One thing that has been a very pleasant surprise since arriving in Switzerland has been the amount of brewing activity going on. We have our big Swiss beers (Eichhof, Calanda, Feldschlossen, etc) and yes, if you are an American (as I am) you will find even the beer produced at industrial levels to be quite drinkable. Even though the EU has more or less killed the reinheitsgebot, most breweries still practice as if the law is still in place as a competitive action. Even more interesting to me, though, is it seems that in rough parallel to the Campaign for Real Ale and its offspring - such as the microbrewing movement in the US - there has been a small renaissance of brewing in and around Switzerland of small breweries. I've stumbled on to a number of breweries just in my area around the Zürichsee. Some of them are run by cheerful expats who are making versions of ales, some are home-grown homebrewers who have graduated to commercial production. They're all pretty good, and some are outstanding.
My latest discovery came courtesy of Darkfool, who was visiting us over the Weihnacht holidays. Ralf Paul, who appears to be sharing brewing space and equipment (and a website) with Erusbacher Bräu is producing some top quality suds. Numbered as the titles, the beers all show a very deft hand on the brew paddle. The first beer we tried was the number 5, an excellent brown or dunkel (honestly, it tasted like an excellent brown ale rather than a dunkel to me). Light on the palette with the perfect amount of nut, toast, and a slight sweetness, it went down very well. This is gonna make a great beer for Carbonnade Flamande one of these nights. When I next returned to Globus am Bellevue to try another, they had the number 1. Wow. This is a "special hell" meaning a light pilsener style, and it thoroughly satisfies. Bright, that awesome pilsener funk on the nose. with the perfect amount of body - a complaint I sometimes have about our local hells - this was about as perfect a bottle of beer as you can ask for. The really good news is he's up to number 7, which means I have five more beers to try, and the number 7 sounds really excellent. I wonder how many cases I can fit on the tram...
Oh, and don't worry folks, there are a lot of other breweries (http://www.bov.ch/beer/swissbeers.htm)to talk about. It's a tough job, but I'm just the man.
