Budget Beer Review #1 - Lammsbräu: Glutenfrei

The Brewery

This beer comes from a company called Neumarkter Lammsbräu, hailing from the city of Neumarkt in der Oberfalz, in the brewery rich state of Bavaria. They were founded in 1628, so they must know a thing or two about brewing beer. What sets them apart from the average "older" German brewery is that they became organic-certified in 1995 across their entire range of products (including soft drinks and mineral water). They're so committed to the cause, that in 2010 their mineral water was quite sensibly certified as organic mineral water, which I think we can all agree is a thing that makes sense. I know I personally hate genetically modified water. Terrible stuff. It might even kill fish.

First Impressions

The bottle is a very odd shape, kind of like a glass whisky still that's been keeping in shape. A long, thin neck, and a wider round base. The odd part is that base of the beer is a bit too short to hold comfortably, and the neck is super thin, and they're both untapered cylinders (though there is a slope between these parts).

The bottle is an organic, environmentally-friendly shade of green, the label is white, and there's a little shield with a lamb sitting on it. It's all very clinical, and there's a bit of a theme across all of their beers. That theme is "devoid of character". But that's fine, a bottle does not a beer make, after all.

The Tasting

Upon pouring this beer into a glass, the head disappeared quicker than that of a monarch that's just yelled "let them eat cake". The colour is straw-like, and the beer appears to be reasonably bubbly. That's all seeming very middle of the road. To be honest, I'd tried a couple of their other beers (the Edelpils, Dunkel and Urstoff), and they were all refreshing, inoffensive and reasonably safe.

My first mistake was smelling the beer, or actually, smelling near the beer. It had the smell of mid-90s Australian pub with carpet that had been soaked in beer, and not cleaned since the 1950's. It just smelled of cheap draught beer, and the ghost of 1.16€. However, my friend and I once made some homebrew that smelled terrible, but tasted okay-ish. However, if you got one of the few ones that didn't have a washing-detergent smell, then the flavour was ungodly. SO maybe bad smell equals good taste! Of course, we'd hadn't been brewing beer for 391 years (it was our second batch I think), so maybe that's an unrealistic comparison.

Then I tasted it. To be completely fair, it tasted like unseasoned corn chips being opened in an old candle factory, and only for about a second. And then that was it, the flavour vanished. And that's absolutely fine for a session beer or something like that. I guess it was kind of a refreshing beer, but only if you don't breath through your nose. But I know that I'd struggle to want to session this beer.

I thought that maybe I'd missed something, so I quickly looked up the official Lammsbräu description of the beer by professional sommelier Heinz Kühnlein. He described the beer as having a "typical smell" and a "pronounced hop note" with  "an aromatic, mild-dry taste". Now, I'm not calling Heinz a bad sommelier, but only because he's probably a dangerous liar that would threaten my life. I think Herr Kühnlein and I might have to agree to disagree on our Glutenfrei friend.

Final Thoughts

I can only really recommend this beer to three types of people: those who have lost their sense of smell, cake-wielding French Monarchs (circa 1789), and Lord Voldemort.  That might seem harsh, but the nose on this was just awful. Like, Tori Spelling's nose levels of bad (90s pop-culture reference!). If you are forced to drink this beer, leave it in the bottle, which will lower your chances of smelling it while you drink it. Actually, that might go a long way towards explaining the strange shape of the bottle.....

Look, this isn't the worst beer I've ever drunk. It's not even in the top 10 (shout out to you, macrobreweries in the US), but the nose was so bad that I'm forced to score it 2/5, and to suggest that you steer clear of this one. I just get the feeling that they felt the need to have a gluten-free beer in their line up to match their organic persona, but that it just didn't have to be a good gluten-free beer. The painful part is that good gluten-free beers do exist, and Mikkeller are one of the best at it (check out Space Race, a glorious gluten-free NEIPA).

Lammsbräu also produce an alcohol-free gluten-free beer, which I'm suspicious is just water. It's probably organic water though, so, at least it's safe for fish. Get that instead.

Brewery	Neumarkter Lammsbräu
Beer	Glutenfrei
Style	Gluten-Free
Alcohol	4.7%
IBU	NA
Price	1.16€
Untappd Global Score	2.72
My Untappd Score	2