Kölsch – the true eau de Cologne and a great beer

Bustling Köln from the Früh brewpub

Summer is, intermittently, here and so my thoughts are increasingly turning to beer. Nothing is quite as refreshing or cleansing on a hot day as a cool beer, so I tend to think about it a great deal at this time of year.

In truth I am a bit of a beer wuss. Because I like beer to refresh I am normally drawn to lighter, criper brews, especially Pilsner type lagers. However such beers can be quite wonderful and I object to the lazy, but widely held belief that all lagers taste the same. Mass market lagers brewed in the UK do, but that is not the same thing at all. Try a König, a Paulaner and a Warsteiner side by side and compare them with an Urquell or an Alhambra Reserva 1925. In fact pop over to the Netherlands and taste all the different types of Grolsch, including seasonal versions – they are all still lagers though. In fact this does raise the question as to why all the big name lagers do become completely bland once they are brewed in the UK, when they have become famous enough to be brewed over here precisely because of their flavour and character!

A sight for sore eyes – Estrella Damm Inedit

Like much of the wine trade, whenever there is a lot of wine around I start thinking of beer – wine can make you pretty thirsty and there is something magically refreshing and restorative about a clean, cold lager or ale. It gets the red wine stains out of your mouth better than anything else too.

So, whilst browsing around the London International Wine Trade Fair Last week these cool, moisture beaded bottles really caught my attention. They looked so refreshing and enticing on that hot day when I was stuck in a vast badly air conditioned hall.