Knightberg
Brewed by Knightberg Microbrewery
St. Petersburg, Russia
Coming all the way from the lovely city of St. Petersburg, Knightberg is a family owned brewery that is taking Russia’s second city by storm. The brewery has been one of the main influencers in the burgeoning craft beer scene in the former imperial capital.
With the fall of communism, many western beer influences flooded the city, from Irish and Belgian type bars, from shops selling generic popular brands such as Carlsberg and Heineken to eventually the “craft beer” scene today that is similar to what we have in the rest of the continent, with beer bloggers, huge and well attended beer festivals and small breweries popping up all over the place. Yes the craft beer scene is truly alive and well in Russia.
Knightberg, along with Vasileostrovskaya Pivovarnya, were quick to capture this new innovative trend all feeding into a city eager to embrace and celebrate the craft beer revolution. This has resulted in a city that has many edgy clubs, specialized shops and bars selling a wide range of local and international craft beers, a city that knows its beer and is surprisingly showing that St Petersburg is a must for any beer connoisseur who is looking for something different and unexpected, and fun!
Knightberg – knight and Berg – a knightly hill, is a place of competitions, holidays and feasts. Symbolizing festivities, fun, joy and delight all the result of having some great tasting beer in the company of good friends. Starting out in 2007, Premium Pivovarny Peterburga (Knightberg), brewed beer according to their own recipes at a brewery in Kondopoga, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. The first IPA Krasnaya Mashina (Red Machine) was brewed in 2012 in collaboration with the home brewer Zhenya Tolstov also by Knightberg. Today the brewery brews all the main varieties one would expect from a major supplier, from your usual and standard IPA’s the edgy Stouts, Knightberg has something for everyone and caters for all taste buds.
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Baltic Porter: 8.5% ABV
Just to note that this was 8.5% but I note in some reviews online they have it as low as 6.8%!
Coming in a very cool looking logo, as are all the Knightberg beers it has to be said. It features a snazzy looking bird, I guess a seagull, perched on top of a lighthouse, battling against the cold sea breeze of the Baltic airs.
On pour I get a chocolaty brown tanned head, I think they call it a mocha head! It really is lovely to look at, brown on top, pitch black on the bottom. The head maintains throughout and there is some slight lacing. What a porter should look like.
The aroma is one of a typical porter smell. Nice on the nose, I get chocolate, sugar, caramel, and roasted malts. Not an overbearing smell but soft enough to enjoy.
So onto the taste. Got a nice mouthful, of tasty dark chocolate, a very deep and creamy tasting chocolate. Also tasted the roasted malts and the caramel.
The beer was strong, and bitter, but that is to be expected for a Baltic porter, strong exactly the way I like these beers to taste.
I am a fan of stouts, dark beers and porters so this was all good to me. Had a bit of a kick as my senses were numbed for a while, and I only had the one. Overall a hit and I wish I had more than just the one bottle, but on second thoughts perhaps not, lol!!
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg American Pale Ale Citra: 4.8% ABV
Just to note that this was 4.8% but I note in some reviews I have seen online they have it as a 4.5 to 4.7%.
Another cool looking logo from Knightberg, this time of The Statue of Liberty appearing very groovy as she observes all below from high above New York Harbor. Nice.
Looks good on the pour. We get a hazy orange colour with a small whitish head.
Loads of small sediment floating around, fermenting away in the bottle. The beer is murky to see, and the head maintains.
Some very good lacing observed on the bottle. Not a bad looking beer
The aroma is nice and malty, get the smell of the the fruits and the hops, a typical pale ale aroma, not too strong.
Get a caramel kind of taste initially.
Hoppy yes, a bite yes, but not so strong and light enough to enjoy and not offensive. Nice to sip and enjoy slowly.
Real strong caramel taste, got the malts, the fruits and citrus as well.
A nice enough beer, not bad, not offensive, Just a regular pale ale.
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg (Mono) HBC 366, an IPA: 6.0% ABV
Weird enough logo, has a giant in the background, hops look like gun shells, must be strong so.
“HBC366” are the hops, from America, that usually produce a powerful bitter brew with notes of tropical fruits.
On pour it has a nice white head with a lovely golden coloured beer. It looks absolutely FANTASTIC!
The head settles very well and the colour goes a dark cloudy orange after a while.
Some good lacing shown and the head maintains well.
The smell is intense, quite strong. very earthy and musky. Get the fruits as well, the lime, citrus and melon. Got some spices as well on the nose. Interesting smell, a pointer to whats to come with the taste.
Caramel found, on the initial taste at least.
Quite strong, can feel the alcohol strength, very yeasty. Very strong in the hops too, which are also very earthy.
Hoppy, very fucking hoppy, very bitter, obviously the Russians have a different constitution than the rest of us when it comes to strong beers! Hops are just too overbearing for me.
Bittersweet from the citrus fruits and the malts in a battle among your taste buds.
Fuck me, hops are so strong, have I mentioned that?
A big fat NO! For fans of the HBC 366 hops I guess, sorry Knightberg my stomach and liver is no match for the strong hoppy beers of St Petersberg!
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Premium Lager: 5.0% ABV
Another Knightberg beer, and another shit hot cool logo. This time of a robot with the heart of a hop. Very clever and for me it conjures up the idea of Ted Hughes’ The Iron Man, who had to survive by eating metal. Replace hops with metal, I know I couldn’t survive with good beer (and football!)
For the appearance we get a golden coloured beer with a white head that doesn’t really stick around too long.
The aroma was very malty. And had nice smells of the grains and fruits. Overall a rather pleasant smell.
Get a lot of malt on the taste, very sweet at the early stages, very tingly on the tongue. A nice start.
Apparently rice is added to this beer to accentuate the hops, and I have to say you can definitely pick it up on the taste.
Not bad for a lager, nicely balanced and quiet tasty. A lager with a bit more of a taste than your more regular beers. The hops are just about right, not too bitter and very manageable.
Light enough, and easy enough to swill. An interesting Russian take on a lager.
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Oatmeal Stout: 5.0% ABV
This time the logo has a pic of a broken down London bus, used as a squat, a nod to English stouts of yesteryear perhaps?
This is an Oatmeal stout, a typically English style version of a stout, less sweet than a regular stout, and will be less bitter and smoother to drink.
On the eye it looks fine, as expected having all the usual stout appearances. Nice and black, jet black, decent head, a tanned head. Some slight lacing. Head died a little.
Stouty smell, nice and chocolaty. Toffee, chocolate, coffee, and roasted malts. The usual suspects here on the nose.
On the taste get lovely big mouthfuls at the start, very nice and smooth.
I have never had an oatmeal stout before and can see the difference easily enough to a regular stout. It is much lighter and not as filling, but very drinkable. Lovely mouthfuls, goes down very nice. This to me is a tiny bit like a Schwarzbier, albeit not as watery and with more flavours.
Nice not bad. Very drinkable. Full bodied and very well balanced. Got the roasted malts easily enough, roasted coffee and the chocolate taste throughout, also got strong sense of toffee notes. With the oatmeal it accentuates the taste of grain and the roasted barley, definitely something I found.
A nice light bodied brew, with some interesting and nice light flavours, all well held together to produce a rather interesting stout albeit a bit too light for me as an Irishman who perhaps is stuck in his ways with his Guinness and Irish stouts.
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Clockwork Cherry, a fruit beer: 4.5% ABV
This time we get a logo of a chilled woman all in pink, sitting on a Vespa bike, another cool looking logo from Knightberg. Pink of course representing all the cherries in this fruit beer.
On the pour we get a nice white head appearance and a dark reddish coloured beer.
Head dies a death and goes flat. But the purple look is nice enough.
On the nose…..oh my word, very nice smells of the cherry, quite prominent on the aroma, also can get the sugars and spices. Kind of like a cherry bubble gum on the nose, really nice and pleasant.
Nice on taste, cherry taste is lovely on the tongue, really easy to drink and appreciate.
Like sucking on a cola sweet, nice and fruity, very sweet and tarty in the taste.
As fruit beers go, this was good. Not much hint of alcohol in it though, but it was nice and refreshing all the same, and very easy and smooth to drink.
Review: 0,75cl. long green bottle of Knightberg Brettness, a sour ale: 8.2% ABV
Coming in a nice big green bottle with a cork to pop. Great, looks like a lot of drinking will be done so!
First have to ask what exactly is a Brettness styled brew? As far as I can tell Brett, short for Brettanomyces, is a type of natural yeast found in the wild, on the skins of fruits, for example. Usually it is unwanted as its can spoil a beer or a wine, and brewers prefer to use pure fermented yeast rather than a fungus type yeast. It can be sometimes found in British ales, Belgian Lambics and Monastery Ales, and the odd German brew, all sour type beers. So the usual tastes to be found are fruity and sour.
On pour we get a creamy white head and a dark brown coloured beer. Looks ok.
Head maintains, some good lacing.
Oh my word, the smell is very fruity, very strong on the nose, got a whiff of berries, all nice on the nose. Good.
For the taste, I am getting hit immediately with the fruits, very strong, but very nice.
Also a very sweet and sour taste, tastes like a good red wine but also like a fruity cider!
Really enjoying this one, loving the fruity edge to it and the fact that it tastes like a fine wine but it is meant to be a beer! It really feels if it in fact a red wine!
Strong to taste, but its a slow burner so very manageable. Get the sourness like a red wine, but with the fruits to give it that pleasant hit on the senses.
Fantastic beer, loved it. Recommended.
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Shisha, a chocolate stout: 5.0% ABV
A very eye catching logo of a Russian Cosmonaut hanging out in space, relaxing, probably out of his head on booze, while his mate seems to be struggling to hang on to the side of the space ship.
On pour looks good, a very tanned frothy head and jet dark black colour. The classic stout look.
Head maintains well. A good looking stout, no complaints so far.
The smell is amazing! Full of chocolate, very easy to get on the nose, very overpowering, but all nice. Smells like a Turkish delight (that would be the hazelnuts)!!
I am getting a lot of fruits such as berries and lemons, and vanilla, caramel, and lots and lots of chocolate!
Taste follows the nose, exactly the same senses are ticked, ie the vanilla and the caramel. Roasted malt and barely as well, to be expected. Tongue bombarded with all the chocolate and sweet hazelnuts. All in harmony and not overtly bitter, lovely.
Very nice, very smooth, really lovely to drink, loved this beer. Recommended
Review: 5l. long brown bottle of Knightberg Hefeweizen: 4.0% ABV
Logo this time is a big green monster wading through fields of wheat, showing that this beer is strong and ready to lay waste on your taste buds, or something like that!
Smell……oh wait……that’s an unusual smell that I wasn’t expecting! Very yeasty, more so than expected, and also strong hints of banana and citrus.
Colour is yellow with a small white head. Head does go flat after a while and it isn’t the most appealing of beers from its appearance.
Taste is wow, very wheaty, very nice, goes down smooth and is extremely tasty.
Taste is very striking and feels very nourishing, like a hearty meal. In fact I would say it tastes a bit like a Weetabix with beer, very weird but I love it. I would say it doesn’t taste like a regular Hefeweizen, in that the wheat taste has a specific Russian style to it that I have never found before. I wonder do all Russian Hefeweizen’s taste like this, is Russian wheat a different taste?
Got the fruits, especially banana, also got corn and the hops were light.
Overall its the sweet taste of the wheat with its unique Russian taste that does this beer for me. A top beer. Excellent twist to a Hefeweizen and one that I was not expecting at all. Fun, and very tasty!
Review: 0,75cl. bottle of Knightberg Les Cinq Premiers, a Flanders Red Ale: 7.0% ABV
Les Cinq Premiers, “The first five from Knightberg”, nice big dark green bottle.
A Belgian style sour ale with Brettanomycetes (that natural yeast), bottle aged for two years.
Looks ok, small whitish head, very dark brownish colour. Looks good. Head maintains
Smell is very fruity. Plums and berries. Nice.
Bit of a sour taste initially, like a bitter red wine, strong.
Like a wine tasting, ok to drink, doesn’t feel like a beer at all. Strong and fruity in the taste, red berries and plum like tastes are prominent.
Very strong in the taste. Initially wasn’t sure, but it did linger long in the memory a good while after, and I got round to thinking Id like to retry it again. Basically it is like a red wine from start to finish, a slow burner that has a lot of fruit in it and with the malts and hops well hidden.
Not really used to Flanders Red Ale’s so I guess this was a new experience for me, to taste a beer that really tastes like a red wine more so than a regular beer. An intriguing beer, and a style I will like to return to in the future.
“Fosters, the Australian for lager” or so they say, but is it really? I am sure we all have heard the stories at this stage that Aussies dont actually drink Fosters. Its like a funny weird game the company play with the public, the more people cotton onto this “fact” the more they flex their “Australian credentials” via advertisements and sponsorship of all things Australian. 
With this initial success, the brothers sold the company to make a quick buck and the company eventually ended up in the hands of the Carlton & United Breweries company. These days it is owned by the international brewing giant AB InBev, and its biggest market is in the UK (second only to Carling), distributed by Heineken International who own the European rights to the brand (SABMiller for the US and Molson in Canada) 
If I was surprised about the look, then I was shocked with the smell. There was none, NONE! Completely odorless. Pretty neat trick I think.
The Abbey still stands and has a number of monks who live the lifestyle dictated to them by St Benedict, ‘ora et labora’ (pray and work). Nestled in a beautiful forest, the abbey is a bit of a tourist attraction and cultural retreat theses days. Visitors like to marvel at the Gothic church, walk in the gardens or do some schooling in the creative arts on offer. The Bible Centre has over 400,000 books, manuscripts and other important artifacts all relating to the monastic and spiritual way of life. But if that doesn’t take your fancy you can always have a beer and cheese tasting tour. I know which activity I would choose!
Really dig the small brown bottle and the label, looks lovely. Simple enough but well designed and appealing. The beer is bottle conditioned as well, all adding to the appeal.
Nice, I like it, very tasty. Has all the typical tastes, very clearly the coriander, cloves, the malts and fruits, particularly banana. 
Privatbrauerei Fritz Egger is a private brewery from Austria. 
Smell is light, malty. Very slight on the nose, nearly odourless in fact! Smell is beery and fruity. 
SAB over time came to dominate not just South Africa, but most of the continent of Africa, and through a series of acquisitions and joint ventures throughout the 1990s, SAB gained a foothold in various countries in Africa, Eastern Europe (Hungary and Czech Rep.) and Asia (China and India). This was a definite process of a company from a “developing nation” buying breweries from countries that had similar geo-political, infrastructural and business issues. Success in these emerging markets showed that SAB could venture into the “Developed world”, such as in Italy and the US. Working in South Africa and in developing countries first was very beneficial as it helped the company come up with numerous innovative ways to deal with lack of infrastructure, supports, and skill shortages. It also made the company more open to take risks. The company also invested in other lucrative markets, such as running hotels and casinos, and diversified into the food industry (coffee, tea, and food products), manufacturing and retail (including green grocers, furniture factories and stores, shoe factories and stores, and clothing stores). This was a company that had its nose in every nook and cranny of SA society!
Back to Castle Brewery. Castle Lager sponsors a host of sporting teams and events, from the main sponsor of “Bafana Bafana”, the national football team, to the South African Cricket Team, the South African Rugby Team, ie, the “Springboks”, and a host of others. 
Has a nice piercing smell of sweet corn, and a lager type aroma, very malty, grainy and lemony. Ok on the nose.