Friday Beer Blogging – Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Looking into my fridge, this week’s case is a trio of lighter beers from the Church Brew Works. The CBW helped start the Pittsburgh beer renaissance and along with the Penn Brewery offers some of the most enjoyable and atmospheric pairings of food and house-brwed beer available in any city. I am not sure when they started offering their beer for wider consumption but this was the first sampler that I have seen from them.

Going from the lightest to darkest, I didn’t have much chance to sample the Celestial Gold German-style pilsner because my wife kept getting to it first. The beer pours like sunshine in a glass, clear pale gold with an enthusiastic head, and the taste doesn’t disappoint. Carbonation offers a peppy mouthfeel that balances the subtle grassy notes and a faintly toasted malt. This would make a great Hoegaarten replacement if you do a lot of hot patio dining but don’t like wheat beer.

The Pipe Organ Pale Ale filled in the designated role of the variety pack’s weak link. The carbonation, signaled by a fading head and bland mouthfeel, seemed unusually low and the weak hops definitely runs contrary to the escalating hoppy arms race that is consuming American ale makers these days. In fact, let me just hijack this review of a not-very-interesting beer and recommend strongly that you go read that link. Now you won’t feel like a complete n00b when your local brewpub unveils its shiny new Organoleptic Hops Transducer. No that name is not a joke, at least not mine. The general idea is that if you need more hops to reach your beer nirvana you can ask your bartender to pressure it through an industrial-grade water filter packed with a pound of fresh hops. Completely insane? Maybe, but it could do wonders for mild ales like the Pipe Organ.

Now we’re talking

Back to my CBW sampler case, the sublime Pious Monk Dunkel brought me back to happyland with aggressive hymns of toasted malt, phenolics and a hint of caramel. I admit that the dunkel style, which is basically a lager incorporating toasted malt, was new to me. Kostritzer introduced me to schwazbier, which you get when you toast dunkel malt to its rational limit, but rather than pitch black the dunkel pours a clear mahogany with a finer-grained head that lasted longer than the other two offerings from CBW. This brew more than made up for the limp pale ale. I enjoyed it with several dinners and found it to go perfectly well with each.

As always, read about the whole CBW line at BA. Prost!