Cooking Lager - Hofmeister

Visit the Cooking Lager site


http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_eQjR-WeaVP...824_181123.jpgMore free beer. Wayhay! Beer blogging is great. Lovely nice people sending you free beer. I salute you Stuart Howe, Head Brewer at Sharps Brewery for being the gentleman and scholar you quite obviously are. The giving of free beer is the very gift of life. Is there a finer thing you can possibly do than give a poor cheap lout drinker some free grog to neck? I suspect not.

As you can see from the picture, some nice grog and some interesting bottles with yellow labels on. This promised to be a recreation and taste of the legendary cooking lager that is Hofmeister, a dead cooking lager killed off in 2003, see here. I’m ashamed to say I have never drunk Hofmeister. Us kids never had the pleasure of tasting the finer beers of days of yore, showing the dangers of not having a CAMRA equivalent for cooking lager enthusiasts, and the need to protect and treasure the cooking lagers we have now, like Foster’s & Carling.

I chilled the beer for 24 hours and for a whole day was eager with anticipation at trying some cooking lager history. I opened the bottle. It smelled sweet. I’m sure I detected a slight hint of red wine. Only slight. Maybe I didn’t. It poured out with a fizz, no froth. A slight haze. Ah, bottle conditioning. I should have left it for a few days. Still, grog is grog, not going to let that stop me. Time for a swig.

Stuart had warned me of the following

“I hope you enjoy it (apart from the Hoff which is truly pisswater of highest order)”

Was he correct? He knows his stuff, does Stuart. Absolute watery piss. Slight taste of beer, but mainly water. Superb cooking lager of the highest order. I commend it. I liked it so much I drank the second bottle, hazy or not.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_eQjR-WeaVP...825_211033.jpgA fine example of bringing back to life something that never ought to have been lost. If I had a brewery I’d do the same. Bring back all those beers that died a death, presumably because people didn’t like them much. Red Barrel, Double Diamond, Colt 45. All the stuff I never got to try. I’d probably go bust mind. There is presumably a reason why brands die, so whether there is a market is debatable.

However I applaud Stuart Howe & Sharps brewery for services to cooking lager in recreating a fine drop of lout. Well done Sir.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.co...r.blogspot.com


More...