Another Ravenswood Brewery Morning: Czech-Style Dark Lager by Dovetail Brewery

 

Czech beers are having their moment in the sun or had it recently, anyway. Breweries happy to churn out IPA after IPA suddenly had to figure out how to put diacritical marks on their labels. Tmavé pivo seemed to be everywhere. OK, not really but it did pop up in places both predictable and unexpected in a nano-trend. Here in Madison, I don't think a genuine Czech dark lager has ever been on a store shelf. It's Pilsner Urquell and maybe Staropramen but that's it and I think that's the case in most of this country. Heck, the style is fairly rare in its homeland. I guess all those craft brewers went to The Czech Republic and learned the mad tmavé pivo brewing skillz.

If, as Evan Rail claims (see link above), "[tmavé pivo] should be brewed with a traditional decoction mash", then most American takes on it lack a big chunk of authenticity. However, I think we've been lucky here in Madison as both Next Door and Working Draft have brewed the style and, to the best of my knowledge, both breweries also decocted, at least while Next Door wasn't just a brand. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed their takes on the style. Same for Lazy Monk's. Brewmaster Leos Frank is Czech so he may have had some first-hand experience with tmavé pivo back in its homeland to bring to his brew kettle.

When I was down in Chicagoland last month, I made my annual autumnal stop at Binny's and found a Czech-style dark lager from Chicago's Dovetail Brewery. Those people - I don't think there's an Old World brewing technique they don't practice. From what I've heard, Dovetail's brewers have weird dreams involving old brewhouses. My undercover contact there surreptitiously recorded the following, a recounting of one of these dreams by brewer Jenny Pfäfflin:

I was in a brewery I did not know, which had two storeys.  It was "my brewery".  I found myself in the upper storey, where there were sacks of Citra and Simcoe. On the walls hung a number of charts about hopping rates.  I wondered if this was really my brewery and thought, "Ewww!" But then it occurred to me that I did not know what the lower floor looked like. Descending the stairs, I reached the ground floor. There everything was much older. I realized that this part of the brewery must date from the 19th century. There were piles of malt scattered around, the floors were of red brick. Everywhere it was rather dark. I went from one room to another, thinking, "Now I really must explore the whole brewery." I came upon a heavy door and opened it. Beyond it, I discovered a stone stairway that led down into a cellar. Descending again, I found myself in a beautifully vaulted room. There were several copper kettles - more than enough for decoction - and horizontal lagering tanks. I looked behind a mash tun and discovered two steinkrugs, obviously very old, and half disintegrated. Then I awoke.

A beer hall

Some barley malt

It joins all

Dovetail Brewery

Dovetail lists their Czech-Style Dark Lager as a seasonal but they don't note which season. I hope it's a fall seasonal for goodness sake. The brewery's seasonals are not easy to find here in Madison. Or maybe they are and I just always miss them as if I were Gordon to their Mr. Snuffleupagus. Ms. Pfäfflin and the rest of the Dovetail Brewers probably decoct in their spare time for fun so I presumed Czech Dark Lager got the treatment. Every Dovetail brew I've had has been exceptional and I expected no less with this brew.

My pour produced a small head of loose, tan foam that didn't stick around. Putting my glass up to the light, I saw that the brew was amber hued and looked clear, from what I could tell, with a smattering of bubbles inside. Never having had a genuine tmavé pivo, I am unsure if this is what the style is supposed to look like or not. Regardless, it was pretty. Taking a whiff, I smelled some caramel, a general roastiness, a dash of dark chocolate, and a plum-like fruitiness.

That first sip revealed a medium-light body that perhaps was a bit more on the light side. A healthy level of fizz oversaw a medley a fine flavors - roastiness, coffee, bread, and a touch of caramel or more, if I was tasting from the back of my tongue. For all of the malt taste here, it wasn't very sweet. All of those roasty/coffee flavors faded on the swallow leaving some spicy hops to step to the fore. My tongue was not inundated with a flood of Saaz or anything but the hops dried things out and added a firm bitterness.

Is this beer anything like the tmavé pivo you get in the Czech Republic? I dunno. But this stuff is excellent. I love how the coffee and bread flavors lead the charge here and I also adore how that brisk wave of hops acts both in counterpoint to the bread/caramel flavors yet complements that vaguely bitter coffee taste. Plus, this pivo has a fairly light body yet is chock full of malty goodness.

As a big fan of the Dunkel and Schwarzbier, I suppose it's time to add the tmavé pivo to this Axis of Darkness. The only thing left is for Dovetail to make this stuff in a Rauchbier version or whatever you call a smoke beer in Czech.

Junk food pairing: With all the malty flavors here you'll need to pair it with something that is up to the task of being able to cut through them to stand on its own yet also harmonize with the pivo. That food, ladies and gentlemen, is Jays Hot Stuff potato chips. With roots in Chicago, their spicy paprika flavor lends an earthy, Central European goodness that complements both the roastiness of the malt but also the sprightly taste of the hops.

You got coffee in my beer!: Cold Press Bohemian Dark by Lazy Monk Brewing

Beer and coffee go together just like rats and parchment, I always say. Or some such thing.

Ever since Dan Carey added some coffee to some stout (and drew the ire of the federal government) back in the mid-90s, brewers have been transmuting mundane beers into special elixirs by mixing the tasty flavors of roasted barley with the tasty roasted flavors of the coffee bean. Normally it is a stout or porter that gets the coffee treatment but occasionally someone gets the idea in their head to create the admixture with a dark lager instead of a black ale.

Beer and coffee can have complementary flavors just as can beer and bourbon. The key, it seems to me, lies in finding the right proportions. Alchemists knew that you didn't just dump a bunch of antimony into a big stash of bitumen and expect good results. They understood that there was virtue in restraint and in harmonizing things. American brewers, unsurprisingly and sadly, generally operate under a more Blakean principle: The road of excess leads to the palace of tasty.

Recall we had 100+ I.B.U. beers that exceeded the theoretical limit of the human tongue's ability to taste bitterness while today's IPAs concentrate fruit flavor more densely than a neutron star of Jolly Rancher flavoring essence. Along these same lines, brewers tend to make barrel aged beers that taste like the bourbon never got drained from the barrel and coffee beers that leave me questioning if there is, in fact, any beer in it because it tastes more like an Americano. Sour can be a nice taste in beer but the brew need not be so acidic as to be of Xenomorph blood strength. No doubt we'll have quad small beers and imperial N/As soon.

The result of all this is that I am weary of IPAs and beers with non-standard flavorings. All too often American brewers show about as much restraint as Donald Trump at McDonald's. But, like a fool, I buy some of them anyway, hoping that someone will also see the virtue of finding harmony amongst the various ingredients whether they're adding bourbon or fruit or hops or, in this case, coffee.

On a recent trip to Eau Claire to visit my stepson and his ladyfriend, I took them grocery shopping and couldn't resist a stroll through the beer department in search of local brews. I came away with some Cold Press Bohemian Dark by Lazy Monk Brewing. It is, I presume, their Bohemian Dark Lager with coffee added to it.

Lazy Monk brewmaster Leos Frank came up with a real beauty of a beer here, although that may not come across very well in that Dexter pint glass replete with blood splatters. It was a gorgeous ruby color topped by a big, tan head that had real staying power. It was clear and I was able to see some bubbles inside. The aroma was a nice mix of roasty grain and coffee with a gentle dose of sweetness.

On my first sips I found a fine, medium fizziness and a medium-light body. A bit of plum came first followed by roasted grain, bread, and coffee. It had a hint of sweetness and there was just a little milk chocolate in there as well. For the finish, the stone fruit and roasty flavors lingered a bit as some herbal-spicy hops slowly emerged to give a modicum of bitterness and dryness.

This is a very good beer. Let me get my gripe out of the way: I think it needed a touch more fizz. Depending on where it was on my tongue, it could take on a slightly syrupy quality that more fizz would have taken care of, methinks. Now, onto the good part. I like Lazy Monk's Bohemian Dark Lager and was quite happy to be able to taste it. The roasty/bready grain flavors were not totally obscured by all the furans and furanones courtesy of the coffee. Frank hit the sweet spot with his mad mixing skillz. The coffee and beer are in harmony here as I was able to taste each of them. They complement one another instead of one overpowering the other.

Junk food pairing: Pair your pour of Cold Press Bohemian Dark with a bag of All Dressed potato chips. Those Canucks are onto something there.

Where's Evan Rail When You Need Him? Lazy Monk Brewing's Bohemian Dark Lager

Eau Claire's Lazy Monk Brewing is the brainchild of Leos Frank, who emigrated from Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. His distaste for American beer led him into homebrewing and from there he took the leap into commercial brewing a few years ago. His brews are traditional styles from his homeland and nearby Bavaria which makes for a beer list which is, to my taste, pleasantly devoid of any iteration of pale ale. Indeed, there are no ales at all to be found.

A recent trek to Eau Claire led me to the wonderful Just Local Food Co-op which had Lazy Monk growlers as well as recently-introduced cans. I bought one of the former filled with Frank's Bohemian Dark Lager. My knowledge of Czech beer styles is very, very limited but I gather this brew would be considered a Černé Pivo. How does this style differ from the Munich dunkles or a schwarzbier? Not sure about that...

Bohemian Dark Lager pours a luscious deep amber and is very clear once you put your glass up to the light. I got a pretty decent head that stuck around for a while but there wasn't much Schaumhaftvermoegen to speak of as it immediately fell back into the beer. Much to my shame, I had a bit of a stuffy nose when I drank this and so all I could catch were the wonderful roasted grains and a bit of stone fruit.

The beer had a medium-light mouthfeel and I tasted primarily those darker malts which reminded me of well-done toast. There was also a bit of plum-like flavor as well just like in the nose. The real difference between this brew and the dunkels and schwarzbiers I've had is that this was much less sweet than a Bavarian dunkles and much more dry than either of the German styles. Indeed, this is one of the driest beers I've ever had. I think it was due to, not only having the yeast deal with most of the sugars but also because of the carbonation and hops. Of the latter, I didn't taste a whole lot as I was expecting. There was a bit of that spiciness but it didn't pop out at me like Saaz does in a Bohemian pilsner.

The finish continued the dry theme along with some mild grassiness.

Bohemian Dark Lager was a thoroughly enjoyable brew and unlike any dark lager that I've ever had. I can't say much in terms of how it adheres to the style as found in the Czech Republic today but it definitely fits in with the descriptions of the style that Evan Rail and Ron Pattinson give.

Junk food pairing: Bohemian Dark lager pairs well with meat flavored snacks like Ruffles Flame Grilled Steak potato chips or Snyder's Cheeseburger Pretzel Pieces.