Franconia Beer Message Board
Pils |
| Posted by Nick B. on 2016-09-14 01:13:45 |
| Jürgen reported below somewhere that Mager's Pils was better than the Dunkel when he visited. It's OK to be wrong! Now with that out of the way, the old standard Keesmann Pils is gone, since they made it stronger and cut back on the hops a year or two ago. But there's another Franconian great Pils that doesn't get mentioned much: St. Georgen Bräu. It's got a lovely, grassy hoppy aroma and flavour. It's not outright bitter, and it's not even all that *dry*, with a light sweet note that somehow works well. As I was enjoying one outside a Kneipe here in town last week, I thought to myself, the ultimate German Pils would be half St. G. and half Jever. Jever's massive bitterness and dryness combined with St. G's hoppiness (flavour & aroma) would make a fantastic Pils. And so I thought I'd "experiment" a little.  First, the three Pilses compared to each other revealed, well, Jever knocks the other two on their collective arse. It's just way, way more bitter, and there is quite a bit of hoppiness too, which I think stands out more when comparing it to the more delicate Franconians. The St. G does have a SLIGHT bit more hoppiness than the Keesmann, but it's not a huge difference. Comparing those two alone is worthwhile. I and others I know have said that Jever was dumbed down a decade or so ago, in that the flavour & aroma hopping was reduced, while the bitterness and dryness remained. It's not so noticable when you compare it to markedly less well-hopped Pilses like these. Anyway, mixing it with Keesmann yields a Jever Lite, whereas mixing with St. Georgen Bräu yields a SLIGHTLY hoppier Jever Lite. Mixing all three somehow didn't work well. So...meh. I was let down by the relative lack of hoppiness in the St. G. Mixing it with bitter Jever yields an interesting, drinkable Pils, but St. G's hoppiness just didn't come through well at all. (The glasses are 20+ years old; back then they called it a "Microbrew Expo", the "c-word" hadn't even been dreamt up in the minds of marketeers by then. Or it'd been ignored by Oregonians.) |
| Followups: |
 Pils by pivnizub on 2016-09-14 03:13:08 |
| Pils by Jürgen Wening on 2016-09-14 03:30:31 |
| Pils by Jason on 2016-09-14 05:38:34 |
| Pils by Nick B. on 2016-09-14 05:57:28 |
| Pils by Barry on 2016-09-14 06:43:06 |
| Pils by pivnizub on 2016-09-14 07:31:26 |
| Pils by Uncle Jimbo on 2016-09-14 10:18:06 |
| Pils by jason on 2016-09-15 00:50:11 |