New Beers From Lidl/Aldi Dungarvan.

[Boycott]

so you didnt even taste them bren?

[brenmurph]

How wud i report on them if we didnt
taste them? Of course we  tasted them!

[Greg2013]

Is that Kings of Tara stuff from Rye River?

No it's from some crowd in Norn Iron called Cumberland Breweries Ltd. I have to say i was not overly impressed with it,all i got from it was hop bitterness,nothing on the nose or palette,not a bad beer just nothing to it,extremely thin and watery IMHO. 

Brenmurph i hear what you are saying but i think it is a little unfair to judge a cheap Lidl Perlenbacher beer against local German "proper beer" from the same region. For €1.49 you can't really expect much, i do agree with your points however i was buying this as a cheap beer rather than a true to style beer,and for that the Shwarzbier is not bad IMO.

[brenmurph]

Right I hope the BJCP students are in on this thread 

Firstly 1.49 is far from cheap, we are just used to being screwed, thats the price of 4 premium flip-top local beers in baden wurrtenberg ( stuttgart) or circa 2 x premium beers e.g Weihenstephaner or Andechs in supermarket. In Germany, 1.49 for a beer in supermarket is outlandishly expensive and our small difference in beer duty does come anywhere near explaining this. In fact You may fail to find any beer available at such a high price.
Diacetyl to me is completely unacceptable in a german beer ( perhaps kellerbier may have some)and  to label your product "finest ingredients and "german purity law" then label it a "Schwartzbier" or "Festbier" suggests its a in your words "proper" traditional german beer. It is far from it. 

In summary its very badly brewed and lacks any sort of proper lager conditioning, is miles off style and tastes cheap and tacky with no german beer charactor. The Scwartsbier is cheap and treacly, im not sure if the germans use treacle (purity law- no sugar additions) but curious which of the "finest" barley ingredient gives such an overpowering treacle aroma and taste.

Re Perlenbacker ( Dr Oetker I think) Has passed our  blind test numerous times against other brands and homebrews and is a fairly respectable North german pilsner...These cans I'm really not impressed with!

[Greg2013]

Right I hope the BJCP students are in on this thread 

Firstly 1.49 is far from cheap, we are just used to being screwed, thats the price of 4 premium flip-top local beers in baden wurrtenberg ( stuttgart) or circa 2 x premium beers e.g Weihenstephaner or Andechs in supermarket. In Germany, 1.49 for a beer in supermarket is outlandishly expensive and our small difference in beer duty does come anywhere near explaining this. In fact You may fail to find any beer available at such a high price.
Diacetyl to me is completely unacceptable in a german beer ( perhaps kellerbier may have some)and  to label your product "finest ingredients and "german purity law" then label it a "Schwartzbier" or "Festbier" suggests its a in your words "proper" traditional german beer. It is far from it. 

In summary its very badly brewed and lacks any sort of proper lager conditioning, is miles off style and tastes cheap and tacky with no german beer charactor. The Scwartsbier is cheap and treacly, im not sure if the germans use treacle (purity law- no sugar additions) but curious which of the "finest" barley ingredient gives such an overpowering treacle aroma and taste.

Re Perlenbacker ( Dr Oetker I think) Has passed our  blind test numerous times against other brands and homebrews and is a fairly respectable North german pilsner...These cans I'm really not impressed with!

Fair enough points however you aren't comparing like with like,you can't compare German beer bought here to German beer bought in Germany and get a fair comparison on price/quality,its not really a good comparison IMO,however if you compared these Lidl beers to other supermarket German beers here in Ireland then that would be a good comparison,just my two cents.

These two beers are also Perlenbacher from what i have been able to find out.

Are these good examples of "proper" German beer,certainly not.They are a cheap supermarket own brand type beer and have to be looked at as such,for that €1.49/500ml is a good price,you don't buy cheap beers like this hoping they will adhere to the Rheingesbot purity laws,you buy them because they are cheap beer,and hopefully don't taste shite.


That said Brenmurph what you said re the faults in these two beers is spot on,but for that price over here you can't expect much,and yes we are being screwed royally.

[brenmurph]

We should rethink  how we buy our beer so. 30 euros shipping (snap parcel) and 30 euros for proper german beer from germany and of german standards. Thats 2 euro a bottle of the finest. :-) german beer e.g andechs ayinger or weihenstephaner .

[mr hoppy]

Didn't get the diacetyl on the schwartz. Must try it again, did think BW wasn't really a region I'd associated with Schwartz.

Anyone try the veltins?

[Drum]

I didnt notice any diacetyl in the schwartzbier either, but my pallette is far less refined than most of the lads on here especially Mr Murphy.

Just wondering, since I kinda liked a bad version of a schwartzbier. What would be a GOOD example I could try that would be easily available in ireland? 

[mr hoppy]

Kostritzer is a classic, as is monschoff schwartz from kulmbacher. Neither is consistently availabile but they do show up sometimes.

[Eoin]

Reinheitsgebot is as good as a myth in Germany now. The amount of twisting they do to maintain the illusion is ridiculous. I remember all my allusions being smashed after a conversation with one of the brewers from Gilde Brauerei who was a regular of ours in the pub over there... He described how sinimar was being added to one of their cheapest lagers to make up a dark pils (dunkel pils). This is after they'd bought out said premium dark pils and their bean counters got a hold of it.

[brenmurph]

I think at a local level the germans seek out quality. While not a proper law anymore the purity law is still in general what customers expect.

There are of course plenty of beer cheap beer in german supermarkets some rubbish Im sure  but there also seems to be a focus on local beer ( from fairly big breweries) which is usually 10 euros for 12 lge  botttles inc a 15c/bott deposit. These are the everyday beers in the fridges of our friends and thats what they expect to pay for a very good local beer. Weihenstephaner, andechs Köstritze and other premium premium beer a little higher. Weihenstephaner bottle in Freising ( its home) was 1.20 a bottle inc 15cent deposit) 
How does it get to 3.95 in Irish offy...dunno someones making a lot of gross profit to get them here and the quality is dubious sometimes, could it be that the beer is fresher and shipped/stored appropriatly in Germany? We have made a lot of trips to germany in past 3 years ( dusseldorf, freising, stuttgart, and austrian/ german alps ) and still await a bad beer or indeed a beer that cost more than 1.25 ( 3 euros in the pub)

as for the cheap lidl stuff...it is cheap and nasty vs german beer quality but I take onboard previous comments and accept that the Irish see 1.50 for a low quality beer as good value....myself and Kellie dont.

[mr hoppy]

@bren if you think german beer is bad don't even think about Belgians.

If you take something like Rochefort 10, it's made with dirt cheap ingredients - maize flour and sugar syrup feature prominently. It owes it's character to lagering and yeast. In Belgium it costs around EUR 2 and here it's EUR 6. Granted it's 10% but St Bernardus 12 - which is a very similar beer and a very similar price in Belgium is EUR 4 here.

@Eoin - while sinnimar has no place in a dunkel, Is it necessarily a bad thing - even in terms of the Reinheitsgebot - given that it's made from carafe malt? I would have thought it would have been quite appropriate in a schwartz.

[Eoin]

@bren if you think german beer is bad don't even think about Belgians.

If you take something like Rochefort 10, it's made with dirt cheap ingredients - maize flour and sugar syrup feature prominently. It owes it's character to lagering and yeast. In Belgium it costs around EUR 2 and here it's EUR 6. Granted it's 10% but St Bernardus 12 - which is a very similar beer and a very similar price in Belgium is EUR 4 here.

@Eoin - while sinnimar has no place in a dunkel, Is it necessarily a bad thing - even in terms of the Reinheitsgebot - given that it's made from carafe malt? I would have thought it would have been quite appropriate in a schwartz.

My point is that it was bordering on fraud. They took a good beer, replaced it with a cheap pils and added sinimar and still sold it as the premium beer.

[mr hoppy]

Agreed. I'm no expert on contemporary German beer but I've seen a lot of comment that even faithful application of the Reinheitsgebot is no guarantee of quality. It says nothing about sinnamar, nor does it prohibit hop extract - both of which I'd imagine feature in the Lidl black lager. I had the impression that beer consumption has dropped in Germany in recent years and a lot of German beer is basically produced to be as cheap as possible. I never had the Lidl beer in Germany but it was packaged in plastic bottles which didn't really inspire a lot of confidence.

Either way, the Reinheitsgebot is a funny fish. It was introduced in Bavaria in the 16th century to make sure people used wheat to make bread not beer. It was only rolled out to the rest of Germany after German Unification in 1870 and wasn't applied all that rigorously in East German. In fact northern Germany had a long and interesting history of strange beers like mumme, broyhan, or gose, which was wiped pretty much by the spread of Reinheitsgebot.