The Bar Towel

Saw this brew in the LCBO after a long absence. I love the malt spine but there is a creepy vegetable taste that lies just below the big malt profile that seems to spoil things....too bad...we lack malt accented import lagers here.

I tried this a couple of months back and quite liked it. One of the better Euro-lagers on the shelves right now I thought. I also didn't get the same vegetal notes that you found - maybe I had a fresher bottle?

GregClow wrote:I tried this a couple of months back and quite liked it. One of the better Euro-lagers on the shelves right now I thought. I also didn't get the same vegetal notes that you found - maybe I had a fresher bottle?

Give it another try Greg...I can even smell the veggies in the drained bottle.

Some East European breweries apparently use peas in the mash, an old practice to enhance strach and fermentable sugar content. This may explain a vegetable taste, but maybe the bottles weren't super-fresh, that is a possibility. Speaking of fresh beer from far away, on business recently in New York I stopped for lunch at Gingerman and had a pint of Ridgeway ESB on cask. The menu didn't say where it was from. I knew from the nose alone it was from England. I asked the waitress, she didn't know, and she asked the big guy with the reddish hair who manages the place and he confirmed it was an Engliah beer, clearly a B. United import. The quality was astonishing, it was very fresh and had no off-tastes whatever. Clearly it had been brought over quickly and kept at a uniform coolness. Later I checked on this bitter. It is brewed by the former head brewer at Brakspear (it shows), he brews mainly bottled beer and some draft at different locations, the main one being Hepworth.
Real ale can be kept for some months (2-3) if chilled at a uniform temperature and it poured to perfection. Many is the time I've had wonky pints of real ale in London and wished I could have a beer served as nicely as this one was. This is not a reddish-colored beer like Fuller ESB but rather a pale-colored one, yet rich with hop flavor. The English yeasts and cakey malts also made their unique presence known. Initially when English real ale was served in America it was (half the time or more) no good but that's changed since people are more familiar now with how real ale should taste. By the way the beer had dropped bright and I didn't have to face a cloudy pint with the sincere-but-meretricious explanation, "this is how it should be". This kind of beer is the gold standard for real ale and I would love to see its like in Ontario, both for its own sake and to compare to our local real ales. An import of this quality might serve as inspiration to some of our ale brewers, too.

Gary

old faithful wrote:had a pint of Ridgeway ESB on cask. The menu didn't say where it was from. I knew from the nose alone it was from England. I asked the waitress, she didn't know, and she asked the big guy with the reddish hair who manages the place and he confirmed it was an Engliah beer, clearly a B. United import.

There is a Ridgeway Bitter, but--as far as I can tell--no Ridgeway ESB. It's a Shelton Brothers import, not B. United, so I'm guessing that this is the beer that you had:

http://www.sheltonbrothers.com/beerProf ... BeerID=165

As for the vegetable flavour/aroma, it's probably due to DMS:

http://www.homebrewhaus.biz/html/dms.html

old faithful wrote:Some East European breweries apparently use peas in the mash, an old practice to enhance strach and fermentable sugar content. This may explain a vegetable taste, but maybe the bottles weren't super-fresh, that is a possibility. Speaking of fresh beer from far away, on business recently in New York I stopped for lunch at Gingerman and had a pint of Ridgeway ESB on cask. The menu didn't say where it was from. I knew from the nose alone it was from England. I asked the waitress, she didn't know, and she asked the big guy with the reddish hair who manages the place and he confirmed it was an Engliah beer, clearly a B. United import. The quality was astonishing, it was very fresh and had no off-tastes whatever. Clearly it had been brought over quickly and kept at a uniform coolness. Later I checked on this bitter. It is brewed by the former head brewer at Brakspear (it shows), he brews mainly bottled beer and some draft at different locations, the main one being Hepworth.
Real ale can be kept for some months (2-3) if chilled at a uniform temperature and it poured to perfection. Many is the time I've had wonky pints of real ale in London and wished I could have a beer served as nicely as this one was. This is not a reddish-colored beer like Fuller ESB but rather a pale-colored one, yet rich with hop flavor. The English yeasts and cakey malts also made their unique presence known. Initially when English real ale was served in America it was (half the time or more) no good but that's changed since people are more familiar now with how real ale should taste. By the way the beer had dropped bright and I didn't have to face a cloudy pint with the sincere-but-meretricious explanation, "this is how it should be". This kind of beer is the gold standard for real ale and I would love to see its like in Ontario, both for its own sake and to compare to our local real ales. An import of this quality might serve as inspiration to some of our ale brewers, too.

Gary

The peas in the mash thing is way overblown. Birzu Alus in Birzai, Lithuania has a couple of dark beers where pea sugars are used. They ferment out fully. It's just an adjunct to boost alcohol and is not very common at all.

On the smell of the Polish beer (DMS), maybe.

Regarding the Ridgeway ale, I am quite sure it was called "ESB" on The Gingerman's menu. Maybe I am wrong.

The designations used for the Ridegway/Hepworth beers may change for export, of course..

I clicked on the sheltonbrothers site, it comes up blank..

Gary

old faithful wrote:Some East European breweries apparently use peas in the mash, an old practice to enhance strach and fermentable sugar content.
Gary

Strange you should mention this it was a very light veggie taste like boiled pea or carrot water. It's masked fairly well in the body but you can still pick it up. I may try another bottle from another store to make sure my palate isn't losing it....I really wanted this beer to bee a good malty lager....it gets halfway there...just that odd background taste that puts me off.

Josh is right about peas being used in a part of Lithuania but I understand at one time the practice was over a much wider area of Slavic Europe. Adjunct is only part of the story, the Lithuanian brewers claim peas contribute to head retention and body. Whether other East European lands use peas or not I cannot say, but in times of shortage of malt and the usual adjuncts it wouldn't surprise me that they would add peas to the mash. This may have been done in Western Europe too, I know I have seen recipes in House Cyclopaedias from the 1800's advising addition of peas, but I can't put my finger on them at the moment. Speaking of lagers, I had a Steamwhistle tonight which was great, it smoked the lousy draft German beer I had in a business bar downtown before dinner. The latter tasted funky and weird, like it was in a can way too long. I don't know why I am tempted to try such things when genuine fresh bottom-fermented beer is made literally blocks away..

Gary