There should have been a picture here but I deleted it by accident
Bit of an intro
I was given this beer along with a whole host of others from the Störtebeker brewery by my German friend and colleague Miss Kohlsdorf. The brewery has been in existence since 1827 under the name Stralsunder Vereinsbraueri, which I assume to be because the brewery is in Stralsund on the Eastern end of the coast in Northern Germany. In 2011 they adopted the name Störtebeker Braumanufaktur, which is a nod to a German pirate by the name of Klaus Störtebeker. They do still produce some drinks under the name Stralsunder, which I think in that kind of industry a well known name is a very valuable thing. If it's well known for good reasons that is, if you were well known for producing terrible tasting, poisonous beer that caused the deaths of fifteen thousand people then your marketing department would probably advise distancing yourself from that particular name. At some point they realized demand for their deliciously intoxicating products was increasing to the point that they needed to build a new building, which they did. It was all modern and shiny and had one of the first mechanical refrigeration units. I don't really know what that is, but I imagine it being a refrigeration unit driven by a cart horse in a giant hamster wheel, with all kinds of cast iron levers and pistons in it. Before that I think they put the beer in a bronze container and dangled it in the sea. Maybe.
In recent years Störtebeker have been winning all kinds of awards, including bronze and silver awards at the European Beer Star in 2017, and the World Star Packaging Award the same year. the packaging award is nice to have of course and a genuinely impressive achievement, but it's secondary to the quality of the beer. Speaking of which I think it's worth getting onto that as soon as we can, so I'll give you some important details and get on with the review.
I had a 330ml bottle, which was actually a decent amount. I often find a bottle of that size isn't quite enough and need a second one, but not so with this one. it's bottled at a strength of 6.67% ABV, which seems like a very specific strength. I'm not sure why they measure it so accurately, surely 6.7% is close enough don't you think? I have no idea how much it cost because it was a gift, and I can't find a price online although I admit I haven't actually tried very hard to do that. I guess it's somewhere between tuppence a pint and five gold sovereigns. Have a look at the summary of info.
Brewery: Störtebeker Braumanufaktur
Beer name: Imperial Stout
Type of beer: Stout, obviously.
Price: Not a clue
Strength: 6.67% abv
Bottle size: 330 ml
Packaging
The bottle's your typical brown 330 ml beer bottle that thousands or different beers use. It looked a bit roughed up around the edges so it appears to be re-used. Not as roughed up as the bottle of banjul beer my uncle brought me from Gambia though, that one looked like it had been in the sea for a month. The label's pretty standard beer labeling too and to me looks kind of American. I accidentally deleted all my pictures of it though and I would grab one off the internet, but I'm a bit too lazy and this post has been a very long time in coming so I'm not going to bother. The bottle down't make much difference to the beer inside it anyway. Google it if you want to see what it look like.
Appearance
Very dark brown. Again, I deleted my photos of it, but here's an artist's rendering.
In recent years Störtebeker have been winning all kinds of awards, including bronze and silver awards at the European Beer Star in 2017, and the World Star Packaging Award the same year. the packaging award is nice to have of course and a genuinely impressive achievement, but it's secondary to the quality of the beer. Speaking of which I think it's worth getting onto that as soon as we can, so I'll give you some important details and get on with the review.
I had a 330ml bottle, which was actually a decent amount. I often find a bottle of that size isn't quite enough and need a second one, but not so with this one. it's bottled at a strength of 6.67% ABV, which seems like a very specific strength. I'm not sure why they measure it so accurately, surely 6.7% is close enough don't you think? I have no idea how much it cost because it was a gift, and I can't find a price online although I admit I haven't actually tried very hard to do that. I guess it's somewhere between tuppence a pint and five gold sovereigns. Have a look at the summary of info.
Brewery: Störtebeker Braumanufaktur
Beer name: Imperial Stout
Type of beer: Stout, obviously.
Price: Not a clue
Strength: 6.67% abv
Bottle size: 330 ml
Packaging
The bottle's your typical brown 330 ml beer bottle that thousands or different beers use. It looked a bit roughed up around the edges so it appears to be re-used. Not as roughed up as the bottle of banjul beer my uncle brought me from Gambia though, that one looked like it had been in the sea for a month. The label's pretty standard beer labeling too and to me looks kind of American. I accidentally deleted all my pictures of it though and I would grab one off the internet, but I'm a bit too lazy and this post has been a very long time in coming so I'm not going to bother. The bottle down't make much difference to the beer inside it anyway. Google it if you want to see what it look like.
Appearance
Very dark brown. Again, I deleted my photos of it, but here's an artist's rendering.
Artist's rendering. Emphasis on 'rend'.
As you can clearly see from my digital artwork, there was little to no head on it. It did have a little bit of beautiful caramel coloured foam which only lasted a few seconds. Fairly typical stout appearance really.
Aroma
Treacle toffee at first.
Sweet extract of malt like Tigger eats.
Bit of soy sauce.
I noted that it smells sticky, and it does. I'm not quite sure if that's because my snout was picking up something of texture, or if it was detecting things I already know to be sticky, like treacle toffee and extract of malt. I suspect the latter.
There was also a note of dry hay which I described as "in the background" which kind of means it was one of the less prominent aromas and seemed to be kind of behind everything else.
Taste
Sweet at first, treacle toffee like.
Bit of nuttiness
Kind of a biscuity malt taste, but much more malt than biscuit.
Dried fruits, quite prune like, but not entirely or exclusively prune.
Bitterness comes in a moment later.
Savouriness with the bitterness, like soy sauce.
Balance
A shade to the sweeter end, but very nicely balanced with bitterness, and nicely full flavoured. Very well balanced for a stout, I sometimes find stouts a bit too sweet and treacley. I fact if I'm not going to like a beer it's most often because it's too sweet. Bitterness you can get over by rinsing your mouth with another swig of your pint, but if it's too sweet then another gulp won't help.
A few extra comments
it's nice to have a beer with such a lot of flavour. Stouts and dark beers tend to deliver in that department. It's a pretty full bodied beer, as a stout ought to be. This one feels thick and satisfying in the mouth without being cloying and syrupy like some. The smell suggests something sticky, but it ends up being just right. On the whole it's just my kind of beer.
I didn't notice any yeasty sediment in the bottle. You're seeing yeaty sediment more and more these days with all the craft ales around. I have two theories about why Störtebeker don't have any. One is that they filter their beer before bottling. The other is that they allow the beer to sit on the yeast cake for a little bit after it's done fermenting. When beer ferments all the little yeasts breed like crazy, munching down fermentable sugars and peeing out alcohol all over the place. When they run out of sugar and drown in their own waste they die off or go dormant and sink to the bottom of the fermenter. If you're home brewing you chuck in a small packet of yeast and end up with an inch or two of greying brownish sludge at the bottom. Anyway, my theory is that they let the stout sit on the layer of dead yeast for a little bit before they drain it off. That would give it the slightly savoury soy sauce taste and give it extra time for any sediment to settle out before bottling.
Conclusion
Awesome! Just my kind of thing. Plenty of dark flavours and satisfying thickness, without being gooey and syrupy and sickly sweet. I'm not sure I'd describe it as refreshing though, it's more of a "sit down late at night and have a proper beer" kind of beer than a refreshing hot summers day kind of beer. Not what you'd call a session beer, more of an event beer. They've managed to Goldilocks it in all the right areas, so on the standard one to ten scale I'd say it's just right. I definitely think it deserves it's various awards. Would I buy it again? Well I didn't buy it this time, but if i ever see it for sale I'll pick up a few bottles without hesitating. Lovely stuff!
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed procrastinating instead of writing it. If you don't like procrastination you should share it with your friends immediately. Maybe copy paste the url into an email to your boss. I'm sure he'd like to know what I think of a German beer he's never heard of.
No comments:
Post a Comment