Great Lakes Brewing, Cleveland, Ohio. This is the best golden lager I have ever had.
“Not as dry as a Pilsner or as malty as a Munich-style lager, our golden lager is a balanced beer named after Dortmund, Germany, the city where the Dortmunder style originated. In keeping with the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516, this beer is traditionally brewed from all natural ingredients: barley, hops, yeast and water. No chemicals or preservatives are used. 5.8% alcohol. Our Dortmunder Gold is a consistent gold medalist.”
I like that beer quite a bit, but I will say that Dortmunder water is renowned for it’s hardness, which accentuates it’s relatively low hop content. I don’t detect that characteristic in GL’s interpretation of the style at all; it seems to me like a pretty malty beer. But then again, that water is also renowned for being incredibly hard to replicate, so I can’t really fault them for falling a little short on that goal, especially when they make a serious effort to comply with Reinheitsbegot purity guidelines, which prohibits adding any kind of minerals to the brewing water. I also don’t know of any well-known German imports in that style that are widely available in the states, so I don’t really have a standard to compare it to, either.
DAB and Ayinger Jahrundhert are two that are pretty easy to come by.[/quote]
DAB is not well distributed in my area. I bought a sixer of it a month ago or so for the first time, and I liked it quite a bit. Ayinger’s Jahrundhert is probably my all-time favorite pale lager, but I’ve never heard it referred to as a Dortmunder-style beer. I wouldn’t necessarily argue that it doesn’t fit that bill at least vaguely, I guess, but I don’t know that the brewers themselves classify it as such.
its considered a classic example under the BJCP guidelines. many folks refer to it as a dortmunder even outside of BJCP. i agree it is a tweener however. DAB is probably a better example. I love Great Lakes Dortmunder as well, but even they didn’t even originally call it that style.
blatz, I know you were working on a recipe for this just like I have been. Have you come up with anything close yet? My attempts have failed, I can’t seem to get this one quit right.
Thanks d1. I tried the Great Lakes Dortmunder last summer and wasn’t a fan of it. If it’s reminiscent of the style I won’t bother trying that DAB either.
If you didn’t like GLBC’s rendition of it, I’d say there’s a pretty good chance you wouldn’t care for DAB beer, either. They’re not exactly dead ringers, but they’ve got a very similar balance. Both are very clean and balanced more towards malt, in my opinion. I find them both to be very easy-drinking brews- session beers, even- and I would say that I like them (the GLBC beer a little more), but when it comes to beers that I would classify as session beers, I prefer mine with a bit more hop character. And really, when you read any description of the Dortmunder export style, you get the impression that it’s supposed to be a well-balanced beer, with a noticeable hop character. I don’t really get that in either of these particular examples of the style. They’re both rather malty to my palate, although not especially rich, just dry. No real hop flavor or aroma to speak of, IMO. Anyway, you should still try the DAB beer just so that you know you’ve tried what is generally considered to be the most spot-on example of the style.
If you live in Cleveland it’s on tap at just about every bar from upscale to hole in the wall.