Review: Pinkus Muller Munster Alt

Yesterday marked the end of my 1+ year project at work to bring our cash register system up to PCI-DSS compliancy. After spending more months than I have fingers, dealing with vague requirements and vaguer QSA interpretations, it was time for a well-deserved beer. To toast the occasion, I opened a bottle of Pinkus Muller Munster Alt, one of my favorite German ales. And seeing as how I was enjoying a great beer, it seemed appropriate to break my 2 week hiatus and type up a quick review. Forgive me if this is a little shoddy, a surprising amount of rust can accumulate in a very short time.

I’ll start my saying it is wrong to compare Pinkus Muller’s brew to other German Alts. It is the lone commercial example of the Munster style; an altbier worlds apart from its Dusseldorf and Northern German cousins. The two most striking traits of Munster Alt are its use of malted wheat and its exposure to lacto during conditioning. The result: a beer that seems more at home with Berliner Weisses than with its fellow Altbiers.

Munster Alt pours a slightly hazy, golden color; a deceptive cover for its malty, well-rounded body. The flavor is a balance of wheat and bready Munich malt. The Alt yeast and long, cool fermentation give the beer a clean, minerally, lager-like quality. The lactic acid, while not nearly as pronounced as in a Berliner Weisse, is still apparent and provides the same drying finish and refreshing sensation.

Munster Alt’s highlander status prevents me from rating it against its style; after all, it IS the Munster Alt style. So, eschewing style conformity and assigning a rating base solely on merit, I give it a well-deserved A.

Munster Alt is a unique beer that is truly in a category all unto itself; an over-used an often inaccurate, but in this case, completely fitting description. It also carries a more than reasonable price tag. The 16.9 oz bottle pictured above came from the newly-expanded beer section of my local Fred Meyer, priced around $3.50.

And for those of you whose Lord Northbournes gets all erect when you hear the “O” word, I’ll mention that Munster Alt is certified organic. Actually, Pinkus Muller is one of the pioneers of organic brewing. They started producing organic beer in 1980 and later became the first brewery to use entirely organic malts and hops.

Well, there you have it. A small review with a little bit of history. My work is done.

Cheers!
Kevin