New Aldi in town started stocking this German beer, that's allegedly brewed to the German purity law, Reinheitsgebot. https://www.aldi.co.uk/steinhauser-german-lager/p/004816020792000 According to wikipedia, the only ingredients permitted under the 1516 Bavarian law are water, barley and hops. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot Yet, if you check the ingredients on the bottom of the label it says "may contain traces of wheat". What the fuck is "pure" about that? Fucking bullshit.
It's all marketing and has nothing to do with the quality of the beer, but since it's from Aldi's it can't be that great. But there are tons of awesome German beers that do not adhere to that stupid law. It has been revised over time, and originally it did not even include yeast.
How can you make beer without yeast? The changed the law some years ago to include any water, filtered presumably but it used to have to be brewed with spring water. Aldi is just a cheap store and labels should be taken with a pinch. That said, they do have another German purity beer on sale for around the same price which is alright. Lidl and Asda also have their own versions, and they are all probably the same beer, from the same place with a different label anyway. I think some of them are even brewed in France. I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to beer, and I've tried a few non-reinsheitsgebot German beers and they are not the same, you get a cleaner, crisper, more refreshing beer with the purity ones. Becks (obv), Warsteiner, Bitburger and Jever are my favourites of the ones I tried. Fuck me you should the litre jugs of Warsteiner they serve fresh and cold out the tap in Roermond in The Netherlands, near the border to Germany where they brew it I think. That stuff goes down well. Dutch beers, Amstel and Heineken can be alright too if the bar keeps them well. If not you'll be sure to get a glass of lukewarm, flat cats piss.
I am not that big into pilsners, and I would consider beers like Becks (Germany's Heineken) and Bitburger to be far from the best Germany has to offer. And if reinsheitsgebot applied to beers in ALL countries, there would be a severe limit to the types of beers made available, since there are plenty of world class beers, including German beers, made with ingredients outside of the reinsheitsgebot stipulations. German hefeweizens, for instance, contain wheat, so they go against that stupid law, yet some of the best beers coming out of Germany are weissbiers. Again, it really has no bearing on the quality of the beer, as long as it's not made with cheap adjuncts like corn and rice.
Can't stand wheat beers, they taste and smell like Amsterdam whore houses. You say tomato, I like potato. Say one more bad thing about Bitburger and I'll have all the hop fields in America contaminated with ground warts
Just stick to Löwenbräu. It's not that awesome, but it's not that expensive either. I was talking to a truck driver once when I worked behind bars. He was delivering kegs. He said it's amazing that. When different beers are brewed out of the same company, the usual boutique expensive brew they sell is a lot of the time, just the top 1/3 of the vat of their low-mid priced beers. You get a cleaner crisp taste as the top third of the vat sits cleaner. I'm not 100% sure if that's correct or not, could be a truckie story for all I know but the one thing that hits me is, whenever I drink these higher priced beers, I don't taste the difference to what I'd normally drink anyway, and so I don't buy them. As for wheat beer, I can't stand it either. It'll make me so full like it's a meal for me, the taste and smell, it makes me gag on contact. Bitburger is really cheap and I don't mind it. Their lemon one isn't too bad either and I think there's a few other flavored. Becks I used to love. I think it's trash now, can stick that with Heineken. Yuck. DAB isn't bad, Späten has its moments. I dunno though, depends who's pooring it too. Some beers taste different from different places. Cans taste different to bottles which taste different to tap/draft.
Dab is piss. Beck's probably isn't as good as it used to be, but it's still alright, especially on tap. I also like the alcohol free version.
