Vienna Lager
Zero Gravity Craft Brewery in Burlington, Vermont, United States 🇺🇸
Lager - Amber / Vienna Rotating Out of Production|
Score
6.97
|
|
Sign up to add a tick or review
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Poured into a pint glass, the appearance was a rugged burnt dark orange almost brownish red color, sly transparency. Just a cap of a light filmy head quickly dissipates. Milky thin lacing.
The aroma smells like a good Vienna lager (SA flagship), crisp bready/German yeasty sweetness with a sly grassy hoppy warmth. Slight cake almost biscuity malts as well.
The flavor resides between the balancing sweetness of the grassy hops to the biscuity malts. Light spice (nutmeg, maybe?). Balanced malty to hoppy aftertaste. Sly malty finish.
On the palate, this one sat about a light to medium on the body with a great sessionability about it. Carbonation runs nicely. Malts play smoothly on my tongue.
Overall, I would say this was a pretty nice Vienna lager that I would have again.
Clarkvv (16523) reviewed Vienna Lager from Zero Gravity Craft Brewery 19 years ago
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Draught pint at the brewery with Muzzlehatch on 3/12/06.
Clear, burnished brass body with some cookie-graham cracker tones, bit of old cream yellow. Very small amount of off-white head that is not long retained, forming a ring on the edge, with no lacing. Large bubbles rest throughout the liquid.
It’s funny how after having two similar gravity German beers, brewed around the same time here (Helles, Spalter Alt), that this one comes out with much less heavy yeast, more bright hop and yeast character and just more refreshing, as the other two should have been. The nose right away divulges a glorious, intricate web of lightly sticky caramel, dry, crumbly coffee-cake, perfectly pitted against each other, with a triumphant noble hop spiciness, combined with a crisp lager yeast, steadily growing to a climax on the finish of an almost perfumy, tingling note, with light yeast. All the while a wise, yet never too sweet woody-caramel character sits patiently behind. I didn’t find as much caramel as Barry, but all the same, I found the hop and yeast qualities to be lively, not overdone and bright.
Flavor begins with a dry, husky vienna malt, touches of roots and coffee, but adding dry, spicy hops and old, tanninless wood notes before it gets too watery (fair amount of water, though as it should be for this session style). At first, while cold/chilled, the sweetness from the munich or cara malts is held well in check, perfectly balancing the beer, while the yeast remains quite apparent, but crisp and lively. Carbonation is rather zippy at first, but carries the hoppiness and yeast across the palate and helps deliver the zesty finish, almost woody/herbal-like, though retaining the dry caramel. As Barry says, with warmth and breath, the beer begins to get a bit too sluggish with sweetly-sour malts and the yeast begins to build up (though nowhere near the alt or helles level). Watery texture, lively carbonation, no alcohol. It’s always enjoyable to find a beer that you can just drink and appreciate chilled, being refreshed, without having to stare at it for a half hour while it warms up. My score reflects the flavor/palate while it is at a chilled temperature.