I live in New England in the US and use to drink Lowenbrau in the 80's. I think it had been about 20 years since I saw it, until the other day. I was in a local liquor store and it was like a love scene in a move. Its beautiful green bottle with its blue label caught my eye from across the store. I swept it up in my arms and took it back to my house. Once I took its top off and put my lips on it I remember how much I use to love it and how much I had missed it. I just hope this time it doesn't leave me like it did before!
I really can't remember when it went away and I have no idea when it came back but I found it again and boy I am happy!
Rift back in the 80's (early 80's) and before it was made in Germany. Miller bought the company out or the right to use the name in the US. Miller has been making for 20 years or more. Frank yeah it was a ritzy beer back then because it was very good and quit expensive. Rift I'm sorry to say but your taste buds lose there senses as you age. You may like the Lowenbrau you bought the other day, but it is not the same beer! I know I have to ruin everything! LOL
@ chromaticblues- The beer i bought said made in Germany all over it. The Miller contract expired in 1999 and it is now imported again from Germany.
This is the real stuff and it is as good as ever. I have photographic evidence of the bottles, LOL. I dont have the ability to post but could email to anyone who could.
PS. I still love the Manji I got from you !
Last Edited by on May 03, 2012 12:03 PM
I was in Germany back in 1997. They had Loewenbrau vending machines... Like on the streets and stuff. It was awesome. ---------- David Elk River Harmonicas
@Frank "Considered to be one of the more ritzier beers if memory serves me correctly?"
Phew, if a LowBrow is "ritzy" how would you define the 15yr old Rochefort 10 I had the other week? :-o
I won't even mention Brew Dog's "Tactical Nuclear Penguin" or "Sink the Bismarck" (too rich for my tastes at £30-40 per 330ml bottle)...no my lips are sealed! ;-)
Aaah, Lowenbrau...happy memories! Bavarians don't know how lucky they are! It's against the law to make crap beer there! ;-) ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
@Todd Greene, that commercial is crazy, they didn't even pronounce the name of the beer correctly!
I did most of my German/Austrian drinking in the monasteries.. We got out of class in the early afternoon and at least twice a week, we'd take a two hour train ride to Munich and drain our steins at the Hofbrauhaus, the one from the song. They had this huge picture of Kaiser Wilhelm II looking down on you and the umpah band played "Country Roads" The only Loewenbrau I drank in Bavaria came from a vending machine. It was two Deutschmarks. The beer I drank with my meals, lounging around, on a bike trip etc. - you know what beer you would drink instead of water was Stiegel, seit 1492, das Salzburg Bier.
Here's where we spent most of our time, the Augustiner monestary/brewhaus in Salzburg. I looked up this little video clip of it, so I could show it. The atmosphere seems a little different in the video than I remember. That's probably because we weren't in there raising hell.
In a former life (before retirement) I had many trips to Munich coinciding with the Octoberfest. I have marvelous memories of the Lowenbrau tent & the huge beer steins with great Lowenbrau beer. Also at the Hoffbrauhaus singing & swilling & having a great time.
I'm not sure how true it is but whilst imported beers are big time here I cannot recall ever seeing Lowenbrau and I was told that the German beers are preservative free and do not travel well? In fact most of the 'imported' beers are not imported at all but simply bottled locally under licence. Recently purchased some Stella Artois only to find it is locally made, but not Australian owned, Fosters (shit).
In fact if anyone is looking for a really good 'fair dinkum' Aussie beer then the only Aussie beer now available is Coopers. Of course there are small boutique breweries but as soon as they reach a market they are gobbled up by the multi nationals.
Having once brewed my own beers I know that it is not difficult to produce a drop that is equal to or better than the best commercial beers. But, it is also easy to produce failures. Not sure if my taste is changing but the 'standard' beers today are garbage whereas 30 years ago all our major Aussie beers were the equivalent of what today is termed 'premium'. ---------- HARPOLDIE’S YOUTUBE
No I believe you! But seriously you can mail me beer any time! I didn't know that about the miller contract. For years I wouldn't look at it because the Miller shit they made here. Looks like I'm going to have make up for lost time. Thank God it's Friday! OH its OK to say God here isn't it. I don't want to offend any atheist or Satan worshipers.
Last Edited by on May 04, 2012 7:35 AM
5FCh...In my neck of the woods back in the day if someone bought Lowenbrau it was a sin cause you could of gotten 2 cases of gut rot for the price of 12 pack of Lowenbrau. hahahahaha.... that 15yr old Rochefort 10, that's crazy- but, it is your hard earned money...Did you see that blind test with wine they did on experts and they all picked the cheapest wine as the best tasting- I don't get it, how is that possible?
Way back in the 70's I drank Lowenbrau, also back then I really liked Fosters in the oil can. I also made a lot of old home brew. Now, my favorite beer is Leinenkugel creamy dark.
---------- Wisdom does not always come with old age. Sometimes old age arrives alone.
Frank - Ha ha, the Rochefort cost the same as regular Rochefort did, just 15yrs ago (it was sheer nectar, it was a job not to glug it down it 2 gulps, so soft & no alcohol evident on the palate...just in the stumbling about after!) It's just a question of not drinking it - easier said than done, the remains of my cellar - Some '91 Whitbread celebration ale & '00 Columbus also went down the hatch recently & at my age, I think it's safer to drink the beer now & lie down myself, rather than lie the beer down! :-). Luckily this bottle belonged to a friend who was having a clear out. Still got the "8"...looks a bit murky though...The Westmalle triple was "OK", prefer the Double myself anyway.
Re. the wine test - a friend of my sister's used to have a half case of Bollinger every week, "I'm a Bolly girl you know", her husband called her bluff & organised a blind tasting - all parties present came to the same unanimous descision - NZ Lindauer at £7 a bottle was the "best", compared to bottles six times the price!
Note: Lowenbrau & most other beers don't improve with age, only those that are bottled with live yeast and undergo a 2nd fermentation in the bottle can be aged...otherwise drink as soon as you can, well at least once you are out of the shop anyway! ---------- www.myspace.com/markburness
Last Edited by on May 04, 2012 8:24 AM
@chromaticblues If you remember I only live about 45 mins from you so I might as well bring some down and help you drink it. Next time I go to the oceanmist I will pick up some on the way and try to catch up with you. The only place I have found it at is Gasbarro's.
BTW, this whole concept of drinking these cheap beers to get drunk cheap is a myth. For those who just want to get drunk, getting drunk on Milwaukee's Beast is a lot more expensive than a regular beer that isn't 99.9999 percent water and horsepiss. Calculate the price per ounce of alcohol for various beers and you'd be really surprised.
For me, I don't like to get drunk, but I love to drink beer. I think of it more as a food.
I traveled in 12 countries in Europe for three months and tasted every local or regional beer I came across and I can say without any doubt that the finest beer I have ever consumed was Brewmeister Kelly Sauber's Scottish Pale Ale at the Marietta Brewing Company microbrewery in Marietta, Ohio. I think Dan Axt posts here sometimes. I know he has drank some of Kelly's beers. 5F6H: I enjoyed your point on beer aging, or non-aging. The beer most enjoyed in the Elk River Harmonicas empire are naturally carbonated beers. These beers are made thusly: You ferment your beer until it stops making bubbles (at least so you notice). Fermentation is pretty much done at this point and you put this flat beer in bottles. Before you cap the bottle you put a PRECISE amount of sugar in the bottle. The yeast, which is still alive in the ERH-preferred beers, eats this sugar, produces a little more alcohol and carbon-dioxide. However much sugar you put in there will control the amount of carbonation. Put too much in and you're picking shards of glass out of the ceiling, walls everywhere - it is LITERALLY a bomb of glass and beer. Too little and your beer is flat. You get a carbonated beer in about a week, but it has some off flavors. In some beers I've made, I've enjoyed the freshness of that one-week beer, others tasted like crap the first week. As time goes on, you get different balances of flavors. Typically, the off-flavors (each chemical presents its own flavor) mellow out as the beer ages. But it's not like wine. We're talking about aging over a year maybe. I think most beers are best at four or five months after bottling, after about a year, they start tasting a little off for my taste.
Wine is completely different. I made a few gallons of apple champagne once in Mountain Dew bottles. I was a beer brewer, not a winemaker, so I let it ferment for a few weeks, then bottled it in the Mountain Dew bottles, thinking the fermenting was done. But no, it kept fermenting and fermenting for months it seemed like. the Mountain Dew bottles were tight and even the cap was bulging out from the pressure. I thought for sure the bottles would explode, but they didn't. That was some damn fine apple champagne (technically called apple sparkling wine). I'm pretty sure I brought some of that homemade champagne to the last Buckeye Harmonica Festival we had. I know I brought some homemade beer to it.
@ David "You get a carbonated beer in about a week, but it has some off flavors. In some beers I've made, I've enjoyed the freshness of that one-week beer, others tasted like crap the first week. As time goes on, you get different balances of flavors. Typically, the off-flavors (each chemical presents its own flavor) mellow out as the beer ages. But it's not like wine. We're talking about aging over a year maybe. I think most beers are best at four or five months after bottling, after about a year, they start tasting a little off for my taste."
For the most part you are probably right...however it depends on the beer strength & style. Courage used to age their Imperial Russian Stout for 2 years at the brewery. I have had 2yrs past "sell by" Guinness Original that was stonking (they stopped bottle conditioning the "Original" in the 90's). I have heard that Chimay 9 doesn't really start to come into "its" own for at least a couple of years. Thomas Hardy's Ale? Some folks don't consider that ripe until you are past the 20 year mark. The oldest beer I have personally drunk was some 30yr old Navy's ale. Bottles of Westmalle Tripel have been found to be in good condition after more than 50yrs! It's a bit of a gamble though...each bottle ages a little differently over these kinds of timescales...one might be sweet, soft, madeirised heaven - dancing on the palate with myriad, complex, elusive flavours. The bottle next to it might just taste of wet, rotting cardboard.
In terms of whether a beer, or anything else is expensive, I tend to think more in terms of "mark up"...I don't mind paying a little more, if I have to, for something that has been crafted, as opposed to paying marginally less for something lashed up in a "factory" for a penny....though for some situations I plump for factory-made every time, like when getting on a commercial flight for example! ;-)
5F6H, I think for the most part you are probably right, also. The experience I described was from my own beers. I was making beer from malt extract (I know the all-grain guys are shaking their heads), it should have been around six percent alcohol, but I added about a cup of honey per 5 gallon batch, so it would have been a little higher. After about two weeks, the beers would have a nice sweet balance, very fresh. Then it would get more complex around the third month and as time went on more bitterness would come out. I've always liked texture and nutty and caramel flavors in beer, never been much of a hophead, so after about a year when the bitterness really starts to come out in the balance of flavors, I'm not so crazy about it. To other drinkers, it might then just be coming into its own.
When my sister was in the Army, she was stationed in Germany, and worked in the Post Office. Mailed me a case of German beer. Been so long ago, I forgot the name. But remember the stuff well. The head so thick a pencil would stand straight up, and had the kick of a mule with rabies. Never had anything so good since.
They just delivered Sam Adam's white IPA this week and It' a fine blend. Cigar Cities Jai Alai is hard to beat here in Fla. though. I drank some of Miller beers Lowenbrau back in the day. I bought it more than once so I must've liked it.
my band was sponsored by Budweiser for a long time. i know it was a long time because Bud went through two mascots; the dipsomaniac canine 'Spuds McKenzie" and a portly masked crusader whom called himself 'Budman'.
along with money, Bud guitars (a flying V and a Strat thing), Michelob calculators,coolers, bottle opener key chains-so you could drink and drive-we were given a case of beer every time we played. at 200 gigs a year this adds up.
at the time i drank gin, the bassist and guitarist drank Guiness. the drummer was the only one interested in his share. i could barely walk down my hall due to stacks and stacks of long neck Bud cases.
i started selling cases for $10 a pop just to get rid of them. this made all concerned happy.
Bass ale, please? no? ok, how about a Harp Lager? ---------- MP affordable reed replacement and repairs.
"making the world a better place, one harmonica at a time"
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Last Edited by on May 08, 2012 3:24 PM
