There’s a lot more to Bamberg than just Rauchbier — the town is said to produce brews in some 50 different styles, including the buzz-worthy U, aka Ungespundetes, an “uncorked” or “unbunged” style of Kellerbier best-known in the versions from Mahr’s and Spezial, as well as very good wheats from places like Kaiserdom. If you’re tempted to take something home with you, the very last chance before you leave town is a small shop in the train station with bottles of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier as well as one of the local oddballs: Zwergla from Brauerei Fässla.

The Fässla pub was one of my favorites on my first trip to Bamberg, if only for the atmosphere, as I got caught up in conversations with the Stammgäste there. And while Zwergla’s “Lil’ Dwarf” moniker is fairly distinctive, I couldn’t remember ever trying it. Grabbing a bottle in the Bahnhof, I figured I’d check out what I missed and compare it to some beers from back home.

On the brewery’s home page, Zwergla is listed as a Dunkles, but there’s quite a bit of red glinting through (especially if you backlight the glass with a tea candle, as in the shot above). In normal light it is a clear deep amber with very moderate carbonation and a loose tan head. The nose is honey with light ginger notes; in the mouth, it has a rich, full mouthfeel with moderate sweetness followed by a surprisingly bitter finish.

That’s pretty good, I thought. And then I made a big mistake: I opened a bottle of Herold’s Bohemian Granát from the Czech Republic. I’m not sure if it says more about Fässla or Herold, but after sampling Bohemian Granát’s rich, sweet-and-sour caramel bite and even stronger bitter finish, I wouldn’t recommend going to Bamberg just for the Lil’ Dwarf.

Of course Beeropolis has much more to try, like the newish brewpub Ambräusianum. Although we missed the Fastenbier at Schlenkerla and Spezial by a matter of days, Ambräusianum’s version, the perfectly named Ambräusiator, was ready to go. It’s the same very dark amber as their normal Dunkles, though clear instead of cloudy, with a thin, short-half-life head, due to the consciousness-altering ABV of around 7.5%. It has a malty, peppery and peach-scented nose, with a filling rich flatness in the mouth followed by tannic notes in the finish. Additional sips bring out tastes of stewed forest fruits and jam. It’s chewy, thick and unctuous, though probably not something most people would order twice, if only because of the kick.

I don’t think the same can be said of Mahr’s Ungespundet-hefetrüb, probably the closest thing in Bamberg to a Czech-style brew, and served on site in an earthenware Krug, my favorite type of drinking vessel. (More on drinking vessels soon.) As I raised the glass, I thought of Alan, who seems to like Mahr’s pretty OK. Maybe even more than just OK.

This particularly gratuitous shot is for him.

Continuing with the report from Bamberg, and now on to Rauchbier, the local specialty made with smoked malt. Above is a post-first-sip shot of Spezial’s Rauchbier, shown in the taproom on Obere Königsstraße. In Bamberg itself, there are two main producers: the oh-so-famous Schlenkerla, aka home of Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, and Brauerei Spezial. (While a few other producers in the larger region also make Rauchbier, I’ll focus on Bamberg for now.) Before I compare the two, I’d like to talk about something else for a second: wine.

Hang on — there’s no need to choke on your Double IPA, bro. This is still Beer Culture, and of course beer and wine have much in common, not the least of which is the fact that they both make life worth living. And just as extreme beers — with more alcohol, more hops, and of course higher prices — have taken off in the past few years, winemakers have gone through their own forms of extremism, producing wines with more alcohol, more oak, more fruit, more malolactic buttery flavors and mouthfeel, and of course ever-higher prices. And not everyone has been happy with the changes.

Much of this was catalogued in the lovely film Mondovino, which pointed out how the preeminence of just one critic, Robert Parker, has single-handedly changed the way French wines are made. A high rating from Parker’s Wine Advocate can take your vineyard from obscurity to sold-out status in a matter of days. If your winery is struggling to survive, why wouldn’t you consider making wines that are just a bit more in line with what the world’s most important wine critic seems to prefer?

Another factor, of course, is the fact that many big wine tastings are done with dozens if not scores of bottles at once. (There’s a reason why they spit it out, and it’s not because the stuff doesn’t taste good.) I’ve been a judge in several blind tastings of 20 wines or more, and honestly, after trying two dozen sauvignons blancs in thirty minutes, it’s very hard to keep track of subtleties. At that point, just about the only wines that have a chance of getting noticed are the ones with more: more oak, more butter, more alcohol or more fruit. This is not the same as saying they are the best, and individually, compared one to another, the more modest, more balanced, less extreme wine might very well be every judge’s favorite. It’s just that when you’re tasting a large amount of samples over the course of an afternoon, subtlety, modesty and balance are often hard to grasp.

Well, that’s what seems to be happening with beer — not in the sense of the preeminence of a single critic, not in the sense of people tasting 20 Doppelbocks in a session, and not in the sense of judges spraying the world’s greatest brews into a spittoon. Rather, it’s happening in the sense that the loud, noisy beers, if you will, are the ones that are getting noticed in the crowd, rather than the elegant and understated beers that you’d want to bring home to Mom and Dad.

Which brings us back to Rauchbier.

As I said, there are two producers of Rauchbier in Bamberg town, and of them, Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier is about as Rauch-y as it can get, so assertively smoky that people compare it to liquid bacon. The smoke first hits your mouth like a Montecristo #2 torpedo, lingering with bacony, porcine flavors before heading off to a bittersweet finish, like the point when your maple syrup gets on the last bite of your breakfast links. For smoked beers, it is extreme, and if you’ve never had one, it pretty much blows your mind (and your gustatory papillae) the first time you try it. It is literally awesome.

And yet I think I prefer Spezial. Compared to its cross-town competition, Spezial is moderately, even modestly smoky. Instead, it’s easier to taste the malt, and much easier to taste the meal you have with it. Another bonus: after you have a Rauchbier from Spezial, you can still enjoy something else. You could have another Spezial Rauchbier and still like it, or you could move on and enjoy the subtleties of the brewery’s very nice Ungespundetes.

Whereas after you have one from Schlenkerla, it’s hard to taste anything else.

Well, that’s a brief take on Bamberger Rauchbier as it looked last week. There is another interesting beer from Schlenkerla, the Rauchweizen (“smoke wheat”) beer. It has a slightly lighter body than the Rauchbier, with a wheat beer’s spicy clove finish, and isn’t quite as aggressive in its smokiness. The Czech Republic’s new Pivovar Kocour Varnsdorf is set to produce a Rauchweizen, and beer fans here can’t wait to check that out. Both Bamberg breweries also produce a strong version known as Fastenbier, available only during Lent, meaning right now.

Oh, and one more thing about wine: while extreme wines aren’t disappearing, there are rumors of winemakers in California scaling back the alcohol and fruit. I mentioned this as a possible sign for a coming sea-change in brewing trends in a discussion about extreme beers on A Good Beer Blog which Stephen Beaumont also cited in his post on the subject at On the House.

Of course the extreme will continue to get the attention from the hoi polloi, but consider Lew Bryson’s Session Beer Project in the US and CAMRA’s attempt to rekindle interest in mild in the UK. Consider the fact that non-alcoholic beers are one of the growth segments of the Czech beer market, and that cult producer Bernard is emphasizing its lehké pivo (“light beer”), an uncommon style of table beer brewed at 7.99° or less and, in this case, containing just 2.2% ABV. With that in mind, you could make the case that the next big thing — at least at the leading edge of beer culture — just might be smaller beers.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to plan my trip to Munich for Starkbierzeit.

Prague is not in bad shape for beer, not by any means. Not only do we have U sadu, U kláštera and a few hundred other great pubs in town, but we also have about a dozen outstanding local beers, including one brewed by college students. Last month we had the Christmas Beer Markets to keep us warm. And now we’ve got a brand new brewpub in Praha 4-Nusle: Pivovar Bašta.

Also known as Sousedský pivovar U Bansethů (something like “neighborhood brewery U Bansethů”), Bašta sits just across from the nuselská radnice, next door to the old U Bansethů pub, a neighborhood stalwart for a century or so and a good source for Pilsner Urquell.

If you board an 18 tram or 193 bus at metro station Pražského povstání (C line), Bašta is just a few minutes away, right at the Nuselská radnice stop. Or if you take a 6 or 11 tram from metro station I.P. Pavlova (C line), you can get off at Náměstí bratří Synků and Bašta is less than 5 minutes away by foot. Alternately, you can catch the 18 tram at metro station Karlovo náměstí (B line) and take that to Nuselská radnice, which should take about 12 minutes. From the outside, it looks like this:

Inside, the atmosphere is classic hospoda, with traditional wood paneling rising halfway up the walls and lots of hooks for coats and caps. The menu board lists sadlo, grundle and other typical Czech pub treats, as well as four regular beers: pšeničné (wheat), světlý speciál (light special), tmavý speciál (dark special) and polotmavý speciál (half-dark special). But perhaps because Bašta just opened, supplies seem to be mysteriously limited.

On my first visit, only the polotmavý was available, a cloudy amber with a thick-set creamy head (pictured at the top of the page). Brewed at 12.5° Balling, it ends up with about 5% alcohol by volume. When I tasted it, it had a lovely nose that reminded me of a great single-malt — the roasted barley of the whisky, if not its alcohol. In the mouth it was almost chewy in its richness, with a strong caramel note, and the finish was a fair bit hoppier than I expected.

On a second visit, other beers were available. Remembering that he’d only had one beer the first time, the waiter made a point of telling me they now had the pšeničné and the světlý speciál. And then, a minute later, when I tried to order them, he said that they’d just run out again.

However, there was still something the waiter called a Bavorská třináctka (or Bavarian thirteen, apparently brewed at 13° and ending up with around 5.5% alcohol). In the dim light of the pub, the Bavorská was virtually indistinguishable from the polotmavý speciál.

At least in appearance. In flavor, it had much more malt sweetness, especially in the finish, and far less bitterness. It reminded me of a few beers in Bamberg, like the lovely Ungespundetes (or “U”) at Brauerei Spezial and the Ungespundet-hefetrüb at Mahr’s. Bašta’s polotmavý is no slouch, but that Bavorská třináctka was outstanding.

In a nod to the neighborhood (not one of Prague’s priciest), beers here are inexpensive, only 25 Kč per half-liter. In Prague, I’m generally comfortable spending up to about 37 Kč before I feel like I’m getting clipped (though I do regularly drop 49 Kč on the lovely Oldgott at U Medvídků, but that’s another story). At 25 Kč, I almost feel like I can’t afford not to have another, especially when they taste this good.

Pivovar Bašta
Táborská 49
140 00 Praha 4–Nusle
(tram 18 or Bus 193 to station Nuselská radnice, or tram 6 or 11 to station Náměstí bratří Synků)
Tel.: +420 261 222 530
www.ubansethu.cz

Pivovar Bašta is only the first of two new brewpubs opening in Prague, to catch us up with the other new brewpubs and breweries set to appear elsewhere in the Czech Republic. If you like good beer, I’d recommend visiting as soon as possible. A word of warning: I was told Bašta only opens after 3 p.m., so check the hours before you head out. And if the waiter says they have the pšeničné and the světlý speciál, order both of them immediately.