BEER.

Quick heads up: I am not a beer person. For those of you who don't drink with me, I generally prefer mixing something sweet up or just taking some shots of something and going dancing. Beer culture is not something familiar to me.

Denmark is inundated with beer and beer culture.

To help bridge this culture gap, and because I haven't yet been able to find tequila or limes, I signed up for a beer tasting event that my program put on. For 50 dkk (about 10 USD) we got to try six different beers and were walked through the process by one of the program's staffers, a self identified beer connoisseur. To date, he has tasted over 3000 beers. That's a lot of beer!

I found out that I liked the beers that he said most people wouldn't like, and I didn't like the beers he thought would be popular. I have no idea what this means, since beer people are a little like wine people. Beer can be described to be "bitter, with fruity, oiled overtones" or possessing "an emergence of dry wood [that] finishes off the nutty taste of this fine lager." A picture below shows the six that we tried:


And here below are the two that I liked:
Quick disclaimer: This blog does not represent, nor is it affiliated with, any of the breweries whose products are featured above. Moving on!

It was exciting that I liked some of the beer, 'cause when I've tried it in USA, it all tastes equally awful to me - it really hasn't mattered who brewed it. I guess it could be argued that I just hadn't tried a good beer, but since I have no conception of relative beer quality, I wouldn't know one from the other. Except Keystone. That shit's nasty. (nor is this blog affiliated with, nor does it represent, whoever brews Keystone beer.)

That was my first baby step into Danish beer culture.

This weekend was the European Beer Festival 2008. Beers, Ciders, and beer themed stuff from all over Europe was concentrated in Copenhagen. It was really exciting, I met some wonderful people, tried some wonderful beers, and don't have pictures to put up. SORRY! Some highlights:
1) hot beer served with whipped cream on top. It was strong, sweet beer, and was sort of like a warm blowjob shot. Although you sipped it.
2) Beer ice cream. YUM! I went for Guinness but they were out
3) Figuring out the taste difference between light and dark beer. I can't actually explain it, but I probably know more now than I did before the festival.

Low lights:
1) banana beer. It tasted like someone filtered a beer through a loaf of banana bread and poured it into my cup. Good in theory? BAD in practice.
2) I was seduced by a beer that contained hibiscus for a floral aroma, fig for a fruity flow, and something else for a silky finish. It was significantly less than floral, fruity, or smooth.

I gotta say, even the beers I didn't like showed an impressive array of creativity. There was beer brewed with champagne yeast, sour cherry beer, super sour cherry beer, beers with old wood, beers with birch tree, beers with all sorts of fruit, vegetables, and spices, and I wouldn't have been surprised if someone brewed a batch in a tractor or a limo to see how it came out. There was definitely a beer for everyone.

My favorite? Hoegaarden, but that may change. Oh, and it's true that you can be walking around at 11 AM and see someone biking around with a beer in hand.