Test the West!

Last week I was sitting in West again trying their pale Bock. There's a blackboard announcing that it's "double brewed and double hopped". I keep asking what this actually means, but nobody's been able to tell me yet. Whatever it means, it's a very good beer, with citrussy hops, though for my taste it's slightly lacking in body for the strength. I think it might be better brewed to have a bit more body and less alcohol. It's not much like the German Bocks I've drunk in the past, more like a very strong pilsener.

I've always thought that Munich Red (the original St Mungo) was one of their best. There is no such thing as red lager in Munich, but I suppose if they were to tweak the recipe a bit they could come up with something akin to a Franconian Lagerbier. Now that would be awesome.

The Dunkel is developing into a very nice beer with chocolatey, coffeeish notes sadly absent from actual Münchner Dunkel from the big Munich breweries, which I have always found quite disappointing.

I noticed that the beer is cloudy recently and apparently the filtration system has been broken. The lager looks like hefeweizen and the hefeweizen looks like soup. However, the brewers think it tastes better unfiltered anyway, and I'm inclined to agree. One leading Glasgow pub has even asked to keep getting the unfiltered version once the filtration system is fixed.