Summer ratings '98

Polish beers: All bought in Gdansk, and mostly consisting of strong lagers. The beers from Hevelius, a brewery in Gdansk now owned by Elbrewery were my favourite of the lot. They lack the somewhat cloying sweetness of many other Polish lagers, and a crisp and clean. The best scoring Polish beer in these ratings were the fairly strong Hevelius Classic.

US beers: A gift. Bought in Kalamazoo by a friend. The beers from Kalamazoo Brewing Co. are really impressing, especially the high gravity ones. Since I usually like well hopped barley wines, so it's no wonder that I adored Third Coast Old Ale, but I had no idea that a fruit beer could be as tasty as Bell's Cherry Stout, a potent stout with sour cherries. Another interesting beer we got was Toronado Pale Ale from Olde Peninsula Brewpub & Restaurant, which was draught ale tapped into a huge plastic bottle. Unfortunately it was way past it's best before date when we consumed it, and the rating may thererfore suffer. The group's overall US summer favourite was Bell's Amber Ale, a well made and tasty American amber ale, perhaps less challenging than some of the other Bell's brews.

Maibocks: We had managed to scraoe together 4 or 5 different maibocks for a head to head rating. One of them was Einbecker Mai-Urbock the original bock beer, and one of the true classics. Though scoring really well this dry and bitter bock was surprisingly outscored by a Dutch beer: De Drie Ringen Meibok from Amefoortsche Bierbrouwerij, a slightly darker, less bitter and perhaps a little bit toffeeish awesome bock. Also the Maibocks from Hofbrähaus and Löbauer Bergquell were of high standard.

Other Dutch and Belgian beers: Most of the bought at De Bierkoning, including our overall summer favourite, the excellent, lightly spicey Speciale Vlo, especially brewed for this beer store by Brouweij t'IJ. But the brweries in the Netherlands can brew other types of good beer than what is usually associated with the Benelux countries. Bonn'ess Strong Kerst Stout is a wonderful strong and malty stout brewed by Tesselse Bierbrouwerij. Unfortunately the diversity of Dutch brewing goes all the way to the crappiest of lagers. The can of Modelo Cerveja Holandesa picked up in Madeira, showed Dutch brewing from it's most awful side. Grolsch Summer Blond is a sweetish one dimensional summer ale also to be avoided. Girardin Gueuze 1882 on the other hand was a treat. More authentic gueuze than the ones that usually reaches us, and in my opinion the sourness is better balanced than in Cantillon's beers.

Swedish beers: From Uppsala, a university town north of Stockholm comes two tasty beers from a brave new micro, Slottskällan. Their golden ale Premiär is complex with vanillaish flavour, and was our Swedish beer of the summer. Their porter Svart also scored well, as did Gamla Stans unpateurized summer seasonal Midsommarfärsköl. Hallsta has for some reason started filling up the shelves in my local beer store with the same beer with different labels. The beer itself is decent, but I really dislike their practise.

Other beers: Ballard's Blizzard was a disappointingly thin barleywine, while Aldaris Porteris from Latvia was a rather one dimensional Baltic Porter. I also picked up two rather tasty lightbodied lagers from northern Italy brewed by Brauerei Forst. Other mediterranean beers included the decent Imperial from Portugal and the carbonated water labeled Mythos from Greece. The Phillipines became our 70th coubtry when we rated San Miguel Pale Pilsen, a fairly nice tropical lager with a hint of maltiness.