When In the German South, Smoke Gets in Your Mouth: Roog by BraufactuM

Today we have another rauchbier from Germany that I purchased on a recent trip to Chicago: Roog, by BraufactuM. Roog is a rauch weizen while Braufactum, whose motto is "Das Craft Bier", seems to be a subsidiary of Radeberger which is the largest brewing company in Germany as of whenever the websites I found saying as much were published. That makes BraufactuM the Teutonic equivalent of Blue Moon or Shock Top, I suppose. The off-shoot seems to have come into existence back in 2010 with their biers making it to these shores three years later.

I admit to knowing little to nothing about the German brewing industry. However, this doesn't stop me from speculating. American craft brewing seems to have made its mark (ahem) in Germany. This combined with declining bier consumption must be making the big German brewers a bit nervous. Not only has Radeberger created a microbrewing subsidiary, but so has another large German brewing concern, Bitburger. Their subsidiary Craftwerk, goes beyond the pale (lager) and into American territory with hoppy pale ales as does BraufactuM. And no, I don't know why the terminal "m" is capitalized.

My mostly baseless speculation aside, I am happy to support some German brewers if they're going to leave me with more rauchbiers at my disposal.

Roog (no idea what that means) pours a lovely deep mahogany. Holding my glass to the light, the bier appeared to have the characteristic weissbier cloudiness. A crown of about a ¼ inch of tan frothiness topped my bier. It lasted about a minute before disappearing.

This bier had one of the best aromas I've ever encountered in a brew: it smelled just like banana bread. Well, smoky banana bread. Mind you, that bacony smokiness was very mild here in the aroma. Mostly it was mouth-watering banana bread. As someone who is more enamored of banana flavors in weissbier than of clove-like ones, I took this to be a good portent.

While the bier didn't taste like banana bread, it did have that banana phenol flavor. Joining the yeasty contribution were a moderate smokiness, some wheat/grain, and some unexpected sweetness. The bier is brewed with caramel malt and caramel wheat which surely explains the latter. There is also dark wheat in the grain bill and it blended with the smoky flavor well. Smoke flavor in beer is rather divisive. People tend to either enjoy it or loathe it. I am of the former but must say that the rauch here has been tempered. This is nowhere near as rauchy as Schlenkerla's Weizen. Folks in that small group who are in the middle about rauchbiers will likely find a friend in Roog.

The smoke and banana flavors faded at the finish which allowed the hops to come through. They had a herbal/grassy flavor which wasn't overly bitter yet, in concert with carbonation, they made for a fairly dry ending.

In a word: ausgezeichnet! Roog has a medium-light body (yet weighs in at 6.6% A.B.V.) that handles the myriad of flavors here very well. I loved how the smoke and banana flavors, present in roughly equal measures, did this graceful pas de deux on my tongue. They just mixed perfectly. One may take the lead but then it would hang back and let its partner do so. In addition, there was just enough sweetness to enhance to the yeast flavors while dark wheat complemented the smoke flavor with hints of coffee. Sheer gustatory joy.

Junk food pairing: Pair Roog with Snyder's Bacon Cheddar Pretzel Pieces to accentuate the smoky aspects of this bier. You can also can stuff some dark chocolate covered pretzels in your maw to complement the banana flavor. Alternate them or, if you're brave, eat both at once and see what happens.

Good Morning Campers!: Hoppy Lager by Sierra Nevada

It's autumn now so what better time to drink the last of this year's vernal brews, right?

Sierra Nevada seems to be at the vanguard of collaborative brewing, at least as far as large microbrewers go. Their latest collaboration saw them partner with German brewery Brauhaus Riegele, founded when the most recent white visitor to North America was Leif Erikson, to produce an Oktoberfest. Subsequent iterations of the beer will feature collaborations with different German brewers. Last year Sierra Nevada began Beer Camp Across America which saw them come together with twelve other breweries across the country. Close to home they paired up with New Glarus to produce an ESB called There and Back. Farther afield they conspired with Ballast Point to brew Electric Ray, an India Pale Lager. The beer was brought back for an encore this past spring with a slightly tweaked recipe and a new nom de beer - Hoppy Lager.

I'm not sure who begat the IPL moniker but it's one of the more recent entries in the ongoing marketing atrocity that labels everything with some West Coast hops an India something-or-other. I've noticed the IPX phenomenon attacking cider now. We now have India Pressed Cider and India Wheat Cider because apples just aren't good enough, apparently. And now that winter approaches, you can have your Double IPA lip balm. Too potent for your delicate lips? Don't worry because there's session IPA lip balm too.

While the IPX moniker and the marketing abuse of hops generally (hop cigars, hop shampoo, hop bar soaps, hop air fresheners, and do any locals remember when Madison Sourdough put hops into bread?) have most certainly become a bad joke, that doesn't mean that tasty beers cannot be had with that unfortunate moniker.

Hoppy Lager pours, contra my photograph, a bright gold color. The beer was quite hazy but I suspect this was chill haze – Stone Brewing's blog has a nice explanation. The haze results when malt proteins bond with hop polyphenols at cold temperatures. Going by the blog post, I'd guess that the age of the beer is partly to blame. The haze doesn’t affect flavor and, if I'm going with the age hypothesis, I certainly can't knock Sierra Nevada. You can see the big, foamy white head for yourself. (It lasted a goodly amount of time.) But the haze obscures all of the bubbles going up the beer.

As I've come to expect from this style, the aroma was full of the requisite hoppy scents, i.e. – citrus and floral, from both Citra and Equinox varieties. But the malt was also evident here with the aroma having a very sweet component that smelled of honey and apricot.

Hoppy Lager had an intriguing mix of flavors. As hops go a dull(ish) blood orange or tangerine flavor was the first thing I noticed. A relatively new variety of hops, El Dorado, are used here and descriptions emphasize its big tropical fruit flavors so I'm assuming that they're responsible for the up front fruity flavor. There was also a floral flavor to be had and I presume that came from the Equinox hops. As in the nose, it was subservient to the fruity hop flavors.

Despite being a hop forward brew, the malt made its presence known. It tasted rather sweet to my tongue – reminding me of bread dough. But I also tasted something like plum – a fruitiness that wasn't sharp or bright like citrus. Perhaps this is the malt and the Palisade hops working in combination. The carbonation

The finish was dry with a healthy dose of spicy hops providing a lingering bitterness.

Although it had a clean flavor, Hoppy Lager was just too sweet for me. The malt flavor stood too far apart from and in too great an opposition to the fruity-floral essences of the hops. It's like there were warring factions on my tongue instead of complementary groups working together to find a zymurgylogical gestalt. The high carbonation added a bit of détente by way of dryness but not enough. As someone who is not a big fan of hop forward beers, I found that I didn't mind the 55 I.B.U.s of bitterness here. I think this is likely because of the fruity hop flavor along with the malt that refused to cede to the botanicals.

Junk food pairing: Hoppy Lager is a fairly big beer. The malty sweetness gives it a medium body and it clocks in at 7% A.B.V. Pair it with something sharp-tasting, something that will cut through the IPL miasma such as Snyder's Jalapeno Pretzel Pieces or Cheez-It Duoz Sharp Cheddar and Parmesan crackers.