The beers on the left in pic I picked up in Lidl today €1.49/500ml. The four pack on the right of pic I picked up in Aldi today €4.99/4x330ml ;D
Sure not the other way around ?? Left Lidl right Aldi 😆
Did you mix up your left and right and lidl and aldi by any chance?
I bought the black lager on the left in lidl a few days ago. Not bad at all, easy drinking lager with a lot of roast barley. kinda like a pint of half guinness, half lager
:P shhhhhhhhhhhh keep the schwartz bier under wraps ...........im on my second crate of it .....buying it a few cans at a time while wearing diffrent hats
Quote from: Drum on September 18, 2015, 08:58:45 PM
Did you mix up your left and right and lidl and aldi by any chance?
I bought the black lager on the left in lidl a few days ago. Not bad at all, easy drinking lager with a lot of roast barley. kinda like a pint of half guinness, half lager
Quote from: evansannagh on September 18, 2015, 08:55:11 PM
Sure not the other way around ?? Left Lidl right Aldi 😆
I always get things arse about face :-[
Drinking the Festbier now, kinda like an amber pilsner to me, bit tinny on the palette but not a bad easy drinking beer even though it gets low marks on Ratebeer. ;D
The Festbier was a bit meh but not the worst. Drinking the Schwarzbier now and it is way nicer,nice dark roast followed by a wallop of molasses.
i have to agree , the fester beer is a bit meh this year , the schwarzbier is nice . wish they had it all the time . dont mention the sausages and predzels or the place will be over run
Quote from: hopapotamus on September 18, 2015, 09:00:53 PM
:P shhhhhhhhhhhh keep the schwartz bier under wraps ...........im on my second crate of it .....buying it a few cans at a time while wearing diffrent hats
Keep it to yourself but theres a few crates in the storeroom in lidl in bandon ;)
Quote from: Greg2013 on September 18, 2015, 10:31:21 PM
I always get things arse about face :-[
You mean face about arse?
Agree with the above, the Festbier isn't the worst, it's like a very malty lager and although I wouldn't rush to buy it, it's okay for the money.
Black lager, sausages and pretzels you say .... ? Haven't seen them in the north yet but I like the sound of all three.
They've the Schwartz in togher and veltins for 1.99. Veltins is a fine german pilsner and a complete steal at that price. The Schwartz is very good for 1.49 but I'd say it's fairly heavy on the acid malt like the perlenbacher pils.
One of each in lidl 2day. Testdrive dem tmora !
Quote from: mrmeindl on September 19, 2015, 10:37:22 PM
Is that Kings of Tara stuff from Rye River?
Judging by the name and packaging, I'd say it's from the same crowd who are doing Finn McCool Irish craft lager. Based in England and N.I. I believe.
Both those lidl beers went down the drain ( before drinking them!)
The scwarts is not a real scwartsbier. they call it black lager. Its a half fermented cheap lager with treacle. Says its brewed in baden wurrtenburg and by german purity law. Its diacetyl laden and all treacle on the nose and taste.
The Festbier is amber ale like lager diacetyl as well. its very one dimential with nothing complx at all and completely loses it in the second half and leaves diacetyl and nothing else. it has no malt charactor and again I dought its german purity law. tastes caramelly / diacetyl no big malt and went down the sink after the black lager.
waste of 3 euros.
interested in others comments and opinions.
and lastly a german would not drink this rubbish. we spent 10 days recently in Baden Wurttenburg ( Stuttgart and the alps) and every one of the Numerous beers we had was superb whether from one of the breweries, local rural festivals, beergardens at the mineral baths or city pub, every one was proper german malty beer....sadly lidl are selling this as a real german beer...they dont state the brewery just the region...Id love to know who brewed this rubbish
so you didnt even taste them bren?
How wud i report on them if we didnt
taste them? Of course we tasted them!
Quote from: mrmeindl on September 19, 2015, 10:37:22 PM
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. ;D
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. ;D
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!
Quote from: brenmurph on September 21, 2015, 06:52:57 AM
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. ;D
These two beers are also Perlenbacher from what i have been able to find out. ;D
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. ;D
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. ;D
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 .
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?
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?
Kostritzer is a classic, as is monschoff schwartz from kulmbacher. Neither is consistently availabile but they do show up sometimes.
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.
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.
@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.
Quote from: mr hoppy on September 22, 2015, 09:12:42 AM
@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.
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. :'(