Suburban beer

It’s hot… I mean really, really hot. The above photo was taken in my office room tonight at 9pm. 30 degrees C indoors. I find myself drinking very little tea at the moment and actually preparing some home-made ice tea for the first time in ages. Wine suffers, too. There’s no question of any red, even a chilled one, and if the white is not a featherlight Muscadet or an 8% sweetish Moselle Riesling, I just don’t enjoy it. But then there is man’s best friend: a nice chilled beer. 

The town of Konstancin is to Warsaw what, say, Richmond is to London. It’s a modest spa with extensive woodland that today is better known as a residential district for the rich & beautiful. You don’t expect a brewery to operate here but Browar Konstancin actually belongs to Poland’s hippest and most dynamic. It’s totally independent, rather small (3m bottles / year), and since a recent takeover in 2007 it has dynamically expanded its range with some exciting new beers, some of which are unpasteurised. I look forward to sampling the promisingly titled Warszawiak Mocny [Strong Varsovian] and the newly created unpasteurised Zdrojowe [Spa Beer]. For the time being, here’s the brewery’s top label, Dawne, meaning simply ‘Ancient’.

Unpasteurised and fairly structured at 7% alcohol, it pours a palish golden colour. The aroma is a bit wild, very herby, almost animal, and is best disregarded IMO. Flavour-wise this beer grows on you. A little simple at first, it develops pretty good length on the palate. It’s bone-dry, fairly hoppy (not so frequent with Polish beers, which generally err on the sweet side), with a linear, sappy profile. I would perhaps prefer a tad more richness but this is a serious, stylish and satisfying beer. And the strong hoppiness is an obvious advantage when fighting the heat.