Bieradventskalender 2015, Day 1
I haven’t had an advent calendar of my own since I was a kid and we had the green felt wall-hanger adorned with yarn ties to which my parents attached Brach’s peppermints or—appallingly—butterscotch candies. Every year now we buy advent calendars filled with chocolate for our own children. They open a little cardboard door each day and eat a piece of candy shaped like something Christmas-y. But I haven’t gotten my own, because I don’t really have a huge sweet tooth. Finally, though, as Mikey Walsh might say, now it’s my time.
Please welcome to the stage: BeerAdvent® Calendar 2015!
Each day for the first twenty-four days of December, instead of indulging myself with a delicious sweet, I get to treat myself to a (possibly) delicious pint of genuine imported German beer! Brilliant idea, and I hope they have them available next year, too. Well, right now I do. We’ll see how it goes after twenty-three more of these. Given the sample size, it’s quite possible not all of them will be good. So, day one… How was it?
##Alpen Stoff http://alpenstoff.de
What can I say? It was a tasty beer. Light in color, and pretty light in taste. It had a distinct malty sweetness that reminded me of some other beers I’ve had at the Flying Saucer that I don’t remember the name of.
To make this a worthwhile exercise, I decided I should try and find out more about these beers and where they come from. But visiting their website, it’s all in German! Here is a mechanical translation from the internet of what the home page says:
For all to enjoy an impressive beer knowledge. The summit of the Bavarian brewing. Old brewing tradition, large brewing experience and latest Brauer know on these foundations is our alpine material. A beer on which not only we can be proud of. One of the most important ingredients for the ALPS gleichzitig material is nowadays one of the most expensive: TIME. We treat our alpine material all the rest that he needs to an immaculate, “dry” and mild beer to tires.
Impressive beer knowledge, check. “Alpine material”, check. “Mild beer to tires”? OK, dude, whatever. There’s a bunch of gold medals all over the page, so they must have won some awards or something, too. Go check it out!
I also did an internet search for “Alpen Stoff” and ended up at BeerAdvocate, which appears to be a website for beer nerds to talk about beer in excruciating detail. Their member reviews of Alpen Stoff say things like “slightly fruity with metallic touches lurking underneath”, “easily quaffable”, and “…I’ve had worse”. An average 3.3 out of 5 rating, so the nerds think it’s OK.
Success! The first day’s beer wasn’t awful. If you have an opinion on Alpen Stoff, questions about the BeerAdvent® Calendar 2015, or anything else you’d like to share with me, tweet me!