March 12, 2009: Karlovacko

Ever since I was a little kid, I've been kind of obsessed with geography. Instead of having posters of athletes or rockstars hanging on the wall of my bedroom, my brother and I had maps of countries from around the world. Instead of learning how to solve a quadratic equation, I was attempting to memorize the capitals of every African country. My brother and I were such nerds as children that we used to sit down and try to list all of the countries of the world from memory as a weird sort game. I've always been good at remembering the countries of Africa and Asia, but I could never really get a good handle of eastern Europe. It's changed around so much in my life time, that it's been hard to keep up with which country is called what anymore. Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Slovakia.... all nations that have come into existance in my relatively short life span. I've always been somewhat fascinated by this area of the world, but to this day I don't really know much about it. It's not exactly a region that is renowned for it's rich brewing traditions, but tonight's beer Karlovacko comes from the country of Croatia, and it's as big of a mystery to me as the country it hails from.

It's always nice try a mystery beer because I never come into with any expectations or preconceived notions. I've spent my fair share of time in bars and corner stores around the world, but have never seen, heard of, or encountered anyone who had known of this beer before. Karlovacko is actually one of the most popular beers is Croatia, but it's popularity is almost non existant in the states. Karlovacko poured a pleasant golden straw color with an thick, with a mouth watering head, and a decent amount of lacing. Karlovacko has a nice creaminess about it that you don't typically find with most lagers, but still feels light and airy. Flavors of grass, hay and oat give Karlovacko a nice earthy kind of flavor, but ends up finishing a bit metallic by the end. All in all Karlovacko is a decent beer, but I won't be going out of my way to try it again.

Živjeli!
Ian

http://www.karlovacko.hr/
warning, the website is all in Croatian so unless you can read the language or just a very intuitive grasp of foreign website, it may not be very useful.