A Hoppy Brew - Andwell Brewery

I've been drinking a lot of beer recently, not sure how good a thing that is, I'm not very good on beer for some reason, but I came across these guys, Andwells Brewery through work. We'd got their full range in, which include several different style of ales and seasonal ones, but one that really caught mine and a few of the other guys eye's, apart from the very inspired packaging, was the Dry Hopped Pilsner.

Now dry hopping is when the brewer, after the fermentation process and the beer is maturing throws in a handful of dry hops, at Andwells they use the Japanese hop, Sorachi Ace, in doing this they get none of the bitterness from the hops just extra pungent aromas of citrus to the Pilsner;

Andwell Dry Hopped Pilsner

It has an amber/golden colour to it, as well as being slightly cloudy, it has extremely pungent aromas of citrus from the dry hopping process. You then get the lovely bitterness of the Pilsner come through and combine to create an extremely drinkable and delicious beer.

Picture courtesy of Andwell Brewery
 

Again through work, they sent me a sample of the normal Pilsner;

Andwell Pilsner

This is a cracking little Pilsner style lager, brewed using English barley with the noble Czech Saaz hop for that classic Pilsner style, with some German Tettnang added to give it a slightly spicy aroma. It was lovely and crisp, with a touch of richness to it, combined with a perfect bitter character to boot, very drinkable cracking little beer.

I have to say I pretty much enjoyed all the beers in there range, but the star for me was definitely the dry hopped Pilsner.

A delightful Riesling from the Mosel

When you mention German wines to most people, they instinctively think of Hock and Liebfraumilch, which is a shame really, as they produce some fantastic wines from the Riesling grape, such as the Dr L Riesling 2008, from the Loosen bros.

The grapes used to produce this wine come from the Mosel valley, near to the village of Bernkastel where the soil is predominately composed of slate. Because of this the root eating phylloxera louse can’t survive in these conditions and the vines remain on their own root stock instead of being grafted on to a phylloxera resistant one.

Many of the vines they have on their estate are well over 120 years old, with the average age being 70, this means the vines are far less vigorous producing lower yields of better quality fruit, and more expensive wines. Unfortunately the grapes from these vines aren’t used to make this wine, as they use purchased grapes from other local growers in the area, but it does produce an excellent wine.

In the glass the wine has a very pale lemony green colour, with reasonably pronounced aromas of stone fruit and citrus. On tasting you get the impression that the wine is sweeter than it actually is due to fruit flavours. The wine is actually more an off-dry style than a med. sweet wine, with fantastic flavours of peaches and nectarines with a touch of citrus coming through as an after taste. Combine these with the low levels of acidity and alcohol and you get a beautifully balanced, refreshing wine which goes down perfectly with a Thai curry.

So what do I think of this wine, for an entry level Riesling it is absolutely outstanding, especially at around the £7 price mark you can’t go wrong.