German Beer and English Cider

I got home from work last night and sat on the porch to drink a glass of Oliver's Dry Cider. Before I could pour a glass, Neil showed up with a bottle of Mahr's Weisse and asked if I felt like sharing. Probably more of a rhetorical question than anything, but I responded by getting another glass.

The cider was still, bone dry, and too cold to properly enjoy, so we set it aside to breathe and warm up while we contemplated the weisse beer. Every beer I have from Mahr's raises their score on my mental brewery list, and this was no exception. The beer poured like a Portland summer; beautiful, hazy sun shone out from beneath a fluffy white cloud while the breeze carried floral notes and a bit of spice. OK, the spice part might not have anything to do with Portland, but the rest is true. The "typical" flavors of wheat mingled with banana and clove phenols are present, but the true measure of this beer is it's restrained balance. Unlike most other German wheat beers the various components don't fight for attention until one starts to dominate, instead they all play happily together like little German school kids.

By this point the cider was calling, so we switched gears for a moment and gave it a go. Even after warming up it seemed noticeably lacking in "top flavor", the initial taste in the front and roof of your mouth. At first it was almost as though you couldn't taste it until after you'd swallowed, but when it hits you definitely notice. The bottle says, "Matured for a minimum of 8 months in oak casks", and when the juice hits the back of the tongue its an easy statement to believe. As a lover of lambics and barrel-aged beer I don't know if I've ever said this before, but the stuff was almost too dry. Wonderfully apple flavored and fairly potent at 7.5%, but the astringency kept jumping out and distracting me.

At some point Neil went back to the Mahr's and immediately commented on how well the flavors and residual sugar in the beer cut right through the cider and seemed to open up both of them a little more. He was right. A little coating of beer on the tongue was enough to soften the puckering sensation and draw out more of the rustic, spicy apple character. We went back and forth like this until both were gone, and then it was time for dinner.

I was pondering how globalization had played a part in what would have been an unthinkable combination of beverages 60 years ago, but that's a post best left to some poly-sci wonk.