Bieradventskalender 2015, Day 2
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!
##Ankerbräu Nördlingen Grandl Helles Lagerbier http://www.ankerbrauerei.de/index.php/anker-biere/grandl-lager
I like a good lager. Most beer I drink is probably classified as a lager. Most beer anyone drinks is classified as a lager. Pilsners are lagers. This was an OK lager. I don’t really know offhand how to tell a lager from another kind of beer, but I know lager beers are stored and conditioned at cold temperatures, in places like basements and caves (a process known as lagering). History! In any case, I didn’t think it was as good as Day 1.
According to the home page for the makers of Grandl Helles Lagerbier, Ankerbräu Nördlingen, they’re part of a 405-year tradition of brewing. That’s a pretty good tradition, and it would seem at this point they probably know what they’re doing. They also have one of those gold medal thingies on there. So either the people that assembled this calendar really picked some good, award-winning beers, or they hand out gold medals to beers in Germany like the U.S. hands out stickers that say “Organic”.
Beer nerds at RateBeer, who apparently use a completely different rating system than the BeerAdvocate guys, gave it a score of 23, with a 44 for “style”. They say wonderful things like “hints of baked bread and caramel”, “a pale lager on sweet steriods”, and “Vielen Dank an kevnic2008! Klare kräftig goldene Farbe, geringe weiße Schaumkrone. Geruch leicht metallisch hopfig, malzig, langweilig. Geschmack dezent bitter hopfig, leicht metallisch, ansonsten wässrig, belanglos.”
In a delightful twist, the first two reviewers listed on RateBeer call out the Bieradventskalender specifically! Bier Brothers! So to you, maxwelldeux and Bockyhorsey, I give a hearty prosit!
The next two guys, though, appear to be cheating. Their reviews are from mid-November, and their cans obviously came from the calendar package (even if they don’t mention it specifically). So, no toast for you. But I hope you enjoyed your illicitly-timed beers, chinchill and crossovert.
Two beers down, and I’m not regretting this thing at all. So far the ranking stands as:
With a sample size of two, I don’t like where this is trending. Let’s hope it has more ups than downs from here. Otherwise it’s going to be a long Bieradvent.
Do you have any opinions on Grandl Bavarian Lager, questions about the BeerAdvent® Calendar 2015, or anything else you’d like to share with me? Tweet me (@scotticus)!