Can a celebrity chef brew? Jamie’s Italian Libertà.

Jamie’s Italian Libertà

Lager style

Bottle from Jamie’s Italian Greenwitch UK

Jamie Oliver has a special space in my heart. We have once prepared asparagus with oranges per his recipe, and this was the first time in my life I liked asparagus.

A Point for Jamie.

However, now, thanks to my wife and friends I have learned that Jamie has become a brewer. Why not, brewing is a kind of cooking and I haven’t seen anything wrong in it.

Bit sadly, the beer is brewed by Freedom brewery in the UK, and there is no information about Jamie’s involvement in the process.

Libertà pours nice, golden with small head. Aroma is rather mildly intensive and hard to define (maybe bit of sweet and cereal). First sip and…

It is clearly sweet. Not much, but clearly sweet, possibly honey… Honey and cereal aroma, medium carbonation. Brewery obviously saved on hops and the bitterness is very hard to detect. All together this is very drinkable beer, even if clearly not a world class one.

Now for the explanation – I rarely read the label of the beer before tasting. I don’t like to be biased. It is much more interesting to smell and taste first and read the label later.

So, I read the label and relaxed a bit. The beer is indeed brewed with an addition of acacia honey. This explains a lot.

After all that I have mixed feelings.

I was hoping on Jamie doing a beer – not clear if it is there.

I was hoping for a beer that would be a bit out of the box (like Jamie’s kitchen) – this is there.

Cubanisto, rum flavored beer

CUBANISTO

Style: flavored lager
Brewed: Anheuser-Busch InBev

Being experiment friendly, I have got myself convinced to try Cubanisto. Why not. I have tried beers flavored with worse things than rum.

Or at least I thought so.

For me simply horrible. Some week lager was completely screwed by adding a rum aroma that you usually add to cakes. In fact, you cannot call it rum flavored beer. It only smells and tastes like rum. Artificial, over-flavored. Very bad. Even Desperado is much better choice.

Sorry for trying that one…  

Kawa Na Ławe, coffee lager

Kawa na Ławe

Style: lager

Brewed: Hopster

Tested: Bottle, August 2016

According to Wikipedia, Coffea Arabica is believed to be the first species ever cultivated. First domesticated in Ethiopia, this coffee accounts to 70-80% of world production.

Even if I am no expert, I drink more than enough coffee to recognize one. And “Kawa na Ławe” certainly has a lot of coffee in it. The light lager was brewed with Polish hops and addition of Arabica grains.

Poor lager (paraphrasing South Park “You killed lager you …)

Since the name “Kawa na Ławe” (literal translation is to put a coffee on the table) means to go directly to the problem without fiddling around, lets do it.

This beer has a deep gold-brown color with small head. Roasted grains aroma, mixed with some coffee notes.

So far, so good.

But the taste is pretty pure coffee, even in the aftertaste. In fact, the overall effects are like you would dilute an extremely strong coffee with some weak beer. If tested blindly, one could easily forget there is a beer part in it.

The overall effect is rather drinkable and interesting but I am not sure if I would try it again. Btw. Does somebody knows whether a brew made like that would have lot caffeine as well? If yes it is a plus for “Kawa na Ławe” – one could imagine its use as party drink (for beer geeks).

Science meets Lager beer - a report from the European Beer Bloggers & Writers conference in Amsterdam

EBBC2016 Report #1

H41 Lager

For me as scientist, congresses are very essential. It’s the way you can get a concentrated amount of information during the small amount of time. You can meet your idol and you can hear the background stories, you would never learn before.

Being on my first beer-related congress, I have realized one more thing – you can also try beer that you would never try in your life.

Some background story – at the time I was starting my adventure with beer, Poland was a beer desert. Major production was lagers (and there were some more lagers available). Then I have moved to Germany, sadly, Germans would also prefer lagers and pils – type beers (and whatever they claim, their commercial its almost the same – boring). All this years lead to the situation, that even if I would stumble upon the bottle of the new lager from Heineken  - I wouldn’t bother to open it.

But during the EBWC2016, we have heard the story from Willem van Waesberghe - the master brewer of Heineken (I think that the official title is: Global Craft and Brew Master, Global Commerce Innovation. He definitely has got my attention the moment he have started describing the yeast strain that is used to brew Heineken lagers. As I said before – I wouldn’t care about lagers, but the yeast strain is really exciting. So the strain – called the A-strain (I think that the taxonomical name is Saccharomyces pastorianus) is a hybrid of the most common yeast  - Saccharomyces cerevisae and the unknown strain. Willem described the story of the identification of the second parental strain by Diego Libkind in Patagonia (for freaks like me - see the original publication in PNAS https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3167505/). S. eubayanus was found on Cyttaria fungi that are know parasites of the tree bark in Patagonia (for me exciting, sorry).

At some point Heineken decided to start to experiment with Saccharomyces eubayanus (btw. I think that the strain is accessible at the yeast repository in Utrecht and as long as you are not going commercial, you could obtain it).

The way from yeast to beer was painful, but at the end Heineken has managed to optimize the process so that the lager could be made. On top, after signing the commercial agreement – Heineken is the only company worldwide (with the exception of Argentina) that can use S. eubayanus for brewing.

At this part, the science was over and so was my interest – very interesting story, but just another lager.

But we got some bottles per table and were asked to try.

Holly wack! I admit, I knew that yeast can do a lot to the beer, but given that Heineken is not using any of modern aroma hops this beer is a blast!

No, no sarcasm. This may be the most innovative lager I have tried since years. You know, it is not hard (relative) to put some Cascade hops in the lager process and be happy that your lager has now interesting fruity aromas.

But to exchange yeast stain and get a beer that is full of fruity aromas is really something.

For now I have two questions – where I can get a box to keep it in my beer basement. Second  - XX, I never thought I will be asking – do you mind sharing some bottles?

WELDE Jahrgangsbier 6th Edition

Type: Lager Bock
Tested: Bottle, 2015
Brewed: Weldebräu, Germany

I see this as an achievement that I have managed to try this one - not because it is hard to get (it is, but not impossible), but because Welde represents for me the worst side of the mass beer production in Germany. Every beer from Welde I have tasted is a misuse of the German Brewing Law. But surprise, surprise - Welde`s lager Bock is really very good beer, with its flowery/fruit fresh aroma its sticks out of the mass production. Respect Welte, you still have some people khow now how to brew.

Beck´s Amber Lager

Style: Amber Lager
Tested: 2015, Bottle
Brewed: Beck´s & Co, Germany

Dear Beck´s brewery. Why do you even try your luck with beers different than a simple pils/lager? Your pale ale was a piece of sh... But look at this one - it is very nice, tasty lager. Bit better that the majority of lagers on the German market, and really good enough to not put a shame on your heads. Please accept the fact that this is your style and keep doing.