Beer on DVD no.65
Beers of Joy
A rollercoaster ride through the lives and loves of a bunch of American
beer creators, not only in the present day but also from the times of
the earliest European settlers.
One of the main threads follows candidates, professional brewers,
wanting to become Master Cicerones. I think these are like Beer
Somelliers. This exam is said to be almost as tough as “The Knowledge”
which London cabbies have to undergo. From William Bradford on the
Mayflower in 1620 comes this: We could not now take time for further
search or consideration, our vittles' being much spent, especially our
beer. This beautifully photographed documentary weaves together the
assessment of those candidates with a brewster’s search of great
breweries in Germany, first Bavaria Germany, then Berlin Germany. You’ll
visit the Weltenbürger Klosterbrauerei from 1050, die
älteste
Klosterbrauerei der Welt surviving destruction from fires and floods 9
times, and allegedly the very oldest surviving brewery Weihenstephaner
from 1040. The proprietor instructs us in pouring our glass then
swirling all the flavoursome sediment around and tipping that back into
our drink. Andechs in Upper Bavaria is still run by Benedictine monks.
It only uses aroma hops in the brewing, adding some at the beginning,
some mid-way and some at the end. There are all sorts of nuggets of info
in this film: there were already hops growing wild in America. English
brewers described these hops as “catty”. An 18th Century American going
out for a night on the sauce would say “I’m off to bung my eye” and
coming back from such a session would say “I’ve been to Jericho”. We
also learn about Spruce Beer– sounds a bit medicinal to me.
Our Brewster moves North to Bamberg and is taken round the iconic
Weyermann maltings (Wednesday afternoons only and 15€
unless you’re a professional brewer). Finally she reaches her goal of
Brauerei Meierei at Potsdam outside Berlin bringing the some of her own
Berliner Weiße for the Braumeister to taste, and yes, it gets a thumbs
up! Then we’re on to Italy, a blank canvas for brewing where Birra del
Borgo brings wine ways to the beer world, using the method champenoise!
Look it up on t’interweb! Obviously this American dvd is NTSC system,
but it played on my cheapo Blu-ray player with an old-ish monitor and on
my Sony Blu-ray player. My Panasonic machine didn’t like it.
to be printed in O-to-K , 2019 main text ©RKW