My Bar, Your Bar

We salute you! I also salute any beer that comes with a small, plastic goat (huh?). I understand that bock in German means billy goat, but I don’t know why the Ayinger brewery of Aying, Germany is compelled to include this novelty with each of its bottles in their four pack of Celebrator Doppelbock beer. I’ll just graciously accept this gift from our German friends and move on.

The Ayinger Brewery was established in 1878. And according to the packaging, they brew their beer “in accordance to the ‘Reinheitsgebot’ Purity law of 1516.” My initial reaction to this news was to think, “let’s hope they’ve upgraded their purity standards sometime in the last 500 or so years.” I mean, I do have to work tomorrow. After a little research on this law, it appears that it is concerned with actual ingredients and not standards of cleanliness. For more info on the law, click here.

Bocks are a lager that were typically brewed by Catholic monks to be heavy beer. Bocks and the even heavier doppelbock (”double bock”) were particularly popular during Lent when the monks were fasting. This beer served as a “meal replacement” to get them through to Easter. It makes you wonder how much of the Lent season the monks actually could remember…

Like alot of dark lagers, the Celebrator’s aroma was strong with molasses, chocolate, and raisins. Its taste was silky smooth, rich with carmel and much sweeter than I expected. The beer had a creamy texture and full body. Truly a meal in a mug. None of the above suprised me. What I did find unexpected was the bitterness in the aftertaste. The hops really comes through at the end which ended up being a nice compliement to full-throttle malty smell and taste. I highly recommend the beer. It’s an easy to drink beer with the monk’s stamp of approval, Lent or no Lent.