So...this post is entirely inspired by Pete Brown's post marking International Beer Day, which you should go and read - hold on cowboy, read mine first then go to Pete's blog. I will say that I like the way Pete has considered this subject, and being a traitorous craft beer drinker too someone that does Dry January as well, that first beer of a year is definitely a highlight, and one that has been considered for far longer than is reasonable. Onwards though...
1. A well-made Czech style světlý ležák
I know I bang on about lager a lot, and Czech styles in particular even though it has been 15 years since Mrs V and I abandoned living in the centre of Prague to come live in Virginia, but I make no apologies for being something of a purist on that. I lived in Czechia for a total of 10 years, both in and out of Prague, and I drank a boat load of great lager, so it grieves me when breweries try to pass off a Saaz hopped pale lager as somehow being a "Czech/Bohemian pilsner", and I know this will get me in trouble with some, but you cannot make great Czech style beers without under-modified malts, decoction mashing, and extensive lagering. You can prattle on about "more highly modified malts" making decoction unnecessary, and I get that, but in that one statement is all the arrogance of people that think they know better than the maltsters and brewers making the best lager in the world, the Czechs themselves. Can you make a great Saaz hopped pale lager with a single infusion mash, yes you can, is it an authentic Czech pilsner? No it isn't. I have only been back to Czechia twice in the last 15 years, and on both occasions it took we a while to start drinking US made "Czech style" lagers once I got back because they by and large simply don't stack up.
2. Harvest beer
My little garden is unlikely to ever keep body and soul together, pretty sure a diet of tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, and chili peppers is lacking some key nutrients. It is a major salve for my soul though. I love prepping the beds, sowing seeds, planting out, and eventually harvesting the produce, my particular favourite is the English green peas that I grow every year, well twice a year actually given our fantastic growing season here in Virginia., The second crop, which I will be sowing in the next week or so actually, I use mainly for seed for the spring crop as well as dried peas for winter soups and the like. When I harvest a bed of peas in late spring or early summer, I bring the entire basket up on to my back deck, extend out the awning so it kind of looks like an old school green grocers, and set to freeing the peas from the pods. Invariably there will be a glass of something on the table as well, probably bottom fermented, likely to be pale or amber (that's amber, not red), and refeshing. For many years, until the beer was discontinued, my go to harvest beer was Port City's delicious Franconian Kellerbier. I am, in many ways, quite a simple soul and so the meditative zen of harvesting and processing food from my garden practically begs for a rustic, flavourful beer.
3. My Best Bitter
It's a beer that used to be brewed occasionally by Three Notch'd Brewing in Charlottesville under the moniker Session 42, or more lately Bitter 42, though it hasn't seen the light of day for quite some time now. At the same time though, I probably brew that particular recipe more than any other in my own homebrewing. There are some slight differences between what I brew at home and what was brewed at Three Notch'd, namely I have switched to using only Murphy & Rude malt, in this case their English Pale as the base, with about 20% of their Biscuit malt - I am not a big fan of crystal malts in my beers. I also use a different yeast, preferring SafAle S-04 over their house yeast, which is if I remember rightly the McEwan's strain. Having the option of pouring a pint, a proper 20oz pint of course, of best bitter from my kegerator in the kitchen is just so much fun. Friday afternoon comes, I don't usually drink from Monday to Thursday, and everything is done for the week, a pint or three whilst cooking just unlocks my inner Keith Floyd.
4. Mrs Velkyal's Beer
My wife doesn't brew, she doesn't really drink beer as much as she did when we met and lived in Czechia, but you bet I trust her understanding of beer absolutely implicitly. When she declares a Czech style pilsner to be "good" then you know what she really means is that she is having an Anton Ego moment and being transported back to the pubs and beer gardens we frequented in Czechia. When she drinks a kölsch please learn to pronounce the "ö" in kölsch correctly without repeating back to her the abomination that is "kolsch", seriously people if you can't say it properly don't try and correct people that can. As I said, her beer drinking has very much diminished since we left Czechia and that is mainly due to the higher carbonation levels you find in many American craft beers, which give her discomfort of the stomach. When she does find a beer that she enjoys, she will be loyal fan until the batch runs out, and when she gets home from work and wants a pint of my homebrew, then I know that recipe will be brewed again.
5. Beer in a Maß
Whether you call it a litre glass, a maß, or my own personal favourite a tuplák, if I have the option of drinking a good lager from a big ass glass then you bet your bottom dollar I am taking it. Now, sure, it's not the kind of glass for drinking a doppelbock from, and to be blunt, I am not sure I would want to drink a festbier or märzen by the litre. However, the 3.6% abv Sommerbier I had at Bierkeller in Columbia, SC last weekend whilst scarfing more Würste than was strictly speaking necessary and reading "Modern Lager Beer" was perfect, especially in the absence of table service (a good thing), so I didn't have to refill quite so often. Speaking of the Sommerbier, I have few 1 litre growlers of it in the fridge, and it is Friday...
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