Beer: Proper pilsner
Imagine this. It's 1842 and you've just invented pilsner. You're really excited about it and you take your new invention to Dragon's Den, or the 19th-century equivalent.
Sitting in their top hats, feathered quills at the ready and a pile of gleaming groats piled up next to them, the dragons' collective eyebrows raise in intrigue as you breathlessly pitch the potential power of pilsner.
Up until now, you point out, all beer was dark and a little dreary-looking. It also was drunk from pewter tankards. But pilsner, brewed in the town of Pilsen, is the world's first golden beer. It glistens, it glows, it flickers like a flame and dances in clear glassware - all sexy and alluring like the opening credits of a James Bond film.
The dragons don't get the Bond reference but, apart from that, they're very impressed. They want to drink it. They take a sip. It's like normal beer, just better. They've never seen or tasted anything like it before. It's tantalising on their tongue, it's bitter yet balanced, there's a softness to it and it goes down easier than a newborn giraffe on roller-skates.
This, think the dragons, could be big. It's already making a big noise in Europe and, word has it, the Americans are interested. This could go global. If there was the internet, they could even sell it online. The pitch has gone perfectly. Hands are hovering over the cash.
But, just as the dragons look like giving up the groats, they give up the ghost. Why? You haven't patented the idea, have you? You fool. You dufus. You dimwit. Always patent the idea. That's the number one rule, even if the invention is rubbish - like a chocolate teapot, an inflatable dartboard or the cream liqueur that came in sperm-shaped bottles and was immediately axed by the Portman Group a few years ago. Think it was called Little Krugy or something.
Jumping on the bandwagon
Anyway, the people who invented pilsner didn't trademark it. Not sure whether there was a way of doing it back then but, ultimately, it doesn't matter, because other breweries copied it. Everyone who could make pilsner decided to make pilsner.
It was born in Bohemia but it was soon being brewed all over Europe and America. D'oh!
More than 100 years on, pilsner is still brewed all over the world - but with varying degrees of success and corner-cutting. Pils has, sadly, become a much abused beer style, a byword for lacklustre lagers and a far cry from the original.
In this lager drinking world in which we dwell, can you be a proper beer pub without a proper pilsner? Some would argue that you can't. The recent Cask Ale Report highlighted a consumer looking for flavour, integrity and authenticity and while cask has all this and more, this newfound thirst for great beer certainly shouldn't preclude a proper pilsner.
And Germany, along with the Czech Republic, remains the most reliable source. The Reinheitsgebot, the German purity law whereby only four ingredients can be used, has helped preserve integrity and outlawed the addition of adjuncts such as maize and rice. Try not to hark back to Holsten Pils and Hofmeister, as it's difficult to hold them in high esteem and both are pale (far too pale) imitations of a pilsner. Perhaps their lamentable liquid legacy explains why, today, genuine German pilsners don't enjoy the presence in UK pubs that they undoubtedly deserve.
Eyeing up the UK
Anyway, it's a good time to make amends. German beer is no longer saddled with an image problem and there are a handful of German pilsners now giving the UK on-trade the glad eye. One of these is Veltins, brewed in Sauerland, near Dortmund, a bucolic and rather bumpy part of West Germany - not far from the Dutch border.
Famed for its forestry and paper trade, it's an industrial heartland where, historically, people have worked up quite a thirst. Veltins has been brewing here since 1824, when it was but a mere brewpub in the town of Grevenstein. It became known as Veltins when a chap called Clemens Veltins took it over in 1852 and five generations later, the brewery remains independent and family-owned with Suzanne Veltins, Clemens' great-great granddaughter, at the helm. It's the fifth-largest premium pilsner in Germany and, apart from a non-alcoholic version, it's the only proper beer brewed. And it's the only beer that's delivered in crates designed by Porsche.
Pilsner is what Veltins does, and it's really rather good at it. The brewery is an enormous, impressive operation which, carved into the limestone rocks and cloaked by the undulating Sauerland hills, looks like the lair of a dastardly Bond villain. But what happens there isn't naughty, it's nice. Even for a German brewery, everything is done with frightening Teutonic efficiency.
The brew water, which is taken from nearby lakes, is completely untreated and stored in enormous underground chambers that look like giant swimming pools.
It travels 100 metres up to a brewhouse where it's mashed using German barley. The wort is then cooked for an hour before being cooled and undergoing a unique fermentation process whereby 80 per cent is removed every 24 hours and replaced with new "beer". This, according to Manfred Hassur of the Veltins Engineering department, allows one to strip off any unwanted flavour compounds.
"It's a completely unique fermentation process," said Manfred. "With four separate tanks, it means that there are 200 different brews in each bottle. A bit like blending whisky it removes any harshness.
"The lager is then stored at minus two degrees for a minimum of four weeks - perhaps more depending on stability and flavour."
The north-south divide
The general rule of thumb with German pilsners is that those from the south, from Bavarian breweries, tend to be a touch sweeter and maltier than North German pilsners, which wear their brusque, hoppy bitterness on their sleeve.
Veltins straddles the two styles and, as one of the few unpasteurised lagers on the market, it's famed for its freshness. In its North Rhine-Westphalia heartland, it's dispensed using a lot less CO2 than pubs are used to over here. This makes it smoother and, served in smaller glasses that don't allow the beer to warm, easier to drink with none of the bloating, belchy baggage associated with the yellow fizz farmed out in UK pubs.
Vertical Drinks, which is importing Veltins as the UK agent, has teamed up with a number of regional brewers to establish nationwide coverage. These include Osset Brewery in Yorkshire, Purity in the Midlands, Robinsons in Stockport, the Oakham Brewery in Peterborough and Butcombe Brewery in the South West.
It's already been taken on by All Bar One and Browns in London and the brand doesn't have the distraction of the off-trade. It remains to be seen whether British bars and pubs can replicate the reverence on display in Düsseldorf, where it's dispensed using a three-step pour.
The pilsner cascades over the side of the glass before the barman, with a Zorro-like flick of the wrist, decapitates the bulbous, fluffy white head and presents the beer with a drip paper fill at the foot of a dainty, stemmed glass. This wasn't a specialist beer bar, nor was it a posh place, the Germans just love their lager. Why can't the British do the same?
"I'd love to see British bars and pubs serve it authentically with a three-part pour and a paper frill, but it tends to come down to serving people quickly," says Vertical Drinks' director Steve Holt. "The trade suspects that drinkers don't have the patience to wait.
"But it adds to the experience and it adds to the authenticity, and authenticity is what people are looking for and willing to pay a premium for. I don't think that German beer, pilsner especially, has realised its potential in the UK."
