Tag Archives: Englishman Beer Kaliningrad

Bistrampolio Beer in Kaliningrad is it any good?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

25 August 2024 ~ Bistrampolio Beer in Kaliningrad is it any good?

Bistrampolio! It’s very much a mouthful, isn’t it! To the complacent, or could that be arrogant, English, who expect everyone else to speak their language, it sounds like a cross between a poser’s restaurant in old-time London’s Tooley Street and a disease brought on by inveterate mint eating. But have I got news for you: it’s nothing of the sort!

Bistrampolio is, for want of a better description, a chocolate stout. Its full name is Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus, but we won’t hold that against it.

It is brewed by Lithuanian brewers Aukstaitijos Bravorai, who seem to specialise in my favourite bottles ~ flip top ~ and win countless awards in my mind for best labels in their class, possibly because their labels exist in a class of their own.

Beer review links:

[Butauty] [Kanapinis (light)] [Kanapinis (dark)]
[Keptinis Farmhouse]

The Bistrampolio bottle is dark but not as dark as its contents. If you were to pour it into a glass, and where else would you pour it (?), and then swiftly turn off the lights, you wouldn’t be able to see it. No, honestly, it really is that dark. As black as your hat, which is green.

And even with a miner’s helmet with a torch strapped on the front, which you probably bought from eBay, you would only need to wear it, if you felt you had to.

A full body is easily found, and this beer certainly has one. If you’ve got a girlfriend like that, you’ll know perfectly well what I mean.

Bistrampolio Beer in Kaliningrad

I’m busy at the moment sampling what the brewers of Bistrampolio tell me is a beer containing five types of malts. That’s not one malt! That’s five! Another interesting figure, which ties in like a pair of corsets to the image of full-bodied, is its 6% O.G., making it not just a full body but an appreciably strong body.

The flavour is all there, and believe you me it’s rich, but, unlike many strong, dark beers, its consistency is light, not intensely glutinous, thus giving you, the drinker, the full malty, as it were, but in a rather surprisingly thirst-quenching way. Drunk chilled, as the brewers suggest, Bistrampolio hits the right spot from the top of the glass to the bottom.

Has it a good finish and an aftertaste to match? What sort of question is that? Has a globalist got morals? The first is a yes; the second a no. Bistrampolio is smooth, as smooth as the finest black velvet. Comparatively speaking (why not?), Guinness is to Bistrampolio what a horse-hair blanket is to silk. “On my sainted mother’s life, to be sure, to be sure, to be sure …” In the second place, there is no second place, for if Bistrampolio was a horse and I a betting man, I would be quids in on this one-horse race.

But enough of this idle banter! Switch the light back on and let’s have a proper look at her!

She’s dark, dusky, sultry; she carries the perfume of caramel malts with just the right hint of barley; and boy does she go down well.

With a pedigree like this (woof!) and an O.G. of 6%, she possesses the kind of darkness that I could gladly take a knee for, or anything else for that matter…

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus
Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai
Where it is brewed: Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1litre
Strength: 6%
Price: It cost me about 310 roubles (£2.71)
Appearance: Dark chocolate
Aroma: Rich malty chocolate
Taste: Handsome
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: Classic
Would you buy it again? I want to

Beer rating

About the beer: Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus
The brewer’s website has this to say about Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus:

“BISTRAMPOLI MANOR unfiltered chocolate dark beer. This 6% ABV beer is brewed with a combination of five malts – Pilsner Light, Munich, Caramel, Dark and Chocolate – which gives this beer a dark mahogany colour and a subtle dark chocolate bitterness and aroma. Serving this beer cool (about 12 ⁰C) reveals its true aroma and taste.”

Brewer’s website: aukstaitijosbravorai.lt

Wot other’s say [Comments on Bistrampolio Dvaro Alus from the internet, unedited]
😑 Smooth and very drinkable. Just slightly sweet overall. Not a roast bomb.
😐 The taste is sweet, malty with a noticeable rag.
[Comment: Is he drinking it through his underpants?]
😊The aroma is persistent and tasty. Damn, really tasty. The aroma is clean and chocolatey.
[Comment: Now here is a chap who tells it as it is!]
💪F*ing Handsome!
[Comment: My brother! He’s got a way with words, but rarely gets away with them …]

Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

Arty Crafty it is and all the better for it!

17 April 2024~ Craft Garage Kaliningrad a Pit Stop for Good Beer

On the same evening that we happened upon the Beer Bar on Prospect Mira and Bar Sovetov, we stumbled upon and into Craft Garage. You’ve guessed it! Whereas it could be argued that my MOT was long overdue, that I was urgently in need of a rebore and my big ends had gone, Craft Garage is not that sort of place.

In spite of the name, the service that Craft Garage provides is strictly beer related. Why else would I beer there? (Ho! Ho!) The clue lies in the ‘Craft’ part of the name. Craft standing for ‘Craft Beer Bar’ ~ crafty, ay!

Craft Garage Kaliningrad

The trend for this type of bar, as opposed to a fully fledged traditional pub, gained popularity in the UK in response to the micro-brewery boom and the inherent advantages of low start-up and maintenance costs together with ~ as the bars are usually small ~ a means of avoiding or at least diminishing the outrageously iniquitous business rates ~ a robber baron tax, which, not unlike death duties, is totally unjustified and is the current primary cause (bar one🙊) of the decay of Britain’s high streets.

The trend for such bars in Kaliningrad, whilst not motivated by the same factors, has gathered pace in recent years, as the taste and therefore the market for beer in general shows an exponential increase, decreasing the sales gap of old between Russia’s flagship vodka.

With my fan belt slipping and my radiator running dry, I was pleased to learn that not only was stumbling into Craft Garage an excellent idea, but that the bar dispensary was in stumbling distance itself, ie just inside the door.

Behind the bar, a youngish chap presided over a chalkboard containing beers of sufficient quantity and with enough interesting names to verily make one’s moustache curl. I’d left mine at home, but the barman’s made up for it. He had one of those Salvador Dali jobs, and the beer was certainly working.

As Salvador Dali was not listed among the range of beers on offer, and I didn’t know how to say in Russian ‘Which beer should I drink to grow a moustache like yours?’, I decided to play it safe, plumping for a beer recently tried and tested at bar Forma, which goes by the name of Kristoffel. It’s a nice name and a nice beer.

Craft Garage is not full of old engine parts, grease monkeys and the smell of spilt fuel and tyres; it is a well-oiled hip joint, suitably decorated and furnished around the novel theme that it has adopted. Its name and image lend themselves admirably to the continued restaurant and bar interest in the nuts and bolts ‘industrial look’, of which there are two categories. Both are shabby chic, but one is more shabby than chic, and Craft Garage occupies the top-drawer end of the chic curve. Excuse me, I am going to use the word ‘plush’.

For example, there is nothing shabby about the brick-effect walls, the cutaway oil drum chairs, the framed exploded vehicle-engine diagrams, the polished tables and bar area. In fact, polished is another good word, as everything in Craft Garage is as clean and sparkling as the pampered plugs of your favourite Rolls Royce’ engine. And whilst the floor is designer distressed, it is completely free of skidmarks.

The vintage accoutrements are, of course, less believable than a black Dr Who, but the willing suspension of disbelief works better for me in this case than my analogous reference. Moreover, Craft Garage has the advantage of allowing you to travel back in time with the company of your choosing, and whilst you can and must fault woke, you cannot fault Craft Garage.

A complete oil change (which you will need if you have spent half a lifetime drinking Watney’s) starts from 300 roubles.

There’s regular and premium, thus every engine is catered for, even the high-performance kind, and as every beer comes complete with a not-to-be-sneezed-at octane rating, when you finally reach the finishing line you can be sure of feeling well tuned up.

Craft Garage, the place to go when you want a night on the pistons!

Mick Hart & Inara outside Craft Garage in Kaliningrad

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro with a Heart of Gold

It’s a venue which immortalises the House of Soviets, serves good beer, hosts music evenings and likes you, the customer.

13 April 2024 ~ Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad Retro in the House of Soviets

Do you believe in coincidences? In my most recent post I wrote about the gradual disappearance of Kaliningrad’s most infamous and controversial landmark, the House of Soviets. Less than a week later, I find myself in a subterranean bar dedicated to that very building.

Bar Sovetov is located in what once was, during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the residential quarter of choice for Königsberg’s affluent citizens.

On foot, it is something of a trek from the city centre to this still sought-after district, but it is one I made on numerous occasions in the days when a bar, long since gone, the enigmatically named Twelve Chairs, exercised a consistent influence and justified the effort.

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

Whilst in the character of its rooms, Bar Sovetov does not possess the intricacy or the old-world charm that gave Twelve Chairs its je ne sais quoi, it is no less thought-provoking in the nature of its decoration and appurtenances of thematic quirk.

The two-roomed bar, with its truncated corridor leading to the lavs, is very much a pop art haven. Victor Ryabinin, former artist and local historian, would have adored it! Symbolism abounds: ‘Look Out!’ the slogan reads. ‘Big Brother is Watching you!’ You see it above the full-sized wall mirror in which you are watching yourself.

A white face mask framed between two suspended lamps exudes from the wall. Wearing a baseball cap in such a way that it partly conceals its features, it holds to its lips an admonitory finger attached to a long white arm. As with the face above it, the arm emerges from solid brickwork as it would through the fold of a curtain. Both face and arm are whimsical, especially in the matter of their relative dislocation, but irony and surrealism are the uniting forces that bring them together.

These are just two of many examples of Bar Sovetov’s camp milieu. Wherever you look, be it high or low, another element of the quaint and fanciful leaps out to greet and surprise you.

With the obvious exception of Aleks Smirnov’s Badger Club, lovers of the out-of-the-ordinary will be hard pushed to find even among Kaliningrad’s most unconventional watering holes anything that surpasses Bar Sovetov’s quaint burlesque. But for all that it camps it up, the nostalgia has a genuine ring; it springs from a source of real affection. And the humour the props elicit, be it aimed at you and me or tailored to the refined perception of the discerning intellectual, leaves plenty of form intact for the inquisitive mind of the history buff.

The genesis, erection, completion and the long-standing but idle years of the House of Soviets’ occupation are captured step by step in a series of timelined photographs. The images of the building in its promising phase of construction, with cranes on either side, are particularly poignant memories, given that in its obliteration almost identical cranes in almost identical places stand either side of the shrinking structure.

On the opposite side of actuality, a wall in the bar’s first room is a bold painted visual replica, close up and in your face, of the House of Soviet’s exterior. The effect is profoundly Gotham City, gaudy, haunting, claustrophobic but seminally cartoon, a perfect piece of ‘dark deco’ kitsch. Further urbanisation occurs not in the question itself, which is off the wall whilst on the wall, but in the way it is daubed across the wall, which reflects the mind of graffiti man stretched to its utmost limit: “Who,” it asks, “killed the House of Soviets?” If we didn’t laugh, we’d cry.

More real photos of the fated hulk that over its 53-year existence dominated Kaliningrad’s skyline, exciting in its awesome prospect, ambivalent and contentious in what it actually stood for and why it stood for so long, can be found in the bar’s back room.

Mick Hart and Inara at Bar Sovetov in Kaliningrad

It is here that the structure’s rightful place in the socio-political era into which it was given a sort of life or maybe a life of sorts is given historical context. Framed copies of Soviet art, amusing, powerful and all iconic, visually break up the hard brick-wall to which they are attached, whilst in one corner of the room a little shrine pays tribute to the final days of Sovietism.

There, upon a shelf, rubbing shoulders with the printed word and a quaint assortment of nick-nacks, sits a large portrait photograph of if not the architect of perestroika then the man who is widely considered to be its chief executive officer, former General Secretary Gorbachev, twinned in the opposite corner with a replica set of traffic lights, which, for some exotic reason or perhaps no reason at all beyond their anomalous presence and illuminative oddity, cast a lurid reddish glow across the whitewashed brickwork.

The seats in this comic-strip memory, when not authentic 70s’ vintage, are made from wooden pallets, painted to look distressed, put together as benches and kindly equipped with padded seats. However, recalling the slatted wood benches with which Kaliningrad’s trains were furnished twenty-three years ago, such convenient cushioned luxury may be but the useful product of indulgent historical revisionism. Whilst the past is unrelenting in its prescribed but often unforgiving and impractical perpetuity, concessions ought to be made, don’t you think, to our poor post-Soviet posteriors. Historical accuracy has its virtues, but is it worth corns and blisters?

Bar Sovetov Kaliningrad

The bar itself, that is the thing on which when you buy your beer it temporarily rests on top and the area to the rear of it, is a content-managed zone, where normal things normally sold behind bars share more than their fair share of shelving space with the weird, the wild and the whimsically whacky. Note the hollow concrete blocks shown in the photo below that have been used to comprise the wall of the bar. Is that or is it not a passing nod to the House of Soviets?

A conforming principle of all such bars, that is to say craft-beer bars, is that the beer selection is written in chalk on good old-fashioned blackboards. What is it, I ask myself, and I suppose you ask yourself too, about this rudimentary practice that makes it so applicable, so pleasingly, conventionally and fundamentally right and so well received in its prime objective, which is to call to our eager attention the dispensation of quality brews? When you’ve found the answer to that one, you might go on to answer the question ‘Who killed the House of Soviets?’ I have a hunch that in both cases we will discover the hand of Old Father Time.

From the six or so beers on offer, I ordered myself a ‘Milk of …?’ Er, a ‘Milk of …?’ What was the name of that beer? Ah yes, now I remember, I bought myself a ‘Milk of Amnesia’. How could you not drink a beer like that, with a name so unforgettable?

In summing up the Bar Sovetov experience, the beer is good. The atmosphere is atmospheric. The people who run the bar are real; in other words, they are genuinely friendly and they are also good at what they do. They effortlessly embody and earnestly convey the qualities prerequisite for fulfilling the role they have given themselves, that of convivial mine host, in an age when many are either not up to it or simply not fit for purpose.

Those who earn their living in the hospitality trade at customer-facing level, would do well to bookmark this truth, that the bar or pub in which they perform is as much a stage as any other and their customers are their audience. Once the curtain goes up, if you cannot manage authenticity, you must put yourself out there, put on a smile and remember that it’s show time! If the act is one the punters like or at least is one that they can believe in, and the beer is good and well kept, they’ll keep on coming back. Loyalty is everything, and that applies to the service industry as it does to everything else, and I cannot think of a better bar more deserving of it than Sovetov.

The main thing:

Bar Sovetov
Prospekt Mira, 118 ground floor, Central District, Kaliningrad, 236022

Link to street map: https://2gis.ru/kaliningrad/firm/70000001082036462

Tel: +7 921 616 36 26
Telegram: https://t.me/barsovetov
VK: https://vk.com/barsovetov

Opening times:
Mon: Closed
Tues to Thurs: 4pm to 12 midnight
Fri, Sat & Sun: 4pm to 2am

Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad is it good?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Kanapinis

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

20 November 2023 ~ Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad is it good?

Kanapinis: This is one of those beers which if you are English and linguistically challenged will be difficult to get your mouth around. Let’s just say by this I mean canapés, and say no more about it.

Whilst Kanapinis’ cannabis-hemp connection cannot fail amongst certain circles to attract (not that I am suggesting foul play by advertising), this beer has three things going for it before you even think of whapping it down your neck. For starters, it’s got bottle, and the bottle is made of glass. It also has a resealable Quillfeldt stopper (as featured in my previous post Butauty) and a label that could take first prize at any pagan festival.

“Plastic coat and plastic hat, and you think you know where it’s at,” sang Frank Zappa. Poor old plastic, destined to travel through life second class. But let’s be Frank about it, Frank, ‘better than glass my arse’, no plastic isn’t and never will be. You certainly got that right! Best beer is best drunk from glass glasses and out of bottles made of glass. Tins are also crap.

The Quillfeldt stopper is what it is: one of those simple but oh so very practical inventions that looks as good as it gets and couldn’t really get much better even if it wanted to. Glass beer bottles in a litre size complete with Quillfeldt stoppers make the urge to save the bottles virtually irresistible. It’s a great way (if you are short of ways) of cluttering up your house. Note: These bottles will come in handy even if you never use them.

Beer review links:

[Butauty]
[Kanapinis (Dark)]

The olfactory clues as to the nature and taste composition of Kanapinis do not do the beer half as much justice as they ought. Not that from the bottle the aroma of the contents can be said to be in anyway dour or as dull as dishwater (are we talking Baltika 3?) or by any stretch of the connoisseur’s thirsty, impatient imagination unpleasant, indeed quite the contrary, the nostrils positively swoon at the subtle shades of bright and smoky, the happy hoppy, the secret scents and the affably aromatic, but subtle is the word and complex is the next one. We’ll get to that in a minute.

In the glass, the decanted beer assumes a smoky amber appearance and comes with a big creamy head. Once poured and given room to breathe, the initial aroma transfigures itself, becoming progressively less like barley and more like a fragrant perfume, not Brute or High Karate or any of that flared-trousers stuff but an exclusively minted, quality Versace.

The exact composition as detected by the nose remains elusive, but drinking is not about sniffing. If it was, the health-conscious caveat added to beer-bottle labels by seemingly indulgent, public-spirited brewers would hardly exhort their customers to play the game and ‘drink sensibly’, as the doing of such a curious thing would have obvious negative impacts on brewery profits. No, the label would instead advise you to sniff the beer with care.

But let’s be done at once with matters of the nose and get down to the business of carefree drinking!

Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad

First, let me assure you that the Kanapinis’ head sits there proudly where it is poured at the top of the glass. It does not wassail away like someone who has vowed that they will love you for eternity but as soon as your back is turned they’ve gone. In other words, the Kanapinis’ head has a certain respectful staying power. It does not go just like that, no matter how much you fool yourself that you would rather expect it to do so.

As you drink this beer, the loyal head clings firmly to the glass, like that special someone you should have clung to in the days before you realised that you were anything else but Love’s Young Dream. But these things invariably happen, and in the world of beery beverages we call this phenomenon not a bitch but by her name, which is lacing.

Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad

As the brew goes down, without unnecessary recourse to rude expressions such as brewer’s droop, it is the fruity innuendos, saucy herbal asides and various suggestive digestive delights that service your longing palate.

The experience is an holistic one: a blend of soft and easy, a tincture of this and that. It’s that mouthwash you almost bought from Aldi but then thought better of it, or that wine you were made to taste by a bunch of pretentious farts, who wouldn’t know the difference between Schrader Cellars Double Diamond Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon and a glass of Andrews Liver Salts (Would that be ‘Andrews’ as in ‘Eamon?’). ‘Spit it out! I should cocoa ~ not!’

Once Kanapinis has gone, it hasn’t. Lacing still clings to your glass, and beyond the climactic finish, which is enough to make your toes curl, the aromatic aftermath is as sweet as the milf next door.

One pint of Kanapinis is nearly never enough. It’s wildly better than sex, with no refractory period. And you never have to worry about it living up to your expectations because, just like playing solitaire, you can cheat as much as you like.

Kanapinis (Cannabis) Beer in Kaliningrad

You’ve got to hand it to the brewers, whether they like it or not, Kanapinis is a babe of a beer. A double-page spread in a paunchy world where beers build better bodies, and you don’t have to switch the light off in order to enjoy it. A word of warning, however, both to the sceptical and the uninitiated who are apt to read the wrong kinds of things and believe what they read is gospel: watch out for those beer reviews that should be taken with a pinch of salt or a glass of Eamon Andrews. Downright obscene it would be, if on consummating Kanapinis, you complained about her virtues and the value you never got for your money. This is not a beer to take home to your mother, but you have to admit its got style.

Kanapinis is habit-forming, but at least it is a natural one. If you don’t come back for more, then there must be something wrong with you. Please to remember the age-old motto, not coming back for more often offends the Lady. I think the someone who coined this phrase was a fan of Margaret Thatcher?

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Kanapinis
Brewer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai
Where it is brewed: Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1litre
Strength: 5.1%
Price: It cost me about 288 roubles (£2.62)
Appearance: Hazy-daisy amber
Aroma: Beer bitter with subtle aromatic hints
Taste: An encyclopaedic experience
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: You wouldn’t want him looking over your shoulder
Would you buy it again? Just try and stop me, pal!!

Beer rating

About the brewery and the beer: Aukštaitijos Bravorai | Kanapinis
The brewer’s website has this to say about Kanapinis light:

“Cannabis, Unfiltered light beer: Beer is brewed according to the classic brewing technology. Natural raw materials, open fermentation and long and careful aging give this beer a mild frozen taste. The barley malt in its composition gives the beer a light amber colour.”

And this to say about their range of beers:

“Each beer recipe is exclusive, with a real story and an authentic composition. The bravors of Aukštaitija produce beer, which dates back to the 1750s. The recipe for one of the brewed beers came from Germany back in the last century, which today is included in the Culinary Heritage Foundation.”

Comment: I would venture to suggest that to look for a better way of enjoying history other than by quaffing it in the form of an authentic, tested-by-time, celebrated historic brew would be a completely pointless object.

Brewer’s website: aukstaitijosbravorai.lt

Wot other’s say [Comments on Kanapinis (Cannabis) beer from the internet, unedited]
😑Hardly tangy, spicy in taste…but overall rather bland
[Comment: This bloke obviously has taste-bud problems.]

😐Slightly sweet, reminiscent of honey, and very drinkable. It could just be a little spicier
[Comment: OK, so make with the chili sauce!]

😁Stonkingly good beer!
[Comment: Alright, I admit, it was me who said that.]

😐Very unusual beer, smells of honey, but not too sweet, very drinkable, delicious! The only drawback is a bit too little carbonation*. Can I drink more of this?
[Comment: Well, if you can’t, pass me the bottle!]

*He needs to add a spoonful of Andrews Sisters

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad How Good is It?

Craft, Imported and Specialty Beers: Butauty

Mick Hart’s difficult job of reviewing craft, imported and specialty beers in Kaliningrad

6 November 2023 ~ Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad How Good is It?

Quillfeldt! No, it’s not the name of a beer and neither is it a term of abuse. It is in fact the name of a gentleman, Charles de Quillfeldt, to be precise, the inventor of the ‘flip top’ or ‘lightening toggle’ bottle stopper, whose name is eponymous with his marvellous creation.

Qillfeldt’s bottle closure system consists of a hinged wire frame attached to a stopper which, being harnessed to the bottle neck, allows it to be removed and replaced with ease and relative swiftness. (Just the job in a thirst emergency.) Since the stopper is attached to the bottle, it is impossible to misplace it, enabling the bottle to be opened and closed at will, a thoughtful contraption and that’s a fact, although in my experience a quality bottled beer once opened will never have need to be sealed again.

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad

Butauty beer, by Lithuanian brewers Vilniaus alus, has such a top, or should I say had, as recent information discloses, without revealing why, that production of this beer has ceased. That being noted, however, as recently as last week I discovered a shelf full of Butauty in one of Kaliningrad’s Victoria supermarkets, so either someone is telling porkies, or the beer displayed is remnant stock.

Nevertheless, as I drank it, liked it and also made notes about it back in 2022, I shall now proceed to review it, even if it has become just an affectionate bittersweet memory.

It isn’t, not bittersweet that is. It has a slightly bitter twang, but overlaying that a predominantly burnt, smoky, caramel flavour, slightly aromatic, one might even venture to say subtly aromatic, with a deep and generous peaty aroma.

When my Quillfeldt flew off, a bit like my toupee did last summer, as I was racing along in an open-topped car, the aroma genie popped out as if it was old Jack from his box, and started into shouting up my nostrils, “Get a load of this! It’s deep and richly peaty!”

And isn’t it just the truth.

Butauty Beer in Kaliningrad

In the bottle, the beer looks as black as your hat, or most parts of South London, but once you’ve outed it into your glass, it could be any one or other of fifty shades of grey.

Butauty gives good head, the sort of rich, frothing, foaming head that they used to like up North in England before the Daleks invaded the area and everything went south ~ although it didn’t help them any. But like a lot of endangered English traditions, the head shows little resolve. It fizzles, farts and splutters and by the time you’ve come back with your crisps, it’s as shockingly gone as a case of white flight.

I, personally and in particular, have never cared much for a big creamy head. As far as I am concerned, beer can be as flat as a triple ‘A’, as long as it retains its zest and unique flavour. There’s nothing much flat that I can’t handle, although I don’t care much for the Fens. Mind you, with its rich peaty smell and Fen-like hue, Butauty beer, at 5.5%, has an earthiness about it that would fable well in the Cambridgeshire Badlands, ‘Ay up, and Jip Oh!’, except, of course, it hails ~ or did hail ~ from Lithuanian brewers, Vilniaus alas ~ sorry Vilniaus alus (with a four-letter word like ‘alus’, it could have been far worse!).

Among Butauty’s internet reviews, many are rather scathing. I just don’t get it (You’re not the only one! Have you any suggestions?). And, if what is written is not a black lie, and the beer is no longer produced, no one will be getting it.

I, for one, and some others I imagine, can honestly say that I like this beer. It smells like good beer should smell and is right tasty, I’ll tell you that!

Should the rumour of its demise be credible, it will indeed be a sorry day for beer connoisseurs wherever they are, and yet we must take heart, for there is consolation in everything: as Bogart once famously said, “We’ll always have Quillfeldt.”

BOX TICKER’S CORNER
Name of Beer: Butauty
Brewer: Vilniaus alus
Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1litre
Strength: 5.5%
Price: It cost me about 280 roubles [in 2022] [Note: recent supermarket price is 490 roubles, £4.30]
Appearance: Dark
Aroma: Caramel and peat
Taste: Complex taste of all things dark and beautiful
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: Olde Worlde Parchment
Would you buy it again? If they ever start producing it again, anytime

BEER RATING:

About the brewery: Vilniaus alus
Vilniaus alus’s claim to fame is that it is the only brewery of beer and natural drinks in Vilnius. The brewery is proud to assert that no chemical additives are used in their beers, guaranteeing quality products wholesome in natural ingredients. Both bottled and draft beers are produced, and the company exports to Europe and to the USA.
Vilniaus alus

Wot other’s say [Comments on Butauty from the internet, unedited]
😊Caramel bitterness, like a pleasant surprise, Doesn’t taste bitter, but pleases with its taste, like a little whim

😒Butter, caramel, diacetyl. Powdery mouthfeel. Nutty with a bitter note. But destroyed by rancid butter.

🙂 Good chocolate stout

😮Lithuanian Shit! [I say! Steady on!]

The right connections
Cultura Kaliningrad ~ a world-wide beer bonanza
Variety of beer in Kaliningrad

Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

Cultura Bottle Shop in Kaliningrad

10 August 2023 ~ Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

The beer reviews that I have written to my blog number in the region of twenty five. That I have managed to fit these in between drinking beer is astonishing, but somehow they have taken shape. In these reviews I have dealt exclusively with beers sold through supermarkets, predominantly in PET bottles in regulated volumes of 1.35 to 1.5 litres, but the fact that I have homed in on this category of beer does not mean that during the course of my beer-drinking lifestyle, I have not permitted myself the pleasure of quaffing offerings of a more specialised nature, beers which by their craft or import status are generally considered more exotic and, as a consequence, more expensive.

Thus, in addition to my reviews of the best and the worst of Kaliningrad’s ‘run of the mill’ bottled beer, I give you fair warning that I am now about to embark on the no less difficult appraisal of craft and speciality imported beers.

As in my last series of highly professional and sensible reviews, it is my intention to stick to beers purchased through supermarkets and/or specialist beer-selling outlets, in other words from what we call in England off-sales rather than licensed premises, such as bars, cafes, restaurants and hotels or, to be more precise, beers sold in bottles as distinct from barrel-stored, tap-dispensed beverages.

Whilst supermarkets and smaller shops in Kaliningrad may stock one or two more exotic brands of beers supplementary to their standard fare, such commodities are typically to be found in greater abundance and choice in specialist retail outlets. A number of such establishments abound in Kaliningrad, but one of the best by virtue of its diverse selection and quality has to be Cultura.

Cultura Kaliningrad

Cultura’s pedigree is accredited by discerning beer-buying and drinking afficionados, whose approving comments feature regularly on various beer-tickers’ websites.

Cultura is situated on one of Kaliningrad’s busy city thoroughfares, Prospekt Mira. As with many other shops in Kaliningrad, it is located on the ground floor of a three or four storey block of flats, whose size and scale dwarfs its presence and understates its potential. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that seasoned beer drinkers are like seasoned hunters — they have a nose for their quarry — the shop and its myriad delights could easily be passed by. True, the Russian word for beer (peeva) is large enough not to be missed, but the back-to-basics look, which may or may not be designer inspirited, is a little too convincing when viewed against the backdrop of the tired old flats in which it is framed. However, first impressions can be deceptive, and don’t we drinkers know it, and any misgivings and apprehensions that may be unjustly inferred are swept away immediately once you have wassailed inside.

In fact, once inside Cultura one’s senses positively reel! The shop has an awful lot of beer, an awesome lot of different beers, and even after closing your eyes, opening them again, rubbing them and pinching yourself, the notion that you might have died and gone to beer-shop heaven is delightfully ineffaceable.

Cultura Kaliningrad

I am not much of a traveller, so Cultura is my compensation. Its beers, sourced from around the world, enable me to globe trot at will. I can be in Germany one minute and Belgium the next. I can even be back in Great Britain, no passport or visa required, all that is needed is cash and in the globalist era of touch-card technology even that is not an impediment ~ or so they would have us believe!

Cultura is like a library, and whilst not all drinkers are readers and not all readers are drinkers, who could resist working their way through the legion of beer-bottle labels that line Cultura’s shelves. Volumes and volumes of labels and each label speaking volumes; talk about spoilt for choice! Where on earth does one start?

A good starting point could be strength, country of origin, dark beer or hoppy light, bottle size and cost. Alternatively, you could invite your curiosity to take you where it will, which is more or less the path that I took. As I travelled around the world in my own inimitable way, marvelling at the exhibits, as unique and individual as anything in an art gallery, price became a factor, albeit a not defining one, in the process of selection.

Mick Hart samples Kaliningrad imported beers

Above: Mick Hart in Cultura: one photo was taken during the Plandemic; the other later. Bet you can’t guess which is which?!

Translating roubles into pounds based on the exchange rate on any given day is never easy; performing the calculation as an aid to purchasing beer is analogous to acrobatics, and whilst it may not, and often does not, provide the safety net you hope it will, price variations in Cultura are sufficiently dramatic to make falling back on this methodology an imperfect reassurance.

On my first visit to Cultura at the height of the Plandemic in November 2021, the exchange rate was such that it allowed me to cut some slack, and I was not particularly concerned about paying 350 to 400 roubles for a litre bottle of beer (then about £4.50) even though in those days the average price for a 1.5 litre bottle available from supermarkets was under £1.50. “Treat yourself!” I thought, and so I did.

Come 2023, however, I was less complacent. This was the time when the rouble was billed as the ‘best performing currency in the world’, thanks to the fiscal measures taken to equalise the impact of western sanctions. The resultant disparity in the price and value of craft and imported beers had me effectively sanction myself. Unlike the big sanctions, however, whose efficacy are questionable, my little, private sanctions were not so ill conceived that they would come back later to bite my arse; they were modest in proportion and tenable in their application, working on the kind of budget that the Bank of England can only dream of. Even so, speciality beers, particularly imported ones, have always come with a higher price tag wherever you might be domiciled, and those in Cultura are no exception. I will leave you to decide whether or not you would be prepared to pay £15 or more for a litre bottle of beer.

“Ay up, mother, I think it’s off to the working man’s club!” (Note: Working Men’s Clubs are no longer permissible in British society: (a) because we no longer have a ‘working class’ and Benefit Class does not sound near as 21^st century as politicians would like, and (b) to have a man’s club or a man’s thing of any kind in the UK is impermissible under the ‘Everyone has to be Queer Act’ [source: Winky’s Guide to British Law by N.O. Balls])

That having been said, and I am sorry that it has been, but things do have a habit of popping out (when you least expect them to) [source When I Was Young by Y. Fronts], the price range in Cultura is flexible enough to ease the stays on your wallet without making you walk lop-sided. And once everything is paid for, it all fits snugly in a nice paper bag.

There are red flags and red lights: one is to a bull which the other is to need, and there are green lights that mean Go. Which is why I went to Cultura. No one should court seduction until it becomes a vice, but every once in a while passion needs an outing. Remember the words that your maiden aunt should have listened to but didn’t: ‘a little of what you fancy does you good!’

Cultura has a lot of that little and plenty more besides. You won’t be sorry you went there!

More beer delights in Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Sir Francis Drake
Four great Kaliningrad bars
Dreadnought

The main thing

Cultura Bottle Shop
Prospekt Mira, 46-48, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236022
Tel: +7 911 860-78-50

Opening times
Fri & Sat 11am to 1pm
Sun to Thurs 11am to 10pm

Website
https://vk.com/culturabottleshop/

An Art to Brew Beer in Kaliningrad

An art to drinking beer in Kaliningrad

28 April 2023 ~ An Art to Brew Beer in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Article 25: An Art to Brew

I bought this beer for two reasons: one, I liked the label; and two, I liked the dumpy bottle with a carrying handle attached to the top.

In order of attraction, the label appealed to me because it appeared to me to be something to do with steampunk. At the time I hadn’t got my glasses on and at the time I was more interested in getting something into a glass, preferably something called beer, and drinking it.

The steampunk allusion, which was also an illusion, was purely provided by pipework. It could have been a pipedream, after all steampunk is still a relatively young person’s predilection, but even without glasses and in my ardent desire to fill one, I could make out something that was illustrative of line-drawn plumbing, which was good enough for me.

The shape of the bottle with its plastic swing-tilt handle has two strings to its bow: novelty is never dull, and handles are good for carrying things with. So, I picked the bottle up by its handle, paid for it at checkout and out of the shop I went, all steampunked-up and ready to go.

At home, tucked away in my ‘never to grow up’ drinking den, my wife cleared up any pretensions I may have fostered about the nature of the illustrated label and also assisted me in interpreting what I was having trouble with: surely this beer that I had just bought whilst in a steampunking mood and carried home with the help of a novelty handle could really not be called ‘The Art of Brewing Czech Bar’?

Good Heavens! Whatever Next?

That’s easy. Next was getting it out of the bottle, into the glass and drinking it.

At last, it was where it should be. But first the aroma.

The beer had a bitter, hoppy smell, and I liked it.

I put my glasses on and looked at the glass. It was in there, alright, and it was giving me the three ‘Cs’: Crisp, Clear and Clean. It had poured with a big head but, being a modest kind of beer, became less big headed as each second past until effectively self-effacing itself.

The first taste proved to be not as bitter as I thought it would be. You could say that it erred more on the soft and mellow side ~ and that’s exactly what I am saying.

No one that I know of has ever ridiculed themselves by calling me a sweet man, either behind my back or in front of it, and I am not about to make the same mistake with this beer. What was sweet about it was that it was dry, not as old boots but pleasantly dry: it was the Hush Puppies of the 2020s, which is not as daft as you sound, at least not when you marry the concept to its leading attributes, which are, as I have noted, soft and mellow.

Are you familiar with the word ‘lacing’? No? Well, you haven’t read enough typically serious beer reviews, have you! But what the cliché doesn’t know the heart won’t grieve about, so we will have no more nonsense where that is concerned. And who cares anyway, if the foam from the beer sticks to the glass or not?

What is more significant is that the dry initial taste travels successfully through the finish and as for the aftertaste it is continuity all the way.

Let’s hear it from the brewers

“Beer varieties brewed under the Art of Brewing brand have a noble taste. [It is a] Golden lager, brewed according to the classic Czech recipe. [Its] bitter richness and pleasant sharpness in taste is achieved through the use of a special combination of hop varieties during brewing.”
The Brewers

Those nice chaps from the Trehsosensky Brewery are not not to be believed. In fact, having sampled other brews in their stable (What is the strangest place where you have drunk beer?) my verdict is that there is absolutely nothing deceitful, underhand or horrifyingly globalist in what the brewers have to say.

An Art to Brew Beer in Kaliningrad

I’ve read reviews about this beer which, although not exactly scathing, have taken a begrudging stance, implying that it is passable but dull. I do not agree. An Art to Brew Czech Bar stands head and shoulders above mediocrity and, whilst it may never take the crown from beers acknowledged universally to have travelled every road of excellence and made it to illustrious, it has enough going for it in singular taste and quality to nudge it around the bend into the aspirant class. Doubt what you hear? That’s odd, because I am typing this, not talking to you, but now I can tell you straight, you should road test one today!

😀TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: An Art to Brew Czech Bar
Brewer: Trehsosensky Brewery
Where it is brewed: Ulyanovsk, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litres
Strength: 4.9%
Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (£1.50) [at time of writing!]
Appearance: Golden
Aroma: Bitter and hoppy
Taste: Dry, mellow with a delightful hint of bitterness
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: Intriguing
Would you buy it again? Anytime
Marks out of 10: 8

*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 30 March 2022 ~ OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 19: OXATA

I have often seen it, but I’ve never tried it, but when I saw a chap in front of me paying for two bottles of it at the local supermarket checkout, I decided that it was high time that I did. I’m talking about Ohota Krepkoye beer (OXOTA beer), a strong Russian beer from the Heineken Brewery* in St Petersburg with an OG of 8.1% and a label affirming real men, and now me, drink it.

The bottle looks as though its 1.5 litres, but when you check the small print you find that it is 0.15 litres short of the full 1.5. I know a lot of people like that.

The label tells you straight away that this is no namby-pamby, Nancy-boy brew. The bold shadow-highlighted 3-D typeface charges across the bottle against a deep red sash and above it is a man who has an awesome chest with a rifle slung over his shoulder. If you have ever harboured a secret desire to appear really incongruous, try carrying a bottle of this beer whilst attending a gay parade!

Before I had taken my first sip, I knew instinctively that this was the sort of beer that you could very easily get pissed on but not take the piss out of. Excuse my professional beer critic’s language.

The aroma struck me initially as though possessing a spicey, citrus twang, but, before decanting into my trusty Soviet glass, I paused a moment, a little affectedly I thought, took another whiff and changed my mind. It was now, I opined, decidedly sweet and disconcertingly antiseptic.

It poured into the glass with a disappointingly weak head which dissipated rapidly. Once out of the bottle, I was relieved to find that the clinical smell had gone, replaced and overpowered by the sweeter notes.

Not the dark, deep colour I had anticipated but a mid-amber, the beer had, I was surprised to find, not a rich sweet taste but a sweet tart taste laced with a touch of burnt charcoal.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

The quite glutinous finish gives way to a strong throaty aftertaste, which is not at all unpleasant, and, whilst you secretly wonder how it received a World Beer Award in the ‘Silver’ category, as the medallion on the front of the bottle signifies, there is no doubt in your mind, and also in your mouth, that the brew is persuasively moorish.

Affirmation that this is a real man’s drink is not backward in coming forward. I could feel my liver shrinking and my ego getting bigger with each successive sip.

The heady aftertaste taps into your long-term memory, summoning vague recollections of cautionless drinking sessions undertaken in the first flood of youth. How much of that memory would survive intact should you overdo an OXOTA session really does not bear thinking about.

One thing’s for certain, OXOTA is a good buy if you want to say goodbye and rather quickly to that irritating condition otherwise known as sobriety.

Footnote:🦶 I picked up the rumour from somewhere that the Heineken Brewery is one of those companies that virtue signalled their allegiance to the United States-led globalist war on Russia by buggering off. But take heart, Hart, I said. Buggering-off breweries mean a larger share of the market for those that are smart and don’t budge and a chance to expand and diversify for those that seize the initiative.😁

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: OXOTA (Ohota Krepkoye)
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre
Strength: 8.1%
Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (1.06 pence)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Predominantly sweet
Taste: Tart, not excessively sweet
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: A big strapper with a large rifle
Would you buy it again? If the need so takes me
Marks out of 10: 6

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 17: Amstel Bier

Published: 21 November 2021 ~ Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

So, if you don’t like pilsner what are you doing buying it? That’s easy. It was on special offer at my local supermarket, and as I am saving money to buy myself a ticket to Anywhere before the whole world is renamed Vaccination to make sense of the universality of the Vaccination Passport, at 90 roubles, less than a quid, as Abba used to say, ‘how could I resist you!’

Amstel Bier’s marketing strategy relies for its gravitas, if not its gravity, on that ubiquitous word of the beer-drinking world ‘premium’. Next to ‘love’, it is probably the most overused, abstruse, misunderstood and misappropriated word of all time. Although it occupies many a ‘premium’ slot, if not an entire chapter, in the Beer Posers’ Dictionary, it would not, in its day-to-day marketing application, be permitted as much as a footnote in the Dictionary of Truth (which is not published under licence to any of the Davos set).

Gold labels and award-winning medallions are often used in conjunction with the word ‘premium’, and it does not hurt any to lend to the product a date in antiquity, thus enabling it to draw from the not-so mythical notion that everything that was produced in the past that did not need a Vaccination Passport or be stamped with a QR code was quality or, to define ‘premium’, was of ‘superior quality’ ~ as was life itself ~ once. Thus, Amstel’s bottle incorporates the lot: the gold label, the word ‘premium’ and a date when the world was real ~ 1870.

The Carlsberg Company saw the funny side of this marketing coin many years ago. They flipped the irony of it into their award-winning marketing slogan, ‘Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world,’ proving to the world that at least they could laugh up their sleeve, which is more than can be said for Watney’s, with it’s disingenuous, ‘Roll out Red Barrel, Let’s have a barrel of fun!’ ~ which drinking it was anything but.

When you see a product labelled in this way, especially a beer, the ‘premium’ promise first supposedly sells it to you and then, before you take the top off the bottle, influences your opinion, so that, unless you are really studying it, when swilling it back with your mates, this little gold word keeps ringing around your taste buds, going ‘Premium! [yum, yum] … Premium! [yum, yum]’.

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

With an introduction of this nature, you could easily jump to the wrong conclusion that I am now going to say that Amstel is crap, but that would be too easy.

Let’s take the top off first and check its ‘nose’, as the pretentious like to say.

My first reaction was to reach for my NHS Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kit, because I couldn’t smell a thing. No, that’s not altogether true. I could smell something. I think it was a rat. I am not saying that the beer smelt like a rat, because I have never snorted rat. I use the term loosely, as I might, if I was a brewster, use the word ‘premium’. In other words, I could smell nothing, no rat no premium, and certainly nothing that could justify anything approaching the notion of ‘superior quality’.

I sniffed the top of the bottle with the cap off for such an inordinate length of time that Ginger, our cat, thought he must be missing out on something and tried to get in on the act. But after the briefest second, he walked away in disgust without so much as a ‘buy it again’ or just a ‘meeoww’ for that matter.

I didn’t want to end up with the bottle stuck to the end of my nose and be rushed off to hospital in one of those little white Russian ambulances with the siren blaring ‘snout stuck, snout stuck, snout stuck’, so I gave up after five minutes, concluding that I had detected a faint something or other, an intriguing cross, you might say, between musk and tinniness.

When I eventually poured it into my glass, I found myself staring at a pale amber liquid, with very little head, which, as soon as it saw me, made a fast exit. I think this is what is known in beer reviewers’ speak as ‘having two fingers’, or should that be giving two fingers?

Most people who occasionally drink pilsners but usually drink something else, tell me that pilsner appeals to their taste in summer because served cold ~ how else? ~ it is light, crisp and refreshing. From that statement, let us extrapolate the word ‘crisp’. Amstel Bier isn’t. No matter how you drink it ~ swig, gulp or roll it around your mouth ~ crispness doesn’t come into it, so, if that is what you are looking for, you won’t find it in Amstel. Make no mistake about that! (Oooh, he can be so manly when he talks about beer!)

However, Amstel is not without flavour: it is mellow, smooth, rounded and gives the lie to the notion that it is all about tininess and not about taste. Some beers, especially some lagers, go down like a lead weight, but the Amstel finish is not unpleasant. It doesn’t really justify the self-presumptuous handshake of the two chums on the front of the bottle leaning out of their stamps of approval ~ perhaps they have just been vaccinated and are about to open a Facebook account ~ but thin and wishy-washy beers never have an aftertaste (think Watney’s!), and this one certainly has.

In fact, Amstel has a two-phase aftertaste: the first is surprising and seems to hit the spot, but as it Victor Matures it does not so much as sock it to you as socks it to you. In Amstel’s defence, pilsners tend to do this to me generally, so it is by no means unique in this respect either, but in this particular case after five minutes had elapsed, I found myself looking for words to describe the after-aftertaste in my cockney rhyming slang almanac, where all I was able to find was something to do with Scotsmen.

I am not saying that Amstel needs to pull its socks up, as I hear tell that if it is not a popular lager on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Greeks can’t get enough of it. This may have something to do with the fact that the Athenian Brewery in Greece is now owned by Heineken and as Heineken brew Amstel, well, work it out for yourself.

Amstel was originally brewed at the Amstel Brewery in Dutchland. It has a proud heritage, going back to 1870 (you can see the date on the Amstel bottles). However, it was taken over by Heineken International in 1968, who moved production of Amstel to their principal plant at Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands.

I am not sure whether the Chief Brewer, Jock Strap, still works for them or not.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Amstel Bier
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: Zoeterwoude, Netherlands
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.1%
Price: It cost me about 90 roubles (91 pence)
Appearance: Pale-amber
Aroma: Faint
Taste: It does have some
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: ‘Premium’
Would you buy it again? If the price is right!
Marks out of 10: 4

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 16: German Recipe

Published: 25 October 2021 ~ German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

On 26 April 2021, purely in the interests of writing these reviews and not because I have a drink problem ~ our local shop is well stocked with beers, is only a short walk away and is the same distance coming back, so no problem there ~ I wrote about Czech Recipe beer from Russian brewers, Lipetskpivo.

Finding it to be a zesty, hoppy beer with a refreshing aftertaste, I decided to improve my geographical knowledge by unscrewing the top on its sister beer, German Recipe. Disappointed that the 1.3 litre bottle did not come with a free moustache or the original helmet worn by the Kaiser, nevertheless, I was not deterred. There is something so German about drinking German beer or a beer with a German name in an old German house in Königsberg, and, although I was not expecting the taste to be earth-shattering, as I had enjoyed its sister so much, not to drink it would be bunkers.

I had already swotted up on the background of its brewery and the claims its brewers were making. They say that in 2005 the brewery underwent a large-scale modernisation programme and that, with the assistance of technologists from other parts of the world, they were able to fine tune their production to meet world-quality standards. An important end result from this investment was that it allowed them to produce beers to a microbiological excellence that negated the need to include all of the preservative gubbins often required for extending shelf-life, which, let’s not be coy about this, can only be a good thing.

My one wish is that I could find a way to extend my shelf life, but as I was drinking German Recipe in 2021, not August of 1944, at least I could drink with the relative confidence that, unless history was about to repeat itself, I would not have to grab my bottle and glass and hurry off to the shelter.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

So, settled in the attic, I ‘cocked a deaf ‘un’ to the air-raid sirens, which, thankfully, I was not around to hear 77 years ago, and boldly unscrewed the cap. No sooner had I done so than a strong whiff gave vent to the air. It was malty, peaty and definitely robust.

Putting the gas mask away, as it did nothing for my Tootal cravat or ties, I braced myself for the penultimate moment of truth and poured the liquid into my glass and then held it up to the light. Yes, I realise that this was inexcusably pretentious of me, but you must understand that in the UK real-ale devotees always do this sort of thing to elevate themselves in their own minds, whether at bar or at beer festival ~ particularly at beer festivals. Fortunately, after three or four pints they are forced to drop the ritual, partly because of alcohol-induced amnesia and also because by this time and quantity, they can no longer tell their glass from their elbow, and even if they could they are in no stable condition to prosecute the pretension further for fear of falling over. This, of course, is not the reason why I only hold my first glass of beer up toward the light, and then quickly leave it at that.

Anyway, drinking sensibly, as they say, having noted a light-brown haziness looking like the mist lifting slowly above the Curonian Lagoon, and a good dissolving head ~ beer drinkers get a lot of those, especially in the mornings ~ I went for the ultimate test: the first sip.

German Recipe Beer in Kaliningrad

The first thing I noticed from the first sip about this ‘German beer’ brewed in Russia was (shock, it’s Germanisation!) that the smell was stronger than the taste. This differential did not phase me, as the second and third sip were like ‘papers please’, and this brew had all its credentials. In fact, it could not have been more convincing had I been drinking it with my QR code tattooed on my buttock. Nothing counterfeit here! This German was surprisingly bright and fragrant (I once worked with someone like that; he was as bright and fragrant as a rainbow.) and, just like its Czech sister, was well zesty with a refreshing finish.

The after taste, and here I really mean the after-after taste, mirrored its appearance in the glass: it was a little bit clingy. It reminded me of the type of women whom I never knew but thought I would meet one day as I had often seen them in films.

With an OG of 4.7%, I felt confident that if I drank a couple of bottles I would not be clinging on to things to keep myself upright, except for the glass itself, which proved to me by the end of the session that my palate must have approved.

To be a little picky ~ I said ‘picky’ ~ after my third pint It did occur to me that the clinginess was becoming a trifle galvanised, and I hoped it would not go further so that the roof of my mouth would feel as if I’d been drinking Anderson Shelter. But the apprehension passed almost as swiftly as a low flying Messerschmidt and, before you could say the end of the war, I knew that I had enjoyed it.

So, thumbs up and chocks away. Buy a bottle of German today.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: German Recipe
Brewer: Lipetskpivo
Where it is brewed: Lipetsk, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.7%
Price: It cost me about 165 roubles (£1.72)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Full bodied, hoppy and malty
Taste: Fragrant, bright
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Suitably Germanic
Would you buy it again? I have done
Marks out of 10: 6