It has been more than a decade now since Raymond Meynet took over my favorite Hungarian sausage and homemade brativurst place called Treffpunkt Jedermann in Cubao. Now, he caters to a more price-conscious market and has branches in Tagaytay and Mactan. But, until recently, Raymond broke into the beer guzzler’s market with a limited distribution of the more popular German beers.

At a recent tasting for Ordre Mondial des Gourmets Degustateurs, the wines and spirits appreciation arm of the worldwide gourmet club called Chaine des Rotisseurs and  another group known as winesandspiritsclub-philippines.com (which is the cyber-based wines and spirits forum and organization seeking to popularize demystify wine), six German beers were tasted to the delight of all present.

Whether it was the more sophisticated Ordre Mondial or the more democratized winesandspiritsclub-philippines.com, the beers were appreciated for their distinct characters amidst servings of cold cut platters filled with cheese and spicy Polish and Hungarian salamis, which started the evening.

We began with a white wheat or weiss beer, a Kapuziner which had a creamy, custard vanilla (which others described as a sago-gulaman character) with sweet corn flavor. Moving on, a pilsner called Eku was next on the flight. This was a golden, fizzy and refreshing pils that had an appetite stimulating bitterness of dark chocolate and light mocha with some ripened lychee notes.

Last on our starters, which people came back for even after cocktails had ended, was a Monschoff Schwartzbier or black beer. It had a light, creamy head and had heavy cocoa notes that seemed to go with the heavy sausage and even with the chocolate dessert as guests went back to the cocktail area to refill their glasses with it and pair it with dessert. Unfortunately, this dark beer is the only beer Treffpunkt does not import in individual serving cans or bottles. The first three beers came in 5 liter minikegs with Eku and Kapuziner having .5 liter cans as personal servings.

Dinner started with a thick soup with dumplings of smoked ham. To refresh our palates, we began with a premium Warsteiner Pilsner from Bavaria which is the largest selling beer in Germany. It was very clean, vibrant and fizzy with spicy, cologne-like aromas and flavors of light juicy tropical fruit and notes of lychee peel.

Then our platters laden with sausage and schwein hacksen or crispy cured german (pata) pork shoulder and feet with sauerkraut, freshly-made spatzle noodles and home fried potatoes came, partnered with Erdinger Weiss Beer or wheat beer with a creamy palate of sweet corn, ripened fruit and custard.

For dessert, an Erdinger Dark (with chocolate and spicy characters and a sweet finish) was compared side by side with the Monschoff Schartzbier which seemed to blend in with the fruit and cream-filled German pancakes and highlighted the dark chocolate chip ice cream. Both Erdingers and Warsteiners came in bottles and cans with two sizes.

For more information, call Raymond Meynet at 0905 2497102.