Carolina Pilsner

A couple of weeks ago, Mrs V and I took ourselves off to her parents' place in South Carolina for a week of quarantined change of scenery. 

Unusually for one of our trips South we didn't stop at Olde Mecklenburg on the way down for a feed and to let the ever growing twins run around for a bit, though we did stop in on the way to buy a stash of beer to bring back to Virginia.

The day before we headed back north, I popped into a local bottle shop, suitably masked of course, and as I was wondering around I thought it would be fun to try a taste off of pilsners from South and North Carolina. I ended up with the six beers below.

The beers were:

• Birdsong Rewind Lager (NC)
• Edmund's Oast Pils (SC)
• Olde Mecklenburg Captain Jack (NC)
• Revelry Glorious Bastard (SC)
• Coast Brewing Pilsner (SC)
• Indigo Reef Pilsner (SC)

Let's just dive on in shall we...

Birdsong Rewind Lager - 4%, Czech style, canned April 10, 2020

• Sight - golden with slight haze, health half inch of white head, good retention
• Smell - faint grass, Southern biscuits, some herbal notes, very lightly fruity
• Taste - bready malt, slightly crusty, clean hop bitterness, herbal
• Sweet - 2/5
• Bitter - 2/5

Really refreshing and session worthy beer. Body in light-medium, maybe a little on the watery side int he finish, but nothing I haven't experienced with Czech made desítky. I really like the can design too, made me think of Anthony Bourdain describing Kout na Šumavě as "nostalgic" when he visited the brewery with Evan Rail. Will definitely pick more of this up next time I see it.

Edmund's Oast Pils - 4.5%, German style, canned July 6, 2020

• Sight - golden with a thin white head that dissipates to a lingering schmeer of foam, excellent clarity.
• Smell - floral hops, fresh scones, slightly spicy
• Taste - juicy sweet malt, firm pithy bitter hop bite, slightly lemony
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 3/5

An absolute stunner of a beer, but it reminded me more of Czech pilsners that German, in particular Hostomický Fabián 10. Medium bodied with a soft maltiness in the finish rather than the crackery dryness you often get with German pilsners. An early contender for the Fuggled beer of the year.

Olde Mecklenburg Captain Jack Pilsner - 4.8%, German style, canned June 22, 2020

• Sight - straw yellow, thin white head, brilliant clarity
• Smell - fresh bread, lemons, limes, some spice
• Taste - cereal grain, citric hops, grassy, floral spiciness like nasturtium flowers
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 3.5/5

Classic German style pilsner. Clean, dry finish with great snap that you get from proper lagering. Medium bodied and insanely moreish. There is a reason this is a beer I drink a lot of, it is simply a stunning brew, I love it.

Revelry Glorious Bastard - 5.25%, Czech style

• Sight - golden with thin white head, good clarity
• Smell - floral hops, some hay, kind of a musty cheese thing going on (aged hops?), fruity
• Taste - crusty cread, saccharin sweetness in background, rough bitterness
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 2.5/5

When I asked Mrs V to give this a try her instant response was "is this an IPA?", says it all really. Such a disappointment as the aroma is generally spot on, but the balance is missing in the drinking.

Coast Brewing Pilsner - 4.8%, German style

• Sight - slightly hazy gold, quarter inch of white foam, decent retention
• Smell - almost non-existent, slightest trace of flowers and grain, maybe
• Taste - dominated by bready sweetness, extracty
• Sweet - 2.5/5
• Bitter - 1/5

This one was a major disappointment, and most of it went down the drain. It was a syrupy mess, lacking any of the snap that well made lagers have, it was kind of flaccid and lacking any hop character. Will try again though at some point in case I got a duff can.

Indigo Reef Surface Interval - 6%, Czech style, canned on April 29, 2020

• Sight - straw yellow, kind of cloudy, think white head
• Smell - floral hops, light citrus character, Southern biscuits
• Taste - sweet malt, very sweet actually, some spicy hops
• Sweet - 3/5
• Bitter - 1.5/5

Given ABV, I am assuming this is about 15 degrees Plato, which would be darker in Czechia as this was surprisingly pale. Medium-full body made it quite syrupy though there was a lingering spicy finish.

As I posted the other day on Instagram, 2 stunners, 1 drain pour and 3 decent beers, though I kind of question the brewers' experience of actual Czech beer. The 2 stunners were head and shoulders above the others, and the Edmund's Oast was particularly enjoyable. 

One thing has been on my mind in particular. I am starting to think that the term "pilsner" is insufficient for describing Czech style pale lagers brewed by American craft breweries. If you take the extremes of the ABV for the 4 beers I have, you have 4.5%, 4.8%, 5.25%, and 6%. Multiplying the ABV by 2.5 gives you the ball park starting gravity in degrees Plato, and we have (rounding to the nearest whole number) 11°, 12°, 13°, and 15°. 

Under Czech beer law these four beers straddle 2 different categories, ležák, aka "lager", and speciální pivo, aka "special beer". Even within the speciální pivo category, Czech would expect different things from a 13° and a 15° beer, think the difference between a strong helles and a bock respectively. Yet they all bear the moniker "pilsner", mainly because they use Saaz hops, or some higher alpha acid derivative, looking at you Sterling.

While I am happy that Czech style lager seems to be increasingly popular with both brewers and drinkers in the US, I think lumping everything pale under the banner of "pilsner" actually does a disservice to one of the great brewing cultures of the world, and I would argue that we reserve the world "pilsner" for those beers that are in the same sitz im leben as the original, Pilsner Urquell - 12°, 4.5-5% abv, 30-40 IBUs of Czech hops. Anything below that could be a "Session Czech Lager", anything above that a "Strong Czech Lager", but pilsner sets expectations in knowledgeable drinkers' minds, so stick to it.