USA, Canada /
Free Tyskie beer at Kiełbasa Factory [28]
Well...beer is a personal taste. I was being snooty - if peeps like Tyskie, that's cool too. Beer is so wonderful that paradoxically I now try not to drink during Rok Skolny, so I can enjoy it properly at my leisure in summer, watching the youth exert themselves on the beach:)
The odd Tyskie or Budwesier Budwar doesn't hurt, but are chemical in nature....Pilsner Urquel and other pilsners and pale ales are better, being lighter in alcholic content. A beer should only be strong in alcohol because it has a high volume (a high malted sugar content) Natural ingredients are the name of the game here - and ideally the beer should be non-pasteurised.
Of course ale and beer are two different things, ale being top fermentation and beer being a more wide ranging term for lagers,stouts..everything really...
And like your country kitchen, it's all in the ingredients and the care in the brewing process. Cook the selected malt(s) as a wort at 153 degrees Fahrenheit (optimum temperature for the brewing enzyme) add your hops, chuck the lot in a 20 litre plastic barrel, filled with water (must be water suited to brewing - Katowice water is from lakes and is NOT suited - Dabrowa G water is from aquifers and IS), lob in your (top fermentation) brewing yeast, slam on the lid - air tight!
If you use 2 kg pale malt for 20 litres water you get a specific gravity of about 1045, which is a meaty beer, slighty stronger than Pilsner Urquell. Not a pilsner of course - pilsner are very difficult to brew yourself - you need to bottom ferment (chance of sourness/acidity) and much longer storage times....
Store in a coolish dark place, 65 degrees F, and avoid looking at it for 10 days/2 weeks. Then bottle with half teaspoon of glucose per bottle plus finings gel.
Store for a further two weeks, then get stuck in. Miles better than this craft beer malarkey.
