Warsteiner question

About 10 years ago, when I was first breaking away from megaswill and searching for real beer, Warsteiner seemed to me like a really tasty Pilsener with lots of character.

For the last several years, I've been drinking other Pilseners, like Czechvar and Pilsener Urquell. Recently I bought a six pack of the Paulaner premum lager. Then, remembering how good Warsteiner tasted, I brought home some for the first time in a long while. But it tastes curiously bland, and looks paler than the other lagers.

Is it just my imagination, or has Warsteiner begun down the same road that Anheuser-Busch started traveling many years ago, morphing good Pilsener into dishwater?

Reply to
Henry Eichel
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No. Your tastes have evolved. Something like Pilsner Urquell is objectively a more flavorful, intesne beer. You get yourself used to that, and something like Warsteiner is going to seem bland in comparison. Because, well, it is.

Every beer drinker has those early beers that were such eyeopeners that, when revisited years later, seem to be disappointments. In all but the rarest of cases, the beer didn't change. The drinker's tastes did.

-STeve

Reply to
Steve Jackson

Too right. 15 years ago I liked Michelob. I bought one a couple of weeks ago, and couldn't finish it.

Reply to
Tim Vanhoof

Warsteiner is not a bad beer, but it's not an especially interesting one either. It has a malty sweetness and just enough hop to give it a freshness rather than bitterness. Light lager done right, you might say. I don't think it was once a characterful pilsener and then went bad.

Reply to
Tim Vanhoof

We've secretly replaced "Steve Jackson" 's message with Folger's Crystals. Let's see if anyone notices:

For me, Pilsner Urquell it the beer I remember fondly that, when returning to it after having not had it for several years, seemed blah. I was drinking it 20 years ago when it came in enclosed cartons of 4 bottles, and I still do not think its mega-marketed current incarnation tastes the same. I drank Grolsch way back then and I drink it now, even though it is mega-marketed as well nowadays.

Perhaps it is the beer itself, perhaps it is my perception. At any rate, my favorite Czech beer for some time has been Rebel.

Michael Shoshani Chicago IL

Reply to
Michael Shoshani

The methods PU uses in production certainly have changed in that time. Twenty years ago, PU was still a state-owned brewery in Communist-run Czechoslovakia; there was much use of very large wooden vessels for fermenting and lagering. Now, PU is part of SABMiller, the wooden vessels have been replaced with shiny stainless steel, and worst of all, not all PU is made at the original brewery: they're now also brewing it at a SABMiller- owned brewery in Poland. Miller is now in charge of marketing it in the U.S., as if the new billboard and magazine adverts didn't give that one away.

At least Grolsch is still nominally independent.

Reply to
Oh, Guess

I'm all up for a round of brewing conglomerate bashing, but to be fair, the vessel changes occurred long before SAB got hold of PU.

-Steve

Reply to
Steve Jackson

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