Poor Poland. Has any country in modern history gotten a worse rap than Poland has for no reason? You know what I'm talking about. Somehow someone somewhere for some unknown reason decided to make the Poles the laughing stock of Europe. They supposedly invented the submarine with the screen door and the helicopter with the ejector seat, along with a litany of other completely frivolous inventions. Poles are unfairly characterize as being dumb, cloddish brutes and it's simply not true. Take Copernicus, Chopin, His Holiness Pope John Paul II and Marie Curie; all poles who made significant contributions to art, science or culture. Being roughly a quarter Polish, I've tried to stick up for the nation that's been bullied by Germany and Russia for centuries. I never thought the dumb Pollack jokes were particularly funny, but when they brew a beer like Okocim, it's kinda hard to defend the Polskis.
Okocim is the beer on the docket tonight, and I'm not impressed. The brewers of Okocim claim that it is a Polish style bier, but if that's true, I think they should copy the recipes of their German neighbors. Even with my overwhelming pro-Polish bias, I couldn't really find one thing about this beer that I liked. No earmarks of quality or class. No refreshing taste or tantalizing scent. Just a bitter lager that had little to nothing to offer. Maybe I'm being a little hard on Okocim because my taste has become acutely sharpened due to the sheer volume of beers that I constantly sample, but the ultimate question I ask myself with every beer is "would I buy this again?" and the answer for Okocim is a resounding no. But don't just take my word for it, get out there and try it and decide for yourself. And lay off the Poles for Christ's sake, they're trying really hard!
Na zdrowie! (cheers in Polish)
Ian
http://www.okocim.com.pl/
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