Budget Beer Review #3 - Köstritzer: Schwarzbier
The Brewery
The Köstritzer brewery was first mentioned in documents in 1543, making it one of the oldest breweries in Germany. Being one of the oldest breweries in Germany, it also allowed them to also be one of the oldest producers of Schwarzbier[1] in Germany (though they did not invent the style). Naturally, since the brewery is quite old[2], it has a storied and interesting past.The brewery is located in Bad Köstritz, Thuringia, which is sort of in central Germany (but Thuringia was part of the former GDR, which is relevant later on). With the foundation of the University of Jena in 1558, the brewery experienced a boom in local popularity[3]. In 1696, the count of Reuss-Ebersdorf, Heinrich X, took over the brewery, and it took the title of "knightly estate brewery". However, with the promotion of the counts of Reuss-Ebersdorf to princes, the brewery became the "princely brewery in Köstritz"[4].
Köstritzer was really popular in the eighteenth century, and were sending their beer to cities as far away (and with their own local breweries) as Berlin, Frankfurt and Dresden! However, ignoring beer-titles, the true success of the brewery began in 1875 after Rudolf Zersch took over the brewery, and rebuilt it to its former glory following a devastating fire in 1829[5]. A new brewing building was also built, and production volume significantly increased.
Clearly, Köstritzer must produce a quality beer. Why do I say this? Well, impressively, Köstritzer was one of very few breweries that exported their beer to West Germany during the Cold War (it was exported between 1956 to 1976). Admittedly, the style of Schwarzbier originated in Thuringia and Saxony (both in the former GDR), and so it is an "East German" style of beer. However, there were breweries in the former West Germany producing a Schwarzbier of their own, and yet Köstritzer Schwarzbier was still popular enough to import!
As is the way with many traditional German Breweries, Köstritzer do not make many different styles of beer (only thirteen in total), and I fully support this ideology. They make a wildly popular Schwarzbier, and then a number of standard styles (a pilsner, a pale ale, a red lager, a wheat beer, etc), and they focus on doing these well. Some are very good, and some are not so good[7], but this is all personal preference.
Personally, Köstritzer Schwarzbier was the first beer I drank regularly when I moved to Jena. I'm revisiting it critically for this review though because I'm wondering if I liked it because I was in a new country and life was exciting, or whether I liked it because it was just plain and simple, a good beer.
First Impressions
I think that the bottle looks dark and menacing, but not boring. You won't mistake it for a colourful, modern craft beer design, and they are really leaning into the schwarz in Schwarzbier. If this beer was a movie character, it would be a sith lord from the original Star Wars trilogy. The glass bottle is made from a dark brown glass, so you can't tell the colour of the beer yet.
Upon first sniff, it smells like roasted malt, cold drip coffee, and a really light burnt toffee aroma. It's not a heavy smelling beer, but it is roasty, and there's sweetness too. You sort of can't tell if it's going to be refreshing, or rich, or some combination of the two.
The Tasting
Immediately on the first taste you get coffee notes and a burnt malt richness, but they're not overpowering. It is light on the palate, and the mouthfeel has the consistency of a lager, so it is refreshing. To me, it's an entry level milk stout (hear me out) because it is sweet-ish, but also quite dark and roasted, but without the creaminess of a milk stout. So, it has a similar range of flavours, but it is not "flat"[8], and it's served lager-cold.Unfortunately, it does have a mild flavour of the smell of coins. I assume this could be because of the burnt malt characteristics interacting with the sulphides that lager yeasts naturally produce, but it is noticeable.
Okay, now I always like to compare my tasting notes to the (often artistic) tasting notes provided by the brewery. The good news is that we both agree that the beer is black, so I'm getting good at this.
Wait, hold the phone, I missed the dark honey and farm-baked bread[9], and I'll be honest and say that I still can't find any traces of chestnuts or sage, and I don't agree that a "gentle tingle" is even a flavour.
Final Thoughts
My most recent tasting of Köstritzer Schwarzbier is in line with my first taste of the beer. It's a good, dark beer that doesn't get heavy on you. It's not a craft beer, and it doesn't pretend to be. Instead, it's an easy-drinking, easy-to-find, mass-produced beer that's only 0.89€ per bottle. In a sea of mediocre macro-lagers, it's always a relief to see Köstritzer Schwarzbier on a restaurant menu, or tap list at a local bar[10].
But I think Köstrizter is a little more than jjst a good mass-produced beer. I think it may even compare well with craft beers. I decided to look up all of the Schwarzbier, Dunkelweizen and dark ales that I've had, and at the top of my list of 39 beers, was Köstritzer Schwarzbier (tied with a couple of other beers). Comparing it to every globally rated Schwarzbier, which includes craft beers and mass produced beers, it only sits 0.5 ranking points below the highest rated Schwarzbier in the world[11]! It really is a very well-made dark beer, and one that everyone should certainly try, even just for history's sake.
So who could I recommend this beer to? Literally anyone. I think that it's a great starting point for people who don't quite like dark beer yet. I think it's a great beer for people who haven't tried a dark lager yet. But most importantly, I think it's a great beer for people who think that only craft beer can be interesting, and delicious. We can't all drink expensive beer all the time, but that doesn't mean that our affordable beer needs to be boring either. At only 0.89€, and with plenty of character, this is the perfect beer drinkers daily brew.
| Brewery | Störtebeker Braumanufaktur |
|---|---|
| Beer | Schwarzbier |
| Style | Schwarzbier/Black Beer |
| Alcohol | 4.8% |
| IBU | 22 |
| Price | 0.89€ |
| Untappd Global Score | 3.53 |
| My Untappd Score | 4 |
Footnotes
[1] Schwarzbier (black beer) is a style of dark lager. Basically, think of it as a stout, but made with lager yeast so that it's somehow lighter and more refreshing. What's a lager yeast you ask? Check out this post where I describe the different way yeasts are used in the brewing process!
[2] It always melts my mind how old things in Europe are. For more than 350 years after before my home country of Australia had a constitution, these guys had been brewing beer!
[3] I like that the brewery came before the university. It was like they thought that students won't possibly stick around unless they have something to drink. They were probably right.
[4] I think I could have enjoyed the last season of Game of Thrones if it had been about breweries instead of dragons.
[5] I don't know what happened for those 46 years. Were they producing beer on equipment that had been affected by the fire? Is this why they invented Schwarzbier to hide the smokey flavour[[6]?
[6] Obviously no.
[7] They make a cola/Schwarzbier mix called "Bibop". I don't like it at all, but only because it's god awful. This apparently that makes me an monster in Thuringia.
[8] I hate when people claim ales like Guinness or Kilkenny are flat. I think macro-lagers have taught people to think that beer should have the mouthfeel of a soft drink.
[9] I guessed pale honey, and bread that was baked near a saw mill. How could I have been so wrong?
[10] There are some truly average-to-awful macro-pilsners that are common where I live that make Beck's look like a masterpiece. They're still better than Bud Light though.
[11] The top rated Schwarzbier is Schwarz Mönch, by Schwarz Mönsch. I don't know much about this Swiss beer, or brewery, except that it's a small volume beer made for the Schwarz Mönsch restaurant/hotel by Jungfraubräu, and that the view from their terrace of their alps looks amazing.
[2] It always melts my mind how old things in Europe are. For more than 350 years after before my home country of Australia had a constitution, these guys had been brewing beer!
[3] I like that the brewery came before the university. It was like they thought that students won't possibly stick around unless they have something to drink. They were probably right.
[4] I think I could have enjoyed the last season of Game of Thrones if it had been about breweries instead of dragons.
[5] I don't know what happened for those 46 years. Were they producing beer on equipment that had been affected by the fire? Is this why they invented Schwarzbier to hide the smokey flavour[[6]?
[6] Obviously no.
[7] They make a cola/Schwarzbier mix called "Bibop". I don't like it at all, but only because it's god awful. This apparently that makes me an monster in Thuringia.
[8] I hate when people claim ales like Guinness or Kilkenny are flat. I think macro-lagers have taught people to think that beer should have the mouthfeel of a soft drink.
[9] I guessed pale honey, and bread that was baked near a saw mill. How could I have been so wrong?
[10] There are some truly average-to-awful macro-pilsners that are common where I live that make Beck's look like a masterpiece. They're still better than Bud Light though.
[11] The top rated Schwarzbier is Schwarz Mönch, by Schwarz Mönsch. I don't know much about this Swiss beer, or brewery, except that it's a small volume beer made for the Schwarz Mönsch restaurant/hotel by Jungfraubräu, and that the view from their terrace of their alps looks amazing.
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