Penn Pilsner

Brewed by Pennsylvania Brewing Company
Style: Vienna
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA

This is a surprisingly nice beer. Sampled from a 12 oz brown bottle this beer poured a beautiful bright golden color with a medium sized white head that lingered. The aroma was strong spicy hops with light tangy malts. The flavor is sour tangy malts and crisp floral hops followed by a dry nutty element and finishing with lingering floral hops.

Light amber body with a medium off-white head. Sweet light malt aroma with some caramel. Sweet caramel flavor with some light grassy hops in the end.

Sampled at the Legend Jazz and Brew fest, a nice fest with low attendance, which was a shame, but made for better sampling. This was actually poured by Maniac, who’s first comment was something along the lines of it being kind of dark for a pils. Interesting to see it listed as a vienna here. Deep gold color, little head. Bread and biscuit aroma. Flavor was of slightly watery biscuit and faint hay and grass bitterness. Not bad. I think I had this about a decade ago.

12 oz bottle via Malt of The earth beer club. Pours a nice clear golden color with an average size head and tons of tiny bubbles laucnhing to the top of the Pilsner glass. Nice mild aroma, some grassiness, English smelling hops, some nice caramel malts. Taste starts out with some mild maltiness, then some mellow orange hoppiness, and then a very nice mellow mandarin orange finish. I always have trouble describing the aroma and flavors of pilsners as they are so subtle and subdued. Lightbodied and refreshing. Nonetheless, this is the best Pilsner i have tasted to date. Very very drinkable....heh and i see that it is actually classified as a Veinna, a lager? Maybe that is why it is tastier than other Pilsners, lol...

One bottle from the PENN variety pack I made while visiting my daughter at WVU in Morgantown. ’06’ Poured a large white head that quickly dissipated. Slight amber color. Aroma of hops and malts. Smooth drink with mild hops flavor. It was ok.

A vienna? Then why call it a pilsner? I don’t know, but I guess the nose agrees well enough with the vienna style. It’s a bit buttery though, almost bourbon-like with the butter note, though. With some hay and grass scents, some dusty, dirty, earthy grains and a bit of an overly sweet corn and caramel smell, it doesn’t set up very well. Altogethor the nose is missing a lot, and has too much of an adjunct (corn and butter) scent. The color of this clear beer is pretty much spot on for orange, and the white head is about two fingers deep when poured, but dies down to a white film with a small amount of lacing present. Light and crisp up front, flavors are pretty faint, with some corn, butter, cracked barley and cereal grains tasted. Across the middle and towards the back of the tongue there’s a decent amount of bitterness, more of the cracked cereal grain flavor, and a husky, slightly sweet malt extract syrup flavor. At times this even smells and tastes like an old towel. Palate is left dry and slightly scorched, like burnt grapenuts cereal. I guess this gets a ’meh’ overall.

On draught at Heinz Field. Amber color with a medium thin beige head with decent retention. Cannot comment on lacing as it was a plastic cup. Lightly malty aroma. Medium-bodied and sweet with malt and caramel flavors. There is a touch of hops character too. The finish is mostly sweet but has touches of bitterness here and there. Pretty average all around.

This isn’t as good as the Kaiser Pils, but it was still a good brew. Darkish, medium-heavy hopping. Fair, dry maltiness. Good beer.