Meet the Brew: Orbit — Neu (4.7%)
DeskBeers customers recently will have been fortunate enough to receive a craft beer box curated by Orbit Beers, and featuring — alongside Orbit’s Ivo Pale Ale and Peel Belgian Pale — Neu Altbier. Named after the Düsseldorf Krautrock outfit, Neu! (originally an offshoot of Kraftwerk), Neu is Orbit’s take on the traditional Rhinelander Altbier.
Now, we’ve sent out Altbiers before — most recently Uerige’s Alt, in our special German Beer Box — but this is the first time we’ve talked about them in any detail. We’ve done this for two main reasons: first, because we think Neu epitomizes Orbit’s genius for producing unique versions of classic European brewing; and second, to emphasize the overlap between craft and traditional brewing, which all hip-to-the-room beer drinkers should be aware of.
As Orbit explained in our interview with them earlier this week,
Altbier is a style from Düsseldorf, close to the Rhine in Germany. It’s a top-fermented, light amber to light brown lager. Bitterness levels vary, as does the amount of caramel sweetness from the malt. However, generally speaking it is a well-rounded style. Ours has a big hazelnut nose, a light body and pleasant herbal hop character with only very restrained caramel or toffee flavours from the malt. The bitterness level is firm but not aggressive and it finishes lovely and dry.
The chief distinction of Altbier, in production terms, is its ‘cool’ fermentation process, in which the temperatures (between 13 and 19°C) measure somewhere between the warmer ranges used for ales and the colder ones required for lagers. After fermentation, Altbiers are lagered for 4–8 weeks at cold temperatures, allowing the yeast to clean up some of the mess it made during the fermentation process (credit: Beer and Brewing Magazine, where you can find a much longer description of Altbier). What is produced after all this is a light and refreshing, yet curiously full-bodied beer.
An immediate first impression of Neu is that it does indeed reside somewhere between lager and ale in terms of both body and flavour profile: the technical description really is borne out by the experience of drinking it. It’s nutty and malty, but there’s an unmistakably hoppy bitterness, crispness, and tingly mouthfeel throughout. Tasting Neu is quite an uncanny experience, in that one would instinctively reach for a word like ‘hybrid’ to describe it, whereas in truth it follows a brewing style which very much predates our modern categories. But in another sense, it is very much a hybrid: equal parts German experimental rock music, brewing history lesson, and first-rate UK craft beer.
Like the sound of Orbit and wanna try their beers? We’re offering 20% off your first Regular Delivery with the code ORBIT20. The code will be valid till we’ve sold out of these beers (about a week from the time of publishing) so get cracking.
