BEAR-ly Getting Started 7.1 - Dunkel

In Series 7 we simply say, 'Let's Talk Lagers' as Jason and Craig open with a talk about unique lager yeasts and roasted malts that make, the Dunkel. What is lagering and why is it so important? With so many biergartens around, we answer the question of where they originated. Of course you cannot talk about lagers with talking food pairings. Featuring Dunkel from Warsteiner Brewery, Germany. Cheers!

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Transcript

When you do this class, like what's the emphasis on which word is it? Let's talk loggers. Yeah, there's, I mean, it's just always like emphasized on the cadence of just, you know, the iteration of let's talk loggers. So I mean, but yeah, it's like, I wouldn't say there was an emphasis, I guess I'd just be let's talk loggers. There you go. Yeah, nice. And like, talk is probably the emphasis like, let's talk loggers fancy a chat. You know, because it's an underappreciated, like people like it, but I don't think a lot of people know like the nuances and the differences and that's some of the stuff I'll get into and why I picked the four beers I picked kind of the podcasts are following my classes because I'm like, yeah, these were, I gauge how well like people like took on it's like, all right, if we did six, like we did six loggers, and I just took four for the podcast. And I was like, all right, cool. I'll take these off the shelf and put them away. So I know I don't run out of them. Nice. And it works well. So okay. So yeah, so then that brings us to series. So we're series seven now. Series seven over we're over the year mark. So happy anniversary. Yeah. Happy anniversary. Happy beer. Happy bearversary. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, if we cash, can we go all the way back to to the beginning and, and the different groupings that we did? I mean, I know we should keep a list. I mean, it's, you know, it's on there. I got it on my, you've got it on your podcast. I've got it on Instagram. And, you know, for us barely getting started, here we are a year later, I do think I feel like we started with the Belgians. I think we did Belgians, then we did German, because it was around Oktoberfest time. That's good. And then I think maybe that's when we went to a style. And that might have been, I don't know if that was the IPAs for days. But then we did the UK. No, we did Stouts. That's where it was. Because all right, here we go. Here we go. So we were, we started off in August. And we did blissfully Belgian, then we went to we're getting closer to Oktoberfest. And when it would be released, that's why we went German and we had an Oktoberfest in there. And then now we're getting colder months. So that's where Shout for Stouts was. And then I think we from Shout for Stouts, that's where I get a little lost. We could Yeah, we I think we came back and did the IPAs for days. Then we did the UK in a day. And that Sour Power was in there somewhere. So there's all six of them. So Sour Power might have think Sour Power came to UK in a day was last one. Sour Power, I think was either the one before that for IPA for days or before IPA for days or maybe before Shout for Stouts. No, it was after Shout for Stouts. I think it was Sour Power. Then it was IPAs for days. Then we did UK in a day. And then we did today. We're definitely going to lock it in final answer going forward. But what I do know is we're barely getting started. Series seven. Technically, this would be episode 29 is where we're starting off here. So we've, we've had a pretty good, pretty good run so far with what we've been talking about. And then as you said, we're going to be it's Hey, let's talk loggers. Let's talk logger. Where are we starting? So I mean, you know, one reason with the let's talk loggers, I kind of come up with new classes because people want they want the new classes like for instance, we've got October Fest coming up and it's sold out immediately. And so much so that I changed I was also offering get the most of pros this month. And this month is we're recording this in September, early September. So I turned that into another offering of October Fest because people that take my classes and know about them or tell friends about them. They love to take the new ones. So you know, you look at what you can actually make a class or in this case, make a season about and a series and loggers. I just think they're underappreciated with what's going on. And people think of logger, usually they think it's synonymous with Pilsner. And then people just think, you know, all right, big brand macro brewery, yellow fizzy beer. And you know, there's a there's a huge I mean, it's the half of the family tree. So I mean, I guess that's one of the main reasons I want to talk loggers is because most people don't even realize that all beer basically gets split into two categories. You know, there's L's and there's loggers and mainly that split by the yeast that's used in this one. We're going to be talking about the logger yeast, Saccharomyces posteronus, I believe. And yeah, you can you could check the pronunciation of that versus for you, Harry Potter fans out there. I think you just turned somebody into a frog. It was a spell of some sorts, but now the kitchen's on fire. But the versus Saccharomyces cerevisiae, that's your typical ale yeast. And then there's some other funky ones in there. Everyone knows about Brettanomyces if you're into beer, especially we talk about sour power. And then there's some wild strains. So there's this kind of like it's the family tree and it's like that distant cousin. It's the wild ales. You know, it's it's spontaneously fermented. If you go back to our Blissfully Belgian and start talking spontaneous fermentation where the yeast isn't added by the the brewer, it's just added because it's in the ambient area and atmosphere. That is, you know, to me, that would be your third branch, but they're technically ales. And, you know, I want to start we're doing Dunkel and it's we're going to a German beer. And one of the things I like to, you know, talk about with lagers is the fact that there's pale, amber, black and you name it within those categories. There's different shades of each. So it covers the same standard reference method, SRM color scale that all beer does. So a lot of people, you know, they just have this misconception that, you know, there's really only one lager and there's plenty of lagers. And the difference is that yeast. So let's talk a little bit about the yeast. Ale yeast is fermented at a little bit warmer temperatures, usually around 65 to 75, you know, 72 kind of is a high mark there. And some people go higher and lower. Ale and then also top ferments. It ferments. The yeast is active on top of the liquid when it's fermenting, whereas the lager is fermented cold. And that is at about 45, usually 40 degrees to 55 at the very highest, a little bit more than 55, but usually 40 to 55 for lagers. And that I think the ale and lager is for low or bottom fermenting. So the yeast ferments at the bottom. And lager is actually a German term for storing, to store something. So the Germans were basically storing their beer because they realized that they let it sit for a while in lager, that it would become more clear. And when you think about, you know, modern brewing today, when we say the beer's conditioning, that's the time that it usually, and it's in the bright tank, you're letting things fall out, which just, you know, with winemaking and everything else, you know, the particulates start to fight gravity and they just slowly make their way to the bottom and you and you rack the beer off top, you rack the wine off top of it and you have, you know, all this sediment towards the bottom. Now lagering means there's a longer resting period. And that's why a lot of breweries, um, don't do a ton of lagers because it takes longer and then people don't want to spend as much money because it's like, oh, it's just a lager, you know, this is easy. I can just go get Budweiser, you know, Blue Light, whatever you want to plug in there for that mass produced lager. But it still takes, you know, good quality ingredients to make a good craft lager. And then it takes time and time. If you can churn out two, three, if you could churn out some sour beers that you can charge more money for and some IPAs that you can charge a little bit more money for at a quicker pace, why would you lager a beer? You know, go get your mass produced lager, but you're seeing some breweries, you know, turn to, hey, we're, we're a lager focused brewery or we have our arm of brewing and we get tanks to do just lagering because we do want to always have a lager on tap or multiple lagers on tap. And I do think people are respecting the lager a little bit more. And a lot of times with palate fatigue, if I'm having too many stouts or sours or IPAs for days, it's, it's nice to get back to the lager and then, you know, it's nice to try different types of lager. So I wanted to kind of take us, you know, we're, we do these episodes all in a row. So we're going to, we're going to go against our palate and, you know, we're starting with a darker beer and we're going to end with a lighter beer and so on and so forth, but, you know, we have to be historically accurate and I kind of want to build the foundation of, uh, you know, the history and the evolution of the lager. So we're going to go to Germany and we're gonna have a Dunkel and I've said this before, but I really like about German English beers is they're just named very easily Dunkel just meaning dark. It's a dark beer. Um, you know, we'll pour it, we'll talk about the color there, but when you hear dark, it's not quite black cause that would be a Schwarz beer. Schwarz beer means black beer. So it is not black, but Dunkel could be, you know, a dark amber, light, light chestnut to all the way to a pretty dark brown. So Dunkel is a darker maltier lager. And we're starting with this because for a long time, most beers, not just lagers were darker, you know, they were darker and slightly cloudier. And that was mainly because we hadn't really come up with the way to properly, not properly, but better roast the malts. Um, I think I brought this up before where, you know, it kind of has like a burnt marshmallow with a s'more. It goes from not toasted to burnt very quickly sometimes, but then Daniel Wheeler came out with a roasting drum and that allowed for indirect heating. And that allowed us to go from light to lightly toasted to more toasted, uh, and, and all the different, uh, variations that we can imagine before we get to just dark or roasty. So that really allowed, um, lighter beers to come to the forefront. We'll talk about that in another episode. So at this point, we're still dealing with some darker beers, but this one's a little bit more clear because it is lagered and what the Germans did figure out, um, you know, mainly because they, you know, trial and error, they're doing this, you know, since the 1500s or so, and that's kind of when the lager yeast came about. So it was, it was basically, we were using the same type of yeast. However, it, it mutated and morphed into this, uh, that's why it's and then, um, you know, I forget my, uh, is it the phylum or the class? But, uh, they're both Sarah, sorry. They're both Saccharomyces, but then the L yeast broke off and now you have posterionis, which is because it adapted to what the Germans were doing. This was not on the test. So no, no, no, no. Don't worry about taking notes. So what did, what were the Germans doing? What were they doing? Well, you know, if you heard about Reinheitsgebot and only having specific ingredients in there, there was also, there was a, you know, one of the reasons Oktoberfest was popular in, in Marzen style beers, Marzen meaning March, was you couldn't really brew from September until April. So people would store beer and the last beers were basically, you know, the beers that were made in March. And they just, in the warmer temperatures, beers would spoil. So the Germans knowing that they, uh, weren't going to be able to brew and they wanted to keep the, uh, the other thing they realized is the colder the brew and the colder the storage, the last yeast notes you kind of got. And that was a difference from say like the Hefeweizen that has tons of banana and clove flavors to typical lagers that are a showcase for the malt and the grain that's used. So now they're using just pure barley water and hops because back then they didn't really know about this yeast. They kind of just knew the process would dictate the outcome. So they were, you know, digging into their caves of mountains and mountainsides and ridges and storing stuff in there to keep it cool while it lagered. Um, they would even then, uh, plant tons of trees. I think even chestnut trees, cause they, they make kind of like a canopy. So that, that would make even more shade. And that's kind of what gave birth to the beer garden. There was these areas around the caves that, um, just were lush with trees because you're trying to shade the side of the mountain and all the things that try and keep this cool because there's no refrigeration and they're even bringing some ice into the caves. And that's from icebergs because they're not making the ice. They'll go and grab it out of cold, uh, water. And, you know, next thing you know, the yeast is adapted and now it prefers the lower temperatures and it doesn't produce as much phenolics, meaning, you know, those spicy clove and baking spice flavors, and there's not a ton of esters because we're looking for clean, crisp showcase of the malts with a balance, just a tiny balance from the hops, and that is what true German lagers are all about until you get into some of the other styles, but we're barely getting there. See, I never, never knew that about beer gardens where that's where it originated from. So the next time I go to some ice bar or, you know, uh, some sort of cold weather, outdoor beer garden situation. Now I know it's rather, excuse me, rather close to what the original was. Yeah. Yeah. That was when I picked up when I was doing my research and then just, uh, before these, uh, podcasts, I, you see my thick binder. I kind of just look through it, breeze through it. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's a good one. That's, that's a good one to bring up for the podcast. So Germans putting beer into a cave, forced the yeast to adapt. Now we've got lagers, but we're still in the time where we don't have, uh, lighter malts. Okay. They're, they're mostly roasted malts. So that's why we're starting with a dunkel, a dark beer and, and bar Steiner. I don't know. Do you have any information about, uh, just a, just a little bit because the, the, the bulk of what they did started in 1753, uh, the current CEO is, uh, Eva Catharina Kramer. She's actually ninth generation descendant to the founders of, to a Varshteyner. So they're, they're out of Varshteyn North Rhine. That's in the, uh, the Westphalia district of Germany that we've talked about previously. So that I, you know, uh, their dunkel premium is actually their second most popular that they sell. I think it's only, I think it's only second to the traditional, the original. Okay. Um, yeah, for the longest dunkels, um, dunkel was the number one, you know, consumed beer until, you know, Pilsner kind of took that over. Summertime, the Hefeweizen in the beer garden always kind of reigns supreme because it is a nice warm weather beer. But yeah, dunkel was the, the number one beer, kind of like in England where porters and then stouts were the number one drink beer. And then it, you know, that kind of morphed into the English mild. Um, but then bitters got popular and, um, you know, a little more of a pale ale and then that became the most drank. And same thing kind of happened in German, uh, beer culture. It says that their Verum is their most popular, which is their, their Pilsner. Okay. But that's a different episode. Yeah. That's where, that's a different episode. So yeah, again, I like, uh, Germany because what type of beer is it? Dunkel. This is their dunkel, their dark. Um, what's the name of the brewery? Warsteiner. Why? Cause that's the name of the town and pretty much that's how it goes. The name of the town's the brewery and the name of the beer, sometimes the name of the beer is from the name of the town because they only brewed one type of beer. So very simple. Uh, in when you're simple about that and you're not trying to come up with a can art or, you know, funny names like prayers to moderate, you know, just anything. You can throw anything in there for these IPAs these days. And, um, you know, this is a dunkel from Warstein and we hope you enjoy. Which brewery in Warstein? Warstein brewery. Yeah. Warsteiner. Warsteiner. You need to know. Yeah. So let's do a quick cheers. Cheers. To the fall here. Starting with a dark beer. So I'm going to hold it up, do all of our sights, smells. And so if you take a look, you know, it's darker, so it's hard to see through, but when you hold it to the light, you can see that it's pretty clear. I mean, from the side, when you're, you're looking through this thing, it looks pretty, pretty Brown. You know, I wouldn't say black, but it's definitely dark Brown. You can kind of see it as it tapers towards the bottom of our glass. Cause we are using these stemmed, um, Belgian tulips, these nice little 10 ounces, you can see that it, you know, gets a little bit, uh, lighter in color. So from dark Brown, a lighter Brown, you hold it up to the light. It's got some red back notes, but it really, really a lot of chestnut with a touch of red. So less Amber, more like a copper chest nutty. Um, you know, looking at this, you can't get, you can't get some light through that. So yes, it is, um, you know, a nice clear it's not too cloudy. So I didn't even smell it yet, but, but you know, we're on episode 29 here. Jason, just looking at this, what do you think it's going to taste like? We haven't smelled it. We're just looking at it. What do you think? I, well, there's to me, it's light head on this. Um, I would, I would also assume that it would have been a stronger dark beer. Um, I know that not to be the case. So we're, we're clocking in, I think only at 4.8%. So I would, I would think, you know, cause to me, less head means more alcohol content. Um, so that's what I see here. Uh, I, first thing I did is actually brought it to my nose, even before I looked at it, cause I love a dunkle. I cheated. Um, cause I love a dunkle. I love the way they smell, but this is really nice. So I think you brought up some more that, which I, the other reason I like doing this, let's talk loggers and looking at darker loggers, people look at dark beers and they automatically assume, Oh, that must be high alcohol. I must be very, um, heavy. This is a 4.8% okay. Less than 5%, which is, you know, your typical. Well, so I was hitting, I was hitting where you thought I'd hit that. Yeah. Okay. And then, you know, looking at this, it looks like it's going to be very light roast, not super dark roast. I'm not thinking I'm going to have too much bitterness from a roast just because it is a little bit more brown chestnut looking through it than it is black. Um, but I, I definitely expect there to be some like toasted note. If I'm looking at bread, I'm thinking that this is more of, um, a darker bread. So not quite pumpernickel, but maybe like a rye bread crust or, you know, even just like wheat bread crust, because it's that little darker flavor than like your standard white bread, but it's going to be, you know, probably a little toasted. And then I'm thinking maybe some nutty notes in there just by this color. It almost just looks like an American or even an English brown ale when you just look at it and then smelling it. I definitely get those malt notes, which, how do we describe malt? They're those cereal grains and then barley, which is the, the ingredient in here, the grain in here. Barley kind of just has that sweet, almost hint of molasses kind of aroma as well as, um, taste and then, uh, anytime I have that, that sweet molasses with the bready notes, I always get like, it just comes off as raisin or like raisin bread to me, like this almost would be akin to like the Belgian double. It's just not going to have those phenolic and, um, estuary notes that you would get from a Belgian yeast. But, uh, have you sipped yet? I haven't sipped yet. I'm trying to, I'm trying to dissect. You can sip. Let's sip. Here we go. And you know what? Easy drinker. Yep. Lightly roasty. And it does come across like a very light brown ale. Um, and I'm going to say more of an English brown ale. American brown ales have American hopping and, you know, a little bit of that pine resin and bitterness. It's beer, not much bitterness at all. It is, it's got that, it does have that, you know, lingering toasty, roasty, but a very light roast on there. Very light on the palate. Not a ton, you know, as you said, didn't have, when I poured it decent amount of head, about a pinkies worth of head, but it did, um, dissipate, dissipate fast, very quickly. Yes. Um, it is nicely coating the glass. If I swirl it around, you know, we've got some lacing and, uh, a nice amount of carbonation still in there. As I take another sip, you know, I do just get that nice, like toasted bread vibe and there's like this, the, the most subtle fruitiness to it and not fruity as in palm fruit and apricots that sometimes you get from yeast and the esters of yeast, I get that kind of raisiny flavor that, and I'm, you know, going off of my palate. This is kind of like what I get when I have the darker malts that aren't super roasty. It's just that touch of molasses with still that cereal grain, um, backbone that to me comes across as like a little bit of raisin, sometimes plummy, but to me, you know, this kind of tastes like a toasted raisin bread without a ton of that raisin sweetness. And it's one of those that you can have a few of these, you know, people that tell me that they don't enjoy darker beers cause they feel like they're heavy. You know, it's pushed them towards Guinness because Guinness being 4.2% is a very light beer, light on the palate, but full flavored. And people often drink quite a few Guinnesses in a row. And then the same with this, it's only 4.8%. The one of those things where say you're eating a dinner that needs something with a little bit more flavor to it, but it's not, you know, it's not something decadent, it's not a roast that's been in there forever, you know, but you're having some sausages or you're having, you know, something off of the grill where there's a little bit of char to it, a little bit of smoke to it, but you know, you're not, you know, you could slather in barbecue and this would stand up to it decently, but I'm thinking more just straight up grilled meats, right? Grilled sausages, grilled chickens, grilled, you know, a lot of stuff that you would see at Oktoberfest, this would go great with it cause it has that toasty slight sweetness to it. And that sweetness always goes well with meat cause, you know, meat is usually pretty succulent if you're cooking it properly. Um, and I, I see this as a sessionable beer. You're not going to get too much palate fatigue because it's not over the top roasty, um, it's not over the top, uh, alcohol. It's just that nice, well rounded, darker beer. And as I said before, it's, if I were to compare it to the other cultures, this is like an English brown ale, not even a porter. And then it is also very similar to a Belgian double if they, you know, maybe lagered it and didn't use Belgian yeast and ferment at such high temperatures. It kind of has the same, what I'm saying is it's got like the same base, um, malt and grain flavors. Belgian beers use a lot of adjunct sugars like beet sugar. So sometimes that brings it a little sweeter and kind of adds that raisiny, plummy note. But, you know, those are, these are three beers that I think would suit your palate and depending on what type of yeast profile you like, you would say this as the least amount, and it's more of a showcase of this nice darker malt, and then you would go over to the English brown ale and you would get a little bit more fruity esters from their yeast, but nothing crazy, just more compared to this. And then you go to something like a Belgian double that's going to be on the higher end of your yeast flavors. And if you like something that's malty without being super roasty or big, then I would suggest one of those three beers. But right now I'm enjoying and going to continue enjoying this Dunkel. Yeah, this is a good start. Yeah. And, um, you know, people that try this, what I love to hear, same thing when like we try a porter or when we're doing shop for stouts and there's a stout in there that people just, you know, not typically used to, like you don't see a ton of milk stouts out there anymore. You don't see a ton of oatmeal stouts and people when they first have it, they're like, Oh, Oh man, I really liked this. And it's well, good, right down on your little note sheet and take a look on the draft list sometimes. And if there is one, at least ask for a sip or try it on your flight board. But then I go and I tell people, all right, well, here is a lager where many people might not even think that they get this dark, but here we have a beer called dark beer, Dunkel, and it has tons of flavor, tons of drinkability. It has very refined, you know, almost no yeast, uh, profile to it character. And it is one of those ones that, you know, when people try the class, they go, Ooh, and some people, you know, they just don't like the, the maltier stuff. And, but this isn't something that you're gonna be like, Oh my God, this is, I got to spit this out because it's very subtle, but it's one of those where you got a bunch of people like, wow, I didn't, didn't realize this beer exists. It didn't realize I liked stuff like this. And, you know, a lot of times I, you know, I've said this before, but I'll ask people if they enjoy their coffee in the morning. And then if they do, um, I say, all right, well, these kinds of beers just have that slightly roasted flavor that I think you should add to your repertoire for whether it's, uh, you know, watching a game going out and especially if you're having dinner and you need something with a little bit more flavor. Yeah. This is definitely a, definitely a good start. And, um, it's nice to learn that something like this, because, uh, going back to what we said earlier is, uh, most people think loggers are just your traditional, that yellowish that they, they yellowish color drink that they, that they have that you can get anywhere, but they don't know is there are so many different types of loggers out there from different cultures. And this is a perfect example, easy drinking, you know, lightly roasty, like you said, grilled foods, this would be something great. And it's not something that's going to kill the palate as the day goes on. This is a drinkable, uh, drinkable lager that you can enjoy throughout the day. That's very not like your typical. Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, this time of year is Oktoberfest comes along. Uh, a lot of people are like, Oh man, I wish they just said Oktoberfest year round, the beers, I love them. And I look at them, I'm like, okay, well, Americans, we mainly drink Mertzen and that's, that's what we think for Oktoberfest. And I'm not going to get too much into Oktoberfest, but if you're looking for a beer year round, that's very similar to a Mertzen, which is, you know, basically our Oktoberfest in America. The Dunkel is for you and a shout out to Hofbrauhaus Buffalo. I mean, they carry three beers all the time and then they have their seasonals, but they have their Pils, they have their Hefeweizen, but my favorite is the Dunkel. Go there, start with a half liter, and then you might just find yourself with a full Ein Masser, a nice a liter, 33.8 ounces of this a Dunkel in your glass. The double tall boy. Oh yeah. It's a fun time, not just at Oktoberfest, but going there, having, you know, dinner, but if you're just having a couple of drinks for happy hour or something, I do like the half liter Stein just because, you know, I drink my beers and in half liter quantities, but, uh, it may come off as a little gimmicky, but it is, well, you could see with the ability to gulp these beers. Cause they, they are very easy to drink. You could see why having a liter at a time is a decent idea, especially if you can't get that barmaid around too often, you need to have a big beer. And if they just slide you a liter, I mean, Hey, when in, when in Bavaria, there you go.