It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Beer: Graminger Kirta and Jubiläums-Sud

Thanks to a slew -- but not a slue or a slough -- of holiday parties in the evenings, I have managed to get a few days behind on my beer advent calendar.  Things aren't going to get any less hectic over the next eight days, so in all likelihood, I'll be drinking my advent calendar beers past Christmas Eve.  Oh well.

There haven't been too many darker beers yet in the beer advent calendar, but that has all changed.  First up was the Graminger Kirta, brewed by Graminger Weißbräu -- a brewery specializing in unfiltered wheat beers (whose two master brewers are sisters) in Altötting, an eastern Bavarian town about 60 miles east of Munich and 10 miles west of the Austrian border.  The Kirta is a dunkelweizen, which might be my favorite style of European beer (apologies to Belgian-style ales).  As the name implies, dunkelweizens are dark wheat beers, using roasted malts, which adds some body and maltiness to the already delicious Bavarian weizen.  This one was excellent.

Name:  Graminger Kirta
Brewery:  Graminger Weißbräu
Location:  Altötting, Germany
ABV:  5.4%
IBU:  N/A
Good for drinking if:  You need a come-down beer when you're chillin' in between holiday parties and trying to get your kids to watch old episodes of Wonder Woman.
Rating (out of five stars, by quarter star increments):  4.5

Tonight, I had Herrnbräu's Jubiläums-Sud.  This is the second beer from Herrnbräu in the beer advent calendar.  As I'm sure you recall, last week, I sampled their Bürgerliches Brauhaus Altbairisch Hell, which was pretty good as far as helleses go.  The Jubiläums-Sud is even better.  It's a dunkel, which is another one of my favorite styles of European beer.  Dunkels are dark lagers that generally have a lot of flavor, little to no bitterness, and a good mid-range of ABV.  The first liter I usually get upon my arrival in Munich is a liter of dunkel.  Jubiläums-Sud is a fantastic example of a Bavarian dunkel.  It's malty, sweet (with caramel and brown sugar notes), and delicious.

Name:  Jubiläums-Sud
Brewery:  Herrnbräu
Location:  Ingolstadt, Germany
ABV:  5.6%
IBU:  N/A
Good for drinking if:  You spent most of your evening telling three children to stop touching things while visiting various stores unsuccessfully trying to find fucking Amazon gift cards in denominations appropriate for said children's teachers.
Rating (out of five stars, by quarter star increments):  4.5