Zlatý Baznak - Slovakian good everyday lager

For dinner today I enjoyed the Slovakian beer Zlatý Bazant. It's a not-bad typical central European lager. The beer has a light golden colour with a cream white head that last long but finally falls together to small spots of white floating on top of the glass. The nose has a light hint of straw along with hops and on the palate it has a good hoppy bitterness. Anyhow, it is fairly anonymous but not consequently bad. Is it a beer that makes life better? Hardly, but with it's 5,0 % abv it fills a good function as a thirst-quencher. Quite perfect a hot summer day!

The Name Zlatý Bazant translates to the Golden Pheasant and I'm not quite sure if it has anything to do with the beer but the pheasant is clearly visable on the label. Zlatý Bazant has been produced and brewed in the Slovakian town of Hurbanovo and has been done so since 1967. Since 1995 the company is under the wings of the Slovakian Heiniken.

As an anecdote it can be added that Zlatÿ Bazant was the first Czechoslovakian beer to be filled in a can. Anyhow, today it is mainly tapped in half litre bottles priced as a medium price international lager.

Having spent the last couple of days studying one of my lights in the dark has been music. Don't mss out on the Swedish-Iranian blues singing american resident Jasmine Kara. Her songs In the Basement and Try My Love Again are wonderful.

So long

Lucas Spinnars

Best pizza ever with a great beer

I occasionally like to publish restaurant reviews here and yesterday I had the best pizza of my life and felt that obliged to share it with the world. La Pizza in Helsingborg at Drottninggatan 124 sets as their goal to provide humanity with pizza that fills another purpose than merely being junk food.

If they succeed? I would definitely say so. They call all their pizzas gourmet-pizza and if gourmet food is available at the price of 85 SEK I'm all in!

My pizza with real Italian salsiccia, red onion, grilled artichoke and mushrooms was absolutely delicious. I've spent considerable time in Italy and as a big lover of pizza the number of pizzas I've eaten is remarkably high. This one beats 'em all!

La Pizza shows off with having won the Scandinavian championships in pizza-making. It is a title they well deserve!

The pizza-place is mainly for take-away and host only two small outside tables. There is though a really nice Italian restaurant next doors if one is in the mood for finer dining (read another of my posts). I brought my pizza a couple of hundred meters down to the esplanade by the shoreline. There I had one of the best spots for watching the sun-down in Helsingborg just opposing Hamlet's castle Kronborg in Helsingør.

The pizza was in good company with a Brewdog Zeitgeist. A good black lager made of organic goods by the controversial Scottish brewery Brewdog. Controversial in the sense that they recently brewed the strongest beer ever made and having as their marketing attitude to make beers that they don't care if anyone else like - as long as they like it themselves. The Zeitgeist is a very humanely priced beer, fairly full-bodied full with dark bread, chocolate and coffee flavours. The alcohol is quite low, measuring only 4,9% abv, and the sweetness goes hand in hand with that. The sweetness is thus not particularly high and gives a beer that can accompany a wide range of dishes without overpowering them.

All for now! Love pizza from La Pizza Helsingborg and enjoy it with a Zeitgeist Organic Black Lager from BrewDog!

Best regards

Lucas Spinnars

Helsingborg

Beer Tasting in Championship Mode

I'm back in Sweden and I am once again being spoiled with the selection of Systembolaget. Some people may argue about the taxes and the high prices of the lower end wines but I have to express my thankfulness towards the monopoly. Having a Norwegian friend here visiting who is not quite as used to the selection I took him to Systembolaget at Regeringsgatan in Stockholm and we got into a little beer shopping spree.

We bought 16 more or less randomly selected lager beers in order to do a semi-blind lager tasting in championship mode. Semi-blind in the sense that we knew what beers that were represented in the tasting but had no insight in what beer was served each time. Maybe inspired from the world championships in football we decided to have a championship mode of the tasting in order to have a clear winner. We tasted two beers at the time and the winner of each round moved on to the next round.

The matches went as follows, we were three tasters but I've marked my own succession:

Bitburger (winner)
Stella Artois

Breznak (winner)
Becks

Gösser (winner)
Jever

Carlsberg Hof
San Miguel (winner)

St Eriks Pilsner
Brewdog Lager 77 (winner)

Amstel
Staropramen (winner)

Mariestad Prima Lager (winner)
Spendrups Old Gold

Guldkällan Vit
Dugges No 1 Lager (winner)

Quarter finals:

Bitburger
Breznak (winner)

Gösser (winner)
San Miguel

Brewdog Lager 77 (winner)
Staropramen

Mariestad Prima Lager
Dugges Lager no 1 (winner)

Semi finals:

Breznak (winner)
Gösser

Brewdog Lager 77
Dugges Lager No 1 (winner)

The final was consequentiality between the Czech Breznak and the Swedish microbrew Lager No 1 from Dugges. In the final it was not a too difficult victory for Dugges Lager No 1 but the price difference between those is also remarkable. Breznak sells for 10,30 SEK per 330 ml bottle (31,21 SEK / litre) and Dugges Lager no. 1 sells for 24,90 SEK per 500 ml bottle (49,80 SEK / litre). One might argue for that Lager no 1 did have a more difficult way to the final than Breznak but it should anyhow state an example of the quality of the low price Czech lager.

Interesting is that my Norwegian friend ended up with exactly the same final as I did after having chosen partly different winners in the first round. He also chose Lager no 1 as winner.

My girlfriend also participated in the tasting and she ended up with partly different results and a final between St Eriks Pilsner and Breznak. She chose Breznak as winner and with all the three of us having the beer go all the way to the final we concluded it as a winner in our little championship.

The main point of this post is to inspire you readers to a fun evening and a very easy going tasting that leaves little room for nerdy thoughts and tasting notes. Rather it focuses on pure appreciation and what one actually likes the best!

Enjoy a good evening!