Ten beers for a beer list

Knut Albert recently started an interesting series of blog posts about what would constitute a nice pub. Today he posted his list of 10 imported bottled beers that deserve a place on a beer menu. All the beers on the list must be available on the Norwegian market, but must not be Norwegian beers (that's for another list).

This makes for an interesting subject, so I've decided to create my own list. The beers are (in alphabetical order):

• Anchor Porter
• Delirium Tremens
• Einbecker Brauherren Premium Pils
• Fullers ESB
• Goose Island India Pale Ale
• Guinness Draught
• Hoegaarden Witbier
• Rochefort 8
• Orval
• Schneider Weisse Original

Note that this list does not constitute a list of my favourite ten imported beers, but more a diverse list that could be a beer list at a pub. Those would of course not be the same, but there are overlaps.

Creating such a list is really hard given its small size. A list of 20 beers would be a lot easier. One have to make sure that there's something for everybody, so a broad selection of beer styles is needed IMO. As the Norwegian market for imported beers is very small some bland beers like Guinness Draft and Hoegaarden Witbier ended up on the list. There are certainly other beers that I would have liked to see on it, but they are not available in Norway.

Travel: Edinburgh

I spent last week in Edinburgh. It is indeed a beautiful city with its medieval buildings and the illuminated castle on top of a hill right downtown. The city is nice to look at, but it also offers a great number of excellent pubs that serve delicious cask ales.

A lot of pubs seemed to have the standard line-up with Belhaven Best, Guinness, Stella Artois, Tennents Lager and Strongbow, and if you were lucky Caledonian ales. Only a small number of pubs had cask-ales beyond one or two from Caledonian, typically Caledonian 80/- and Deuchars IPA.

My favourite pubs were:

• Thompson's Bar
• Cloisters
• Guildford Arms
• Halfway House
• Blue Blazer
• Bow Bar
• Abbotsford

All of the above pubs had taps to please the swill-drinkers, but they also had a nice selection of cask ales in top shape. Most of them standard taps, but also a few of them dedicated to guest ales. I love the idea of guest beers as new ones will be put on as soon as the current ones are empty. Within a day or two the guest taps rotate, and the next time you visit the pub there is going to be new beers to try out. Very nice. I wish they would do the same thing here in Oslo...

Real ales typically have a soft mouthfeel, very little carbonation (condition), a subtle maltiness and a mellow hop aroma and bitterness. Some of them venture into more hop bitterness, but it never gets out of hand. The alcohol content of most of the beers I tried was in the 3.4 - 4.3% range. The various ales were surprisingly similar, which is a bit sad as I cannot see why brewers could not apply more creativity when making them. There is afterall a surging interest in craft ales. The only American influence I could see was the fact that a some of them used citrusy American hops.

Anyway, thanks to the half-pint, I managed to get through about 60 different real ales.