Emersons Pilsner

Brewed by Emersons Brewing Company
Style: Pilsener
Dunedin, New Zealand

Kind of strange. Really don’t know if I like it. Aroma and flavor is dry and reminds me of the smell of fireworks. Or is it the aroma of old grass/hay?? And it has a lot of it, it dosn’t hide it like so many other pilsners.

Bottle. Creamy white eccellent mostly lasting head. Yellow colour. Powerfull hoppy very grassy aroma. Smells like fireing rockets new years eve. OK flavor, but not that fantastic. Very bitter. OK palte, a very strange but good beer.

Bottle. Light golden with great head. Aroma is mainly hops. Taste is very hoppy and fresh.

Bottle. Nice big head with good duration. Color is light golden. Aroma is mainly hops. Taste is hops with a nice sense of freshness because of a well balanced acidity.

This is how a good pilener should taste. Lots of hoppy flavour with malty notes. Nice palate.

I am a huge fan of Pilsner as a style and as such I am a bit of a traditionalist. I can see why so many like the beer. Its distinctive with a huge fruity flavour. Passionfruit. So is it a pilsner...? I don’t think so.

Bottle, RBESG, August 2005. I think I must have missed something here. Or perhaps I was just becoming rather fatigued after a long and boozy day. It has some nice grassy hops and a clean refreshing mouthfeel, but I just didn’t get anything too much out of the ordinary. Oh well. Guess I’d better try it again if the opportunity arises.

BIG Thanks to Engelsmann for this bottle. Best before SEP 07, it says. Huge white head, very strong retention, snow white in color and very dense/creamy, providing ample sheets of lace. Great clarity in the very pale-straw body, with faint bronze-copper tints. Unfiltered, but settled and carefully poured. Tiny bubbles rising methodically in the liquid. AROMA. Nose just blows up, surging forth with saaz and hallertauer dryness, but just enough light grass-like fruitiness and a very crisp lager yeast bite that dries things out even moreso on the end. Snappy, crisp, dry, highly aromatic, this is pilsener at its best. Further sniffing shows ripe green bartlett pears, mixing with a mildly sweet, almost tart white grape juice note. Malt is grainy, with minimal traces of sourdough, but it adds substance without butting in on the masterpiece that is the hops and yeast. FLAVOR. Pears and juicy white grape juice notes combining with lighlty sourish malts and crisp, snappy yeast, flow gracefully down the throat, with not-overdone carbonation. The dry, hay-like, sweaty and grassy hops keep things very dry, without overdoing the bitterness. Just a wonderful job with the finishing hops! Malt adds light honey that lets the crisp notes simultaneously nip at the palate and then sink in to a soft sweetness, only to be rinsed lightly by the engaging carbonation and then further cleared by the genuinely crisp yeast. No flaws whatsoever. Perhaps a little vacuousness in the middle, with some water and just a touch too round of a maltiness, but then, not all pilseners are bone dry. Oregano/dill and grass come in retronasal, quite pleasingly. Perfect carbonation levels, thanks to a superbly executed bottling job, especially for an unfiltered, delicate lager. Texture is supple, bit too round at times as stated, but it makes up for it by being wonderfully dry at the beginning and end. If this does indeed have American-style hops in it, they are certainly used sparingly and complementary.