Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Beers of Bourgogne

After arriving in Dijon and checking into our hotel on yet another cold, windy and rainy day, we dropped our giant mounds of soggy luggage off in our room and wondered downstairs to the bar to plan our afternoon and the following day.  And to use the free Wi-Fi.

Despite it being happy hour, there was no one there but there was a bucket with 5 bottles of open champagne sitting on the counter of the bar with clean glasses sitting next to it.

We seated ourselves at a small table by the window and waited.  Waited.  Waited some more.  Finally, The Husband got up and went to the bar to pour a glass of, what we assumed was, complimentary champagne.  Sure enough, some small French guy appears at the very moment The Husband delivered my glass of champagne.  Little French man wanted to know what room we were in.  Seriously?

How do you try to tell someone in French that if they don't want people to help themselves, they should a) have a bartender present at the bar and b) not leave open bottles of champagne on the counter with clean glasses immediately adjacent to it?!? Je ne sais pas (I don't know).

So after wondering around the city on a bank holiday (Pentecost) in the rain for a few hours desperately looking any place that was open to grab a drink, we ended up back at the hotel.  We waited about 10 minutes again for the bartender to appear and then got two local brews (330mL for 6 each) to take back to our room.

According to the brewery website, their beers are made using traditional Bavarian methods and adhere to the purity laws ("Reinheitsgebot") enacted in 1516 .  The Reinheitsgebot is very simple.  It states that beer must contain only malt, hops and water -- no additives of any kind.

Blanche - Weissbier (4.8% ABV)
Brasserie de Vezelay
Saint-Père, Bourgogne, France

Blonde - Pale Ale (5.5% ABV)
Brasserie de Vezelay
Saint-Père, Bourgogne, France
Neither The Husband or I can remember too much that was either remarkably good or remarkably bad about either of these beers.  We finished both of them and I remember commenting that perhaps the French people in Bourgogne should stick to making wine -- because -- as we learned on our wine tour the following day, they do that really really well.

The next day we spotted the other varieties produced by Brasserie de Vezelay in the market.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Homemade Swiss cooler at the Hotel Edelweiss

My improvised Swiss cooler (window half open for photo purposes).
After arriving at the Hotel Edelweiss in Wengen, Switzerland, we were cold, wet and hungry.  So we took the beer out of our luggage and wanted to chill it.  But alas -- no fridge in this quaint little hotel/ski-chalet.

I put on my thinking cap and opened the window to find a large windowsill outside.  I set all our beers on the ledge.  First thing I do in any hotel is try to open the window.  I'm not sure why -- but I do.  Every time.  I realized there were functional outdoor shutters, so I pulled the outdoor shutter closed and locked it to prevent any random winds from coming along and blowing my beer off the ledge.  I left the other shutter open to let the cool air circulate in the space.  Don't worry -- I checked below to make sure that should some strange event come along that would cause my beer to fall -- I wouldn't injure anyone sitting around eating their schnitzel dinner.  It was an alley below.  So we shut the window and headed off to dinner in the cold.

When we arrived back at our hotel after dinner, we popped this open and dug out all our maps to plan our adventures the next day.  We were fighting against a few factors: 1) the TSA had stolen or misplaced one of my running shoes when I left Phoenix and 2) it was cold and snowing on the mountain.  We did not expect to deal with either of these factors when we planned to go to Switzerland to go mountain biking and hiking.

So although the weather was crap, the beer was perfect.  Boozy and sweet.  A surprisingly good brew!

La Goudale (7.25% ABV)
Les Brasseurs De Gayant
Douai, France

About the brewery:  as of the date of my research, the Les Brasseurs de Gayant Brewery is the second largest independent brewery in France. The brewery was originally founded in 1919 in the Norde-Pas-de-Calais region of France that borders Belgium. Despite being one of the largest independent breweries in France, they specialize in producing high quality small batches of "biere de garde" style of beers.

About the beer / beer name:  in the fourteenth century, the good beers were called Goudale, Goudalle or Good Ale. A merchant called the Goudalier sold each of the "Good Ales" for 2 deniers a pot.  This particular La Goudale was crowned the "World's Best Biere de Garde" at the 2008 World Beer Awards.

As we headed out the next morning, we finally got to see some beautiful blue skies and the tip tops of the Alps.  Mother Nature teased us with just a few short hours of sunshine to soak in the beauty of the Alps.  And then it started to snow...


Sunday, June 2, 2013

Drink local: Interlaken, Switzerland

Despite being abroad, we decided to drink local and unfiltered.  Naturtrubes...naturally cloudy.

Zwickel Bier (4.8% ABV)
Rugen Brau
Interlaken, Bern, Switzerland