Beer Review: Birra Di Levante (Levante Brewing Company)
Another style underrepresented here on the blog and in beer reviews in general is the pilsner. I’ve done a few reviews of them, but they’ve been exclusively in multiple beer review posts where I’m doing a flight or reviewing two or more beers at once. But I was gifted a can of this by J. Hoak after his Halloween party from when he and Tattered Flag did their collaboration with Levante Brewing Company. So thats’ gonna change now… its time to do a review of a pilsner!
Beer: Birra Di Levante
Brewery: Levante Brewing Company
Style: Pilsner – Other
ABV: 4.9%
IBU: 32
Untappd Write-Up: A fine Pils is crafted from water with terroir. West Chester provides our brewery with such a pure water source that we hardly manipulate our water profile to achieve the characteristics of a true Bohemian-style Pilsner, lagered and further clarified through filtration. True to classic style, Tettnang hops brighten this crisp golden-straw hue Pils with earthy aromatics of noble spice.
Levante Brewing Company is probably best known for Tickle Parts (IPA); which as I write this blog, I’m currently drinking a variant of it (Tickle Parts Passionfruit IPA). But this pilsner certainly deserves recognition and should be mentioned when discussing some great beers that Levante has made. Pilsners for a long time are one of my ‘weird’ categories of beers or styles of beers; where it can go either way with little wiggle room. Either pilsners have a weird taste to me and its just off putting and I can’t drink it, or their extremely good and I could down a six pack in no time flat.
Luckily, this one falls more on the “how many cans do I have in the fridge? …thats not enough!” side of things.
Appearance for this is crystal clear light straw. Similar to the Newfangled Brew Works Lager I reviewed yesterday; this is clear, crisp looking, with nice bubbles, and good lacing on the glass afterwards. Great carbonation coming out of the can.
Aroma is light beer fare, but with some earthy undertones to it. Once again, similar to the Lager and similar to lagers and pilsners in general, this just has that ‘beer’ smell to it. The stereotypical, prototypical, nondescript ‘beer’ smell one associates with beer, when ‘cracking open a cold one’ after a long day’s work. There is some spices that you can get a faint hint of, earthy herbal spices, but they are pretty faint and more of an undertone than something to stand out.
Taste is clean, crisp, clear, straight forward pilsner. Not too many frills or sillyness with this beer. Light and low in ABV at only 4.9%, this is what a simple clear crisp refreshing beer should taste like. This is easily crushable and would make for a wonderful fantastic six-pack beer for a game or mowing the yard. There is a nice hoppy taste to this that kicks this up a bit of a notch from your generic or average pilsner, or lager, or lite beer. Certainly over the corporate swill of Coors, Bud, Miller.
My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.64 (as of 11.18.19)
This passionfruit Tickle Parts is super good too, you can probably look for this to be the review tomorrow, so keep your antennas ready to check out the site for when it drops! Hopefully before work (makes it easier), so check around 10AM.
Fingers crossed.
Cheers!
-B. Kline
