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I felt especially hateful and loathsome and had just heard Gollum’s Song by Emiliana Torrini, so using a Swedish translation of “Nobody likes you” from the Gollum/Sméagol dialogue (monologue?) felt natural. I love the “face” it made in the third shot! I also like how it looks like a sad bully-victim in the first two.
Brewer: Brouwerij de Molen (Bodegraven, South Holland, Netherlands) Colour: Light amber yellow with a grand head. Nearly opaque. Be careful pouring. Afterword: I love the label design of this brewery. It has everything you want to know (except the kind of malt) written on it, and kept pretty plain. Parts of it is translated into Swedish, including the possible storage time. For some reason it says five years in English and two years in Swedish – a mistake or intentional? Note: As you may notice reading the above, I’m publishing my beer reviews some time after they are written – in fact, I’m still almost a year behind. I’m still not sure why I upload them at all, but they do make good filler material. As mentioned in the last snailpost I was running low on ideas, so why not reuse one?
Brewer: Ängö Kvartersbryggeri (Kalmar, Småland, Sweden) Colour: Murky brown with a copper tint. Afterword: This is certainly no Trappist beer. Instead of being made by monks and named after their monastery, it’s called “Diabolisk”, meaning “diabolic”. Instead of being complex, balanced and full-bodied, it’s one-dimensional, sweet and plain. It’s still very drinkable and quite good; if it hadn’t been so sweet and plain as water it might even have been able to compete with some of the non-Trappist Belgian doubles. So why compare it to the Trappist beers? Well, the simple fact is that it’s more expensive than some of the better Trappist doubles I have tasted. In my mind, the price should be reflected by the taste. It is most certainly not. While I do realize it’s hard for any company to turn a profit in Sweden, and for a microbrewery even more so, especially when located in one of the more exclusive parts of town, maybe I was right to dismiss Ängö as a brewery that will only be able to sell if you take the “local factor” into account. That is to say, the only way to justify the high price is marketing the product as a local speciality. They make pretty decent beer on average, and I would very much like more local breweries, but having a price that is at least 30% higher than the beer is worth and in relation to the competition will not keep the Ängö brewery afloat for long, no matter how many new short-run brews they introduce for the local pubs to serve. I was running low on ideas, and so I turned to looking at printed T-shirts. This is the result. “Oskuld” means “virgin” in English, and in the most sexual sense of the word. Quite a tacky T-shirt, but it suits this snail (and I love the appropriate pose).
Brewer: Brouwerij Rodenbach (PALM Breweries) (Roeselare, West Flandres, Belgium) Colour: Nearly opaque reddish brown. Afterword: Certainly not my kind of beer. I can’t think of any reason to drink anything this sour, especially not at this price. This one is rather self-explanatory. It’s a snail with a zebra-striped shell. Given the size of the shell (about the same as a 1 euro coin seen from above) I think it turned out good, but I wish I could have made the corners at the top of the stripes have sharp corners.
Brewer: Sigtuna Brygghus (Arlanda/Sigtuna, Uppland, Sweden), recipe by Mohawk Brewing Company (Mölndal, Västra Götaland, Sweden) Colour: Semi-opaque dark amber. Afterword: This is brewed according to the same recipe as Mohawk vs Goldings, only the Amarillo has replaced the Goldings hops. It makes for a very nice and drinkable ale, and it is in fact better than the Goldings variety, but it still suffers from the same major flaw found in that one: a low “volume of taste”. This means being somewhat watery, having a weak finish and rolling off the tongue. Having shown the snailpimping project to a more than a few people, there was some bitching about removing their natural camouflage and thereby causing the premature demise of the snails. I of course explained that had I not painted them and released them, they would be fermenting in a bucket of salt water, which caused an immediate unbunching of said critics’ panties (expression used figuratively – they were mostly male). And who knows, painting a snail bright red might deter predators? Still, I will admit that the paint has completely fucked the natural camouflage of the snails – though it obviously wasn’t brilliant seeing as I found them – and so I decided to upgrade the camouflage of a snail instead. The camouflage a splinter type pattern, with black lines edges as was especially common during the First World War, sometimes seen on surviving tanks and helmets. It’s hard to say if it’s effective, but it’s the thought that counts is it not? I called the result “Pansarsnigeln”, meaning “Panzer Snail” (really “armoured snail”, but that sounds boring).
Brewer: Sigtuna Brygghus (Arlanda/Sigtuna, Uppland, Sweden), recipe by Mohawk Brewing Company (Mölndal, Västra Götaland, Sweden) Colour: Amber, somewhat dark. Semi-opaque. Rather foamy. Afterword: It seems this is in fact to be labelled typical English ESB, if anything. It’s very drinkable, but in my mind not as good as other similar ones, especially in the ESB category. This should be reflected by the price, but it’s not. |
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