By Harley Zipori. First things first. This coming Wednesday, July 31st, 2013, there will be a Beatles tribute at the Dancing Camel Brewery in Tel Aviv. Michael Leitner and LiLach Perlstein-Bonanni will be performing Beatles songs in the relaxed environment of the Dancing Camel pub.
It’s a chance to hear some fun music, taste some great beer and have a fantastic Dancing Camel sandwich. It all starts at 9 PM at the Dancing Camel. I am looking forward to another taste of the Brown Ale I had just after it was introduced a few months ago. I hope David will have it on tap.
Since my last blog, I managed to sneak in a trip to Istanbul Turkey. Yes folks, there is beer on the Bosporus. The only local beer I saw there is called “Efes” and is a ubiquitous in Istanbul is as Urquell is in Prague. Maybe more so.
“Efes” of course sounds like “zero” in Hebrew but Efes Pilsner is a full flavored beer that is as good as the well known European brands. They also make a dark lager which was tasty but not something to make you run to the ratebeer.com site to tell the world.
My last blog, titled “Beerless”, lamented my beer free home. This has been remedied as a result of a “Beer Festival” at the Tiv Taam chain of upscale food stores. Of course a “Beer Festival” at Tiv Taam is not what I call a beer festival (which I discuss below). It’s really a slight discount on a variety imported and local craft beers. I have to admit they do have a very nice beer selection, much larger than when I last visited a Tiv Taam a couple years ago.
I purchased a couple bottles of beer from the Pavo Brewery in Zichron Yaakov, 2 bottles of Bitburger German lager and 2 kinds of Franziskaner Weissbier (a regular and a Dunkel).
The Pavo beers were a bit of a disappointment. The Wheat beer had very little of the character that I like in a Weissbier and the Pilsner, while tasty enough, had a bit of a foaming problem. I hope this is temporary since a good handmade Pilsner can be a real treat, especially in the summer.
Bitburger is a decent German lager with that distinctly German lager flavor that I attribute to the yeast (but I could be wrong). Since it is made according to the German beer purity law, Reinheitsgebot, from the 1500’s, it has to be the barley, hops or yeast. I can’t believe it’s from the water!. I actually prefer Krombacher as a German lager but i do realize that it is not to everyones taste.
By Harley Zipori
The Franziskaner Weissbier Dunkel is a dark version of their traditional pale Weissbier. It had that expected Weissbier flavor (the banana/clove overtones you read about in most Weissbier reviews) with a nice dark malt flavor. Probably not an ideal summer beer, but still very enjoyable.
Before signing off, I would like to mention a Beer Festival. The Jerusalem Beer Festival is taking place August 7 and 8, 2013 in Gan HaAtzmaut (Independence Park) in the center of Jerusalem. This is Wednesday and Thursday evening, from 6 PM to midnight. This time we are talking about a real beer festival with tons of people, booths set up by local importers and most important, local craft brewers. I blogged about the festival in 2011 and hope to attend this year too.
This is a short blog since I really want to get the notice of the Beatles evening online. If you have any comments or additions, please send mail to [email protected].
