great Doppel next to my favorite Belgian Ales even if the mojo is more straightforward than Belgies (with their crazy yeasts, spices, and multiple fermentations and other additions like sugar.) It's quite startling how contemptuous Germans can be of non-reinheitsgebot Belgian ales, when both of those cultures have such a high craft ethic in their respective brewing cultures & have for a long time. But in the end this 'stand of principle' has happened to preserve all these distinct Bavarian styles of beer in (we may think) classic form.

Just a heads up everyone. I stopped at Queens Quay LCBO on Wednesday and noticed the Asam Bock was on the shelf @ $2.95. What a great beer for the price!

Probably the only case in the system so far, ie. the one they opened to do the lab test, so here are the remaining bottles. More cases to arrive... when is this release, April?

It was supposed to be mid-March.

Hey look at that, we're in mid-March now! No sign of the release though...

What, you're surprised? I figure we'll be lucky to get some by Easter. Keeping the expectations low means that the LCBO is more likely to meet them. Remember the first coming of the Rodenbach Grand Cru a few years back, when it never materialised in a release of five or six beers?

No, I'm not surprised, but tracking these releases as they trickle in is a semi-annual Bartowel pastime I intend to continue until we don't have them any more (probably sooner than we think)

tupalev wrote:(probably sooner than we think)

Then what do we do, pool our money together for private orders (or to do a hit on the guys who caused it.... no I'm kidding... just my 'old world' humour shining through a bit.)

tupalev wrote:No, I'm not surprised, but tracking these releases as they trickle in is a semi-annual Bartowel pastime I intend to continue until we don't have them any more (probably sooner than we think)

Yeah, I do the same thing as well, which is why there was the hint of bitterness in my comment. It's crazy that we're forced to wait around like children on Christmas Eve for a few measly beers every four or five months. It just builds my resentment to the LCBO. At least when Vintages was importing beers, we could get a couple every two weeks. Hell, I'd be happy with one a month, with the odd flourish of a few additional ones here and there. Kind of like methadone to a heroin addict - not as good as it could be, but enough to get by.