Do the French even brew beer?
So, today I arrived in Germany - and promptly decided to go to France! More correctly, I decided to take a quick day trip to the Alsace region of France to see what’s left of the once proud brewing heritage of this past pawn in the power struggles between Germany and France
Now, I had a serious language barrier, as I speak very little French. Since it was a last minute sort of decision, I had also done absolutely no research on the city or its beer scene whatsoever, adding to the challenge. Fortunately, I did stumble across a small brewpub by the name of Kohler Rehm (site in French only) just in time for lunch and a beer. As you can see from the site, they’re not exactly flooded with English speaking waitstaff, which means I could barely get myself a beer, let alone find out what kind of beer I was ordering. This beer list would have helped.
In any event, the first beer was clearly the Blanche, a Belgian-style wheat beer. Now, I’m not a huge fan of that style, but the citrus taste wasn’t overpowering so it was a nice beer for a hot day, and it matched the cheese plate nicely. As an aside, the cheese plate was very good, even the stinky cheese with cumin sprinkled on top (as you can see, the language barrier extended to the cheeses as well).
The second beer is more of a challenge - I think it was the J.B.K., but I unfortunately have no idea what that means. I have a bottle which I brought back from the restaurant, so I’ll try it again in an attempt to figure it out, but it’s a darker amber color than the Blanche and doesn’t have the unfiltered haze. Whatever it was, it was fairly mild, without a lot of hop flavor, and I preferred it to the Blanche (unsurprisingly).
If you’ve tried the beers, or if you know what JBK means, let us know!
photo by Chris Erb
Tags: beer, brewpub, france, strasbourg
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