Montezuma's Chocolate Lager - a rare review

OK, so it's fairly uncommon for me to post reviews of a single beer.

Like most beer writers, I sometimes receive samples from breweries for my earnest consideration, but the reality is that I prefer to do most of my drinking at the pub, and these bottles (and more recently cans) can be left lying around for months to the point where they may not be in optimal condition, and any assessment would be coloured by that.

I also feel that if I review one of them, I should probably review them all, which creates a lot of work for me, and ultimately a series of fairly samey reviews about fairly samey beers. I'm not a bottled beer expert and there are plenty of other writers keen to work in this fashion, so I'll leave it to them.

And while I'm grateful for the freebies, if a beer is good enough for me to write about, I'll probably be buying it myself.

(Occasionally, I do make exceptions if a beer is particularly good, bad or just noteworthy - like Brewmeister 'Snake Venom' and Brewdog 'Nanny State', neither of which, incidentally, were free!)

Montezuma's Chocolate Lager is a collaboration between the Hogs Back brewery in Surrey and Montezuma's, a fairly small time chocolatier based in West Sussex. In all honesty, I don't think I've ever tried one of their chocolate bars, and while Hogs Back beers have been around for as long as I've been drinking, they're not a brewer that has made much of an impression, at least until now. The beer was developed last year, but I've only discovered it in the last couple of months.

This is a very good beer, a very different beer, and at 4.5% a very accessible, drinkable beer. And the good news is that it's widely available in supermarkets, at least around here.

The Sausage Trilogy part III: Katzenjammers

Concluding the BV silly sausage season, I thought it might be an idea to let the professionals take the reins and review a place that specialises in all things sausagey.

Of course, there aren't really all that many sausage-oriented restaurants around, but one bold exception is Katzenjammers, a German bierkeller close to London Bridge station where you can drink authentic Bavarian beers and enjoy a range of traditional sausages from the region.

Located down a fairly steep flight of steps from Southwark street's Hop Exchange - in what may or may not have once been the site of the legendary Becky's Dive Bar - Katzenjammers is owned by the chaps who run the New Wheatsheaf pub next door, and while the basement look and feel is similar to the 'Sheaf, what's on offer is very, very different.

With long wooden benches and continentally-accented bar staff dressed in Lederhosen (they may technically be Eastern European rather than German but it doesn't shatter the illusion) it does capture the bierkeller atmosphere, and you can even order your beer in litre steins.

One thing that isn't typically German is the lack of table service - you order from the bar, and about half the customers seem to just be in there for a few beers.

BV London Pub of the Year - the results

It's time to whip out my trusty old bugle and start practising fanfares in earnest.

Yep, the moment has come when I reveal the winner of the first ever Ben Viveur London Pub of the Year competition. I'm sure everyone involved is quite literally tumescent with excitement.

What I find rather fascinating is that just two years ago, I hadn't been to a single one of these pubs. Indeed most of them didn't exist in their current guises. Even six months ago I hadn't visited three of them. The London beer scene is improving with an almost frightening rapidity!

There are, of course, some very good pubs that haven't made the top five and which won't be in the 2012-13 competition next Summer, but this is the business end of things and we're only interested in the very, very best now.

Czech this out

The Tweetosphere can be a great thing

OK, so 99.9% of it consists of boring people telling the world stuff that they either know already or don't want to know, but occasionally it throws up nuggets of usefulness.

Earlier today the White Horse in Parson's Green (aka the Sloaney Pony) tweeted that this evening they would be featuring something very rare indeed, and a few hours later I was there, drinking the stuff.

It interested me as a beer ticker looking for rare scoops, but this wasn't just any old one-off, special beer. It was an unfiltered, unpasteurised cask version of Pilsner Urquell

While the vast majority of output from the Czech brewery for decades has been fizzy keg beer, at which I'd turn up my nose, I applaud them for at least making gentle movements in this direction. Let's not forget that they are a part of the International SABMiller group, which has hitherto done fuck-all for real beer. It's a bold step.

A bitter Pils to swallow...

About eight people in 'Pilsner Urquell' shirts turned up to set up the promotional stand and tap the cask with considerable fanfare. Perhaps overkill for what was essentially just a pint of lager, but it's a significant pint of lager nonetheless. Indeed a pint of lager capable of winning arguments and potentially turning the beer scene on it's head.

Nicely but not brain-freezingly chilled, naturally carbonated, and with that slightly spicy, bready character that Czech lagers often have, it was undoubtedly superior to the same beer from bottle, can or keg, which begs the question: why isn't real Continental lager more widely produced, either here or anywhere else on the planet? It's bloody good stuff.

Get Real!

I actually purchased a half of keg Pilsner Urquell just so I could compare the two side by side, and there was no contest. The cask version was fresher, hoppier, and just, well, infinitely superior in every way. I'm not known for being a huge fan of Czech lager, but I'd happily drink this all night. With a curry it would be quite magnificent.

Indeed, the experience assured me that I'm right in my point of view, and that the arrogant approach of 'craft' brewers like Brewdog and Camden Town who dropped cask beer altogether in favour of keg is so absolutely wrong-headed and misguided that there can be no excuses. No defence. No justification.

Surely they have to admit that they're not doing it because keg beer tastes better, but because it's easier to produce and manage and more profitable - the exact same reasons all the big breweries tried to eradicate real ale in the 1970s. The same big breweries that Brewdog love to criticise.

I've always argued that any beer of any style will taste better in cask form, and that all beer was 'real' before they started pasteurising and artifically carbonating in the middle of the last century.

Some folks - like beer writer Tim Webb in his rebuttal to a piece I wrote for London Drinker - take an opposing view, but I'd desperately urge anyone who thinks that cask isn't always best to try the beer I had tonight. Sample it side by side with the keg version as I did. I challenge you.

Here in Britain we were lucky enough to have CAMRA to stand up for, and preserve traditional conditioning and dispense. Just because other countries weren't so fortunate doesn't mean they shouldn't revive the old ways though, and people who claim otherwise are missing a trick.

It would also allow marketing departments to stop misleading the public so brazenly. Kronenbourg might actually resemble the way it really was back in 1664 if they did it in cask to an original recipe, rather than the result of a reboot 300 years later when keg dispense came along.

I'm a long-time CAMRA member, but one of my biggest criticisms of the organisation is the hypocrisy at our beer festivals where foreign keg beers are regularly featured. 

There are some who would like us to move further in that direction and who would have CAMRA condone or even promote British keg beers. 

And to these people I say: Fuck Off.

Fuck Off and start a new organisation if that's how you feel.

The whole purpose of CAMRA was to save cask beer from an encroaching tide of inferior keg. Without that focus, it's a subjective beast at best.

I've long acknowledged that, yes, a good beer in keg form is better than a bad beer in real form, and it doesn't matter one jot for the purposes of this argument. The point is that the same beer is always at it's best when in good condition from the cask.

I've tried Pilsner Urquell the way it would have been decades ago and it's better than the way it's usually served now. The fact that it's lager from the Czech Republic is irrelevant. The great truth is no less true than if we were talking about mild from Manchester or IPA from Aberdeenshire or anything else.

Meanwhile, I got the impression that quite a few casks have come over from Pilsen and the promotions team will be going around several pubs, so take the opportunity to try it if you possibly can.

It might be the best pint of lager you ever drink.