Pressure Drop: Freimann’s Dunkelweiss (England: Smoked Dunkelweizen: 4.8% ABV)
Visual: Dark cloudy brown. Massive browned mounded head.
Nose: Very smoked meat –bacon and salami. Peat. Some crisp wheat.
Body: Malt chocolate. Smoke and smoked bacon. Brown sugar. Wheat. Salami. Prickly feel. Cola bottles.
Finish: Brown sugar. Wheat. Smoke. Chocolate. Liquorice and treacle. Cola.
Conclusion: There is more to this than I first gave it credit for. You see, I had this on keg a few weeks back and it was nice but very one note. Utterly dominated by the massive smoked meat. Fun, but due to being so one note I was bored by the end.
No massive meat jokes please.
Here the smoked meat is still a chewable and appetising plan A for the beer, but let it flow around a bit and you can see that they have a plan B for when A gets a tad dull. Plan B is the base dunkel weisse showing through, malt chocolate and a wheat texture, giving something a bit easier to cling onto and get some relief from the weighty meal that plan A lays before you.
What doesn’t work quite as well in Plan B is a kind of cola and brown sugar sweetness that comes in. Now, I would often be impressed by a counterbalancing element like that, and I can see what it is doing, trying to add a sweet element as an offset, but it doesn’t quite work here and just ends up as a sickly touch.
Thankfully it isn’t really that big of an element, just a slight side note. The main course of the beer, while not wide ranging, is one you can really get your teeth into. So, while it isn’t as good as say the best of the Aecht Schlenkerla smoke beers (and even they can be hit or miss for me depending on the version), but it still gives enough to get your teeth into.
A satisfying beer, and not a style you often see on offer, let alone in the UK, so I applaud Pressure Drop for their willingness to take risks. It holds up well enough, but not enough to be special.
Background: I do like a good weisse, Dunkel or otherwise, but as prolific as they are in Germany, they are hard to find made elsewhere. So when I saw that this London Craft Brewery had not just turned out a Dunkel Weisse, but a smoked Dunkel Weisse I decided to give it a try. Then, a few days after I bought the bottle I found it on tap at the porter. So I have now tried this in two formats. This was finally drunk the day after going to See Scroobius Pip vs Dan Le Sac for the second time this year, and so I was listening to the newly picked up “Logic Of Chance” album. I was unsure about using the Aventinus glass for a 330ml bottle, but I guessed a vigorous pour would result in a just right head, and so it did. This was picked up from the forefront of the Bath bottle scene, “Independent Spirit”.