Bruchmüller: Marzen (Germany: Marzen: 5.3% ABV)
Visual: Darkened yellow gold body with a mounded white head and quite a bit of small bubbled carbonation to the body.
Nose: Crushed malted milk biscuits. Subtle pepper hops character and low bitterness.
Body: Brown sugar sweetness. Lightly hop oil texture. Moderate hop oil bitterness. Palma violets. Light chalk touch. Orange skin.
Finish: Burnt brown sugar. Mild orange crème. Hop oils and bitterness. Light charring. Slight smoked bacon oily bitterness that grows over time.
Conclusion: Ok, there are elements of this beer that make sense, and those elements I will mainly concentrate on, but there are also elements that I am convinced is just my brain fucking with me. I cannot lie about what I experienced but I will try to separate stuff I am confident about, from elements that may just be me being my usual strange self.
Ok, what am I confident about this beer actually being? The aroma is gentle, and the body has a solid brown sugar sweetness to the malt. Soothing in general with moderate hop bitterness and a use of hop oils that helps it slide down. So fairly gentle but with a hop edge. Some palma violet notes which I associate with the noble hop usage and showing just a touch of orange fruit character.
So boom, done, nice and easy description right. Nothing too unusual there.
Ok, but….
I think it is in how the hop bitterness interacts with the oiliness, but , especially in the finish, I’m getting a gentle smoked bacon like character. Not much, and I don’t want to over emphasize it in case people buy this beer specifically for that, when you would be better over with the rauchbiers for that, but, yeah that is the vibe I am getting. Think it may be a me thing, but that is definitely how that bitterness and oiliness mix comes across to me, a meatiness with smoke at the end.
Anyway, I prob spent more on that part than it deserved, not a big part of the beer, but I wanted to put that disclaimer around it.
Generally this is a tasty beer, not a must have, and has occasional chalk touches in roughness, but not much so doesn’t hurt too much. A fairly gentle marzen with a touch more bitterness and hop than I would expect, and that nice orange touch a little extra pick me up to the style. Feels like a Marzen with a touch more umph to it.
A solid one.
Background: Not much to say on this at first glance, its a German lager, the brewery name has umlauts, as is well and good. It’s a Marzen, in the darker Vienna style. Also while doing research on this I found a good guide to a bit that had been bugging me on how beer styles exactly break down regarding Marzen/Oktoberfest/Festbier, etc. Looking at their website they are one of the older breweries at over 500 years in the same place. So really is time I pull my finger out and do notes on one of them. Grabbed from Independent Spirit, not much else to add. Germany has a great metal scene, so while not German I went with a recent metal discovery of Demonic Resurrection: Dashavatar for backing music. They were warming up for Bloodywood recently and I was blown away by their mix of symphonic death metal. Fantastic stuff.
