Lager – Vienna – The Tap Takeover

Name: Crimson Skull
Brewing Company: Bonesaw Brewing Company
Location: Glassboro, NJ
Style: Lager – Vienna
ABV: 5.8%

A well-crafted, clean, Lager that hits all the right notes.

From the untappd page for the beer:

Crimson Skull is a Vienna lager, a red-amber lager style focusing on toasty, biscuity malt notes without being sweet. Aromas of baking brown bread, toffee and barley fields.

Bonesaw opened up in 2018 with some sizeable fanfare, the brewery is very large and they managed to recruit a well-respected brewer to be their brewmaster. I’ve had a few beers from Bonesaw Brewing and I’ve enjoyed them to varying degrees and with their beer showing on shelves in my area with more frequency, I decided to finally give one of their beers a full review treatment here at the Triple T. Yeah, of course it is a Lager.

This is the second Vienna Lager I’ve reviewed and as I pointed out in that review, it is a misunderstood style, Sam Adams Boston Lager is a Vienna Lager so it is rather ubiquitous without many likely realizing that Boston Lager is a Vienna Lager. Maybe the closest better-known cousins to a Vienna Lager would either be an Amber Lager or a Märzen. The Vienna Lager is typically a bit lighter than a Märzen, but has a nice amount of bready malt to the beer.

Enough of the style primer, on to the beer under review. .

Pop of the can top, the beer pours into the glass a translucent amber with a nice thick head. Crimson Skull certainly looks the part. Nothing too distinct on the aroma, although I do get some of the breadiness. As I’ve come to say, it smells like beer.

First sip…is quite tasty! Big malt flavor, as I would expect. Despite the beer looking a little on the thin side, from a body perspective, it has a full flavor and feel to it. As I have more of the beer, I get some of the caramel essence, more than the toffee called out in the beer description. The two flavors are fairly similar, so maybe I’m just splitting hairs but that sweet element isn’t overpowering The hop presence is mild but noticeable, which is just how I’d want it to be in a lager such as this.

Bonesaw has crafted a very balanced, clean lager in Crimson Skull. It hits all the notes one would expect from the style, and it does so with a nice level of clarity. The beer went down very easily for me and was very enjoyable

Recommended, link to 4.25 bottle cap untappd rating check in.

Name: Cross Stitch
Brewing Company: Grimm Artisanal Ales
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Style: Lager – Vienna
ABV: 5%
An outstanding amber-hued Lager from one of NY’s premiere craft breweries.

From Grimm’s landing page for Cross Stitch:

This Vienna-style lager was brewed with a double decoction mash — our first time using this historical process for our lagers! With a base of German Vienna malt and a touch of CaraAroma, Cross Stitch is a warming, toasty lager with a smooth mouthfeel. Aromas of freshly baked bread and subtle caramel are complemented by flavors of sweet malt and toffee, ending with a crisp finish.

Vienna Lager…a conundrum of a lager style. In some ways it is a relatively obscure style (certainly not as popular as Pilsner, Helles, or Marzen), but also one of the Lager styles most predominant on shelves of beer shops and bars, thanks to Samuel Adams Boston Lager and Brooklyn’s flagship, Brooklyn Lager, most people grabbing those two beers probably wouldn’t realize they were drinking a Vienna Lager. For my tastes, (and probably because of my general malaise towards Boston Lager), Vienna is the Lager style I’d always gravitated to the least. With some of the smaller independent breweries crafting this style, I realized how damned good this kind of beer could be (I’m looking at you Icarus, Kane, and Untied). So imagine my surprise when a brewery with “Ales” in their name canned and distributed what might be the best (of the admittedly limited quantity, a baker’s dozen including this one) interpretation of the style I’ve had. 4 years in, this is the first time I’ve reviewed a Vienna Lager, as it turns out.

Thick aroma of malty breadiness greets my senses when I open the can – maybe warm bread even. The beer pours a deep amber that could easily be mistaken for an Oktoberfest/Märzen. First sip test – Cross Stitch passes with flying colors. That breadiness is maybe the strongest element. Immediately following, or even overlaying that breadiness is an extremely pleasant lacing of caramel, likely from the CaraAroma malt. The last thing I taste is a hint of toffee on top of the ever-present caramel lacing.

The flavors are great, but what maybe impresses me the most is how incredibly smooth this beer is. Especially since one of the issues I’ve had with Boston Lager is how unsmooth the beer seemed to me. Granted, it has been well over 4 years since I’ve had Boston Lager, and the recipe has supposedly been tweaked. There’s still that characteristic crisp finish a Lager should have, but it is a complement to the lovely, caramel smoothness of the beer.

Cross Stitch is an outstanding take on the Vienna style of Lager. As I stated at the outset of this beer review, Grimm’s take on the style is probably my favorite Vienna Lager and one of my favorite “new to me” Lagers of 2021. As such, this kind of makes me sad that I grabbed the last four pack of this beer in the store.

Tag: Lager – Vienna

Beer Review: Bonesaw Brewing Company’s Crimson Skull

Beer Review: Grimm Artisanal Ales’ Cross Stitch