Friday, March 26, 2010

I ♥ B.L.

Brooklyn Lager is one of my favourite session beers. Its cute Milton Glaser designed label has been making cameo appearances in Dublin off licenses and supermarkets recently. Hopefully it will become a permanent addition.

The beer pours quite high (i.e. a lot of head) and the dense foamy bubbles have great staying power. The colour is darker than you would expect from a lager, being a light reddish amber colour. With sunlight reflecting through the glass (at my impromptu picnic for one) the colour is reminiscent of a stained glass window.



The first aroma of the beer is a fresh grassiness, with a hint of sweetness that smells to me slightly like brown sugar. On aroma alone I would guess this beer would be a great match for barbequed meat. I am thinking particularly of satisfyingly messy foods requiring finger bowls and a change of shirt after, for example marinated chicken wings or glazed pork ribs.

The first sip of the beer gives a rich smooth bodied beer with a sharp hoppiness which clangs across the entire tongue. This is balanced by a malty sweetness and there is a delicious earthy aftertaste, and a lovely warmth in the throat which reminded me of malted whisky. All this makes the beer sound quite heavy, but it is not, with plenty of carbonation carrying the beer and there is a definite lasting freshness about it. The beer is dry hopped, which means fresh hops are steeped in the beer as it ferments.



While called a lager this beer feels more like an American pale ale in its body, and would be a perfect match for the Scotch eggs I posted about earlier this week. I think it would also be an amazing match for a herby roast chicken or a pork and leek pie, both of which I think I will experiment with and blog the results.

1 comment:

Bionic Laura said...

I've found that Brooklyn Lager is a great all purpose beer. It goes with almost anything you care to eat with it. I'd say it was definitely tasty with the scotch eggs.

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