Oh Lord, Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood!
Written: Jun 09 '00 (Updated Jun 09 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good enough for geeks, easy enough for every day
Cons: Not hoppy enough for novice geeks to understand
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| beerfly's Full Review: Victory Brandywine Valley Lager |
This magnificent, misunderstood beer (also sold as Victory All-Malt Lager), left to wander in a land of geeks and posers, rarely appreciated, often reviled, many times questioned. It is painful to consider its fate, even as it teeters on the edge of success. Sure is easy to drink it as I consider, though.
Lord, is it easy to drink. If mountain streams flowed over deep beds of pale malt, under hop vines that dangled their fragrant cones in the rushing water (and you kept all those nasty fish and frogs out of it), this would be a horn of beer dipped from that refreshing brook. Cold, smooth, just on the edge of being malty but never going over to being chewy, just bitter enough to keep it from being too sweet, and still a presence, not an absence in the mouth.
The beer is light in color, though not as light as an American mainstreamer. It's a medium yellow, with a beautiful white head that froths and furls. If you dip your nose in you can smell fresh, almost yeasty malt, but not overpoweringly so; everything about this beer says "refreshing," not cloying. Taste it, and all you get is that dry, bready malt flavor in a lightly refreshing wash, leaving a similar aftertaste that lingers only briefly.
I cannot understand how pilsner came to be The Beer That Conquered The World when Dortmunder Export was around. Somewhere there was a grave miscarriage of justice; was it in your mouth? Fill the liter stein with this juice, work your elbow till the very joint screams, you'll never grow tired of this spectacularly drinkable quaff.
Michael Jackson writes that Dortmunder Export was designed as a workingman's quaff, a pounding beer for hard-working millhands. God bless their lucky souls. They partook of a beer that falls very comfortably between the softly malty hellesbiers of Munich and the bitter, full-bodied pilsners of Bohemia. Export is firmly malty, and not as bitter as a pils. It stands solidly on malt for its flavor, not hops, and is the more refreshing for it, in my estimation.
For somehow, Export style beers, particularly this example from Victory, contrive to make the malt a dry flavor, not bready-sweet. On and on the beer lures your palate, a foamy Pied Piper, till you find yourself opening or ordering another, not altogether sure where that first one went so quickly.
My dad, who drinks Old Milwaukee NA because of heart medication and who used to be a confirmed Miller High Life man, will break training when he visits Victory's brewpub in Downingtown, PA (the lucky stiff is only 20 minutes away!). He will order a small Lager and slowly sip it.
I'll sit right beside him and do the same, me, the confirmed beer geek, the man with the Dedicated Beer Fridge bulging with 120 different beers and another 8 cases in the cellar, some carefully aged over 8 years, ranging from bourbon-barrel stouts to special brewery reserve bottlings to lambics and saisons and barleywines... I'll sit at the shrine to beer exotica that is Victory's bar, and order up a 22 oz. Lager.
The boys at Victory tell me that when brewers come to visit, they'll taste the Golden Monkeys and HopDevils and Primas... but when they all get down to drinking and swapping stories, it's the Lager that they drink, and drink, and drink. It's the kind of beer a brewer appreciates. He'll look at it and think, wow, they have nowhere to hide here, and this beer is flawless.
If only the drinking public were so savvy. Way too many people find this beer "boring," say it's "not as good as HopDevil." Arrrgh. If every beer were HopDevil, every dish would be curry, every spirit would be cask-strength Laphroaig, every car a Morgan. You need meatloaf, you need George Dickel 12 year old, you need a Jetta (okay, I need a Jetta, a 6-cylinder, and don't tell my '95 4-cylinder, she'll be heart-broken). Victory's Lager is a home-cooked meal, the calm sure love of a spouse, that reliable car that always starts and knows its way home when you're tired.
There aren't many beers my dad and I agree on. It's an amazing gap that this beer can bridge; easy-drinking enough for the everyday beer drinker, flawlessly perfect and interesting enough for the hardened geek. If only people would take the hops from their eyes and learn to love the dry, firm hand of malt.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 82 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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