Beer School, Session 2

Thanks for sending me your recommendation this week. We're looking for the brands that you suggested and will try them in the coming weeks.

I thought that, since Kevin and I went to Alsace, France this week we'd drink more wine then beer. But after assembling this post I see that we managed to try a few brews too.

Here's what we tasted this week:

• Holsten Edel from Hamburg. Kevin's comment when tasting this Pils was, "Once you get past the first bitter sip, its not too bad." I agreed. Today, however, I was checking their Web site and discovered that the packaging we have is completely different from what's online. Could it be that we had a very old bottle and that effected the taste?
• Kloster Andechs Dark Double Bock from Anderchs in Bavaria's Five Lake region. We didn't really like this one. It was too heavy, with too much malt for our liking. (One good thing about this brand though, is that they have a very good beer glossary on there Web site.)
• Rothaus Pils from Grafenhausen-Rothaus in the Black Forest. Pils, with its pronounced hoppy taste, is not generally Kevin's favorite style of beer. This one, however, made Kevin say, "I think I should give Pils a chance." This beer also gets our nod as been our favorite for the week.
• Oscar MaXXum Weizen from Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. This beer was fine; I generally like wheat beers, but nothing special. There are many other better Weizen's out there.
• Peters Kölsch from Cologne. This is a good Kölsch, but not the best. I am looking forward to trying some of the others recommended instead.

Best of the Batch: Rothaus Pils and Peters Kölsch.