Verbatim: Zipfer Original. 330ml, $?, at home, 5.4%, 7/3/04. Neat curvy bottle. Smells very beery and lagerish, appropriately. Pale, but gold. G doesn’t like it. I do. Tastes of something, again. Not sure what. Fruit of some stripe. Harsh, in a way I like.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: I think I’d say “punchy”, rather than “harsh, in a good way”, these days. But then, maybe this one would still rate as such, given the palate shift over the years — still, it’s apparently a perfectly-decent example of what it is. It’s also one of those multiply-named beers, going by ‘Urtyp’ as well as the blander-sounding ‘Original’.

I have to guess at just which Gösser beer this is; I had left some of the beers in there and what was once ice was later a few inches of water, and the label floated right off of this one and turned to moosh.

Verbatim: Gösser. At home. Label gone completely. I thought it smelt lager-y, turns out it’s dark. Lighter than some darks. Quite light flavour, but with something in there. Sharp and round. Almost fruity.

Afterthoughts, October 2010: So soon after the initial Sam Adams was I again undone by naively thinking that all and only lagers were golden. The path to Beer Nerdery is beset with wonderful re-jugglings of preconceptions like that. I’m also fairly sure that I’m right in saying that this was likely the ‘Stiftsbräu’ Dunkel — definitely matches colourwise, and it does have that slightly sweet note, according to people who actually knew what they were reviewing.