Admittedly I didn’t do my research on Cubanero Fuerte. It made a perfect birthday present for my brother, who having visited Cuba a few years ago, has become quite the fan.* So, in the process of buying him a few bottles I of course dropped a few on my side of the beer carrier and popped them in the fridge for a sunny day (yeah, optimistic I know).

For some reason I was expecting something more than a bog standard lager. Perhaps I was somehow charmed by the Jack Sparrow wannabe on the bottle and some sense of hidden treasure and adventure. So with that ever-present hope that every long suffering football fan will recognise I waded straight in.

And it turns out that Cubanero Fuerte is quite the bog standard lager. I mean, it’s not bog standard enough that I wouldn’t drink it (I surely would served cold on a hot day or in a hot bar) but it’s pretty bog standard. No hidden treasure.

It’s pale. Marketers would describe it as golden but that’s marketers for you, always selling the dream. There’s more gold in an Elizabeth Duke catalogue. It comes complete with a touch of roasted cereal but it doesn’t have quite enough earthy vigour to hide the sugary, corn syrup and metallic-like twangs that stand out like the green marks on a cheap ring finger. Surprisingly there is just a touch of actual hop flavour to tempt you further down the bottle. Well, compared to some lagers, that is…

The Bucanero might not be my cup of tea but I won’t turn him down in a moment of need. This is my brother’s Mythos after all, and that’s something worth sharing.

Cubanero Fuerte Cuban beer

*In Cuba, and the rest of the World, Cubanero is actually Bucanero (the picture make more sense now, yeah?!). Apparently copyright prevents it’s sale under it’s real name, which is a shame. Anyone know what copyright this is?

Statuesque lager the label says.

Hop Rocker.

So why is it almost entirely made of the sweat of digestive biscuits? This beer personifies Hobnobs on holiday without a care in the world, sucking lemons and painting the town red with the blood of hops. Think Holsten Pills brewed by McVities with all the ingredients on steroids. Nothing prepared me for the sweet and fruity injection or the flurry of malt near the end, malted barley rushing with blazing blues and twos to counter the whopping astringency that punches you in the face when you take a sip.

Funny how Hop Rocker slipped off the radar, because this beer is BrewDog through and through.

BrewDog Hop Rocker lager

Read the rest of this entry »

When I’m reading on holiday (and spouting verse to rival Simon Armitage) I’m never far from a little notebook where I can jot down words I’ve never come across before. That either make me sounds like a geek or perhaps slightly illiterate, but I read a lot of popular science and it can get quite…technical.

More often than not I can guess the meaning of words from their context and a dash of arbitrary knowledge. That’s because nothing is without context, nothing exists in a perfect vacuum, and that includes beer.

Luckily it only rained once on my recent holiday to Skopelos which allowed me 13 and a half days to lap up the piercing Grecian sunshine. At 36 degrees celsius to was hard not to break into sweats just lazing around with a book.

In such conditions you wouldn’t dream of picking up the same types of beers as you would at home. No matter how much a dry pale ale is perfect with the saltiness of olives or how much a German weisse would compliment the crispiness of a Greek salad, it’s just too hot for everything.

Everything that is except Mythos.

Without meaning to labour on my love for Mythos (I actually drank more Amstel on this holiday once the sun had gone down) Mythos rightly deserves it’s name and holds a special place in beer folklore. Mythos is a mythical creature that brings with it dismay and disappointment when drunk anywhere outside Hellenic border controls, yet chilled to within a inch of it’s life and deployed at critical moments of a boiling hot day on a Greek island, it’s  powers to revive might only be bettered by a cardiac defibrillator.

Admiring the distant olive groves and drying off after a dip in the swimming pool, Mythos is just…perfect. Nothing more, nothing less.

And in the context of the above weather conditions, Mythos is the best beer in the world. Period.

Mythos: the best beer in the world. The Hellenic one, at least.

On the last day our energetic shopkeeper asked me if I drank Mythos at home in England. She was delighted when I said it’s just not the same without the sun and the backdrop of Greece. “Everyone says that!” she exclaimed, wondering how such a thing could be true.

Mac’s Gold All Malt Lager would simply fly off the shelves if you stuck it in UK supermarkets.

It’s the perfect barbecue beer: it’s lager, it’s sweet golden nectar with just a hint of pilsner influence from the brewer.

It’s gimmicky ring pull gives it points simply for the lack of dependence on those pesky bottle openers that inevitably go missing mid-way through the evening, lost in decorative stones or knocked off a low brick wall into a thicket of patio plants. It happens, you know it does.

The distinctive bottle and ringpull of Mac's Gold

Mac’s doesn’t distinguish itself by being different, bold or arrogant. It’s simply good lager – a sweet not-a-million-miles-from-honey twang.

Hops don’t dominate, in fact hey barely offer any bitterness to counter the sweetness infused by the malt.

This is probably the endearing factor that might make Mac’s Gold suitable to beer lovers from all walks of life, even hop head vampires whose blood runs thick with DIPA. I believe they have a predisposition to chilled wholesome lager anyway. Even BrewDog James.

Tell me I’ve been done by the fact it looks different to the others.

Tell me actually its not better than San Miguel, Sam Adams or even Sam Smith’s Alpine.

I’ll say ‘whatever’ – whether it’s branding or body copy, Mac’s should be brewed on license over here, because it’s a winner through and through.

Macs Gold from New Zealand: Perfect for bbqs

This weekend I spent £10 on beer.  Two Elizabeth Fry’s. A pair of fivers.

In return Wm Morrisons Supermarkets PLC handed over 36 bottles of beer for my imbibing enjoyment, 2×18 pack boxes of Bière Continental.

Despite some taunts on twitter I stacked half of the first case in the freezer and the remaining half in the fridge, plonked myself on a chair in the garden and necked the sweet golden liquid as quickly as I sweated it out in the blistering heat.

A waste of money? Absolutely not. The same amount of branded lout or fancy bottled beer would have set me back twice or thrice as much, depending on your tipple. The chubby 275ml were just about the right size to stay cool in the blistering sun instead of turning in a tepid vial of…yeah, you know what I mean.

Bière Continental

This wasn’t a blind, test. A 500ml bottle of Saltaire Fuggles was boiling like Eyjafjallajoekull by the time I’d got half way down it. Carlsberg Export became an insipid green bottle of water, dashed with a trace of barley.

I'm being serious, it's great stuff!

Which kinda ruined the experience.

Morrison’s ‘French’ stubbies on the other hand were ice cold, liquid refreshment. Take them as they are – no craft brew, no care and attention. You can freeze them to smithereens and they perform even better, they hydrate you better than anything else I tried.

Plus they brought back fantastic family holiday memories of rotisserie chicken, cheese filled baguettes and Eurocamp in the Vendée?

Perfectionner de la bière?

In the specific conditions of Saturday afternoon, c’est possible…

Cotswold Premium Lager - 330ml bottle

Following the brief response I made to comments asking about this lager left on an earlier unrelated post, I have now taken delivery of a batch to get a full review done. Firstly I would note that I was wrong before when I said that this came in a 500ml bottle. It does in fact come in a 330ml and so is right there in my opinion to take on the mass produced bottled lager area of the  market. I could not stand in a bar drinking Old Hooky from it’s bottle but I would have no problems doing so with a 330ml bottle like this. Having said that, the brading itself does perhaps leave a little to be desired and the label does not really have the colour or liveliness it would need to cut it on the shelves of a busy bar. The outward appearance of the bottle unfortunately does not do justice to the contents.

Golden Premium Lager

The beer is pale golden with a lingering malty aftertaste, probably down to the Maris Otter malted barley. The beer has as strong a flavour as those that it would, in my perfect world, displace from the shelves in all bars, but it is less aggressive with it. I am having a bottle with Winnie and Jim, I have been the most disciplined and dragged mine out for 15 mins but Jim polished his in less than 5 and Winnie was under 10. All three of us agree that this is drinkable, with the 5.0% abv maybe too much so!!!

I would love to see a day when locally produced lagers, available in 330ml bottles, take over from the mass produced bottles that are available in Vodka Revolutions up and down the country. If this work from the Cotswold Brewing Company is anything to go by there are certainly British lagers more than capable of taking up the fight.

After discovering this week that some friends of ours have brilliantly spoofed our efforts to appreciate good beer with their own lager reviews site, it seemed fitting that I should come across a bottle of lager I picked up in Beers of Europe a few weeks ago brewed by a company that have had rave reviews for their ale products on our own site.

Grozet: A quality lager the real-lager-reviews boys should sample.

Williams Brothers Brewing Company have couple of lagers in their range, including Ceilidh (reviewed here). Rather unusually, this beer is described on the bottle as a ‘lagered fruit beer’, which suggests that it is something of a hybrid product aimed across a couple of beer styles. Based on an old Scottish harvest beer recipe from the 16th century, we should anticipate a fruity beer infused from the gooseberries prevalent in the ingrediants.

The nose is extremely sweet, with the citrusy, fruity aroma backed up with a chocolatey note that cuts through at the end. In the glass, the liquid is a very pale blonde that lets the liveliness of the lager shine through. Despite the fruit beer connections, the appearance is definitely one of a lager, so it seems natural to describe it as such.

Despite the effervescence of the beer in the glass, the fizz on the tongue quickly fades away to something of a creamy mouthfeel that is surprising as it is pleasant. The taste continues the sweet theme set up in the aroma, but does have a citrusy sharpness about it as well. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the brilliant advantages of being a beer reviewer is that you are easy to buy for. So naturally, my parents just knew to look out for new or interesting looking locals beers whilst in Cyprus recently.

They did very well – two large bottles locally brewed ales (and as far as I can tell the only Cypriot beers available) – Leon and Keo were my holiday gifts, so naturally a proper Cypriot beer tasting was in order.

Leon and Keo ales from Cyprus. With added Keo t-shirt in the background.

First up, Leon beer; an all-malt beer that was the first to be brewed on the Island from 1937. The scent is rather unusual, but distinctly reminded me of fresh pea-pods and poured similar to a typical run-of-the-mill lager: lively and a pale amber in the glass.

In the mouth, the liveliness caused an abrasion on the tongue that is usually experienced by drinking bog-standard lagers. Unfortunately, there was just nothing in the beer to differentiate from anything I could have picked up from the multipack section of a supermarket. The taste was somehow hidden by the invasive texture on the tongue, whilst the 4.5% ABV was also lost amongst the chaos. It is hard to find anything positive to say about the taste and flavour of this beer.

By contrast, Keo provided a much more interesting scope. I remember enjoying this brand when I visited Cyprus some years ago; it was ubiquitous amongst the tourist bars and was quite an enjoyable pint in the balmy heat of a Cypriot autumn.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anyone who wants to find me on a Thursday night will do so in leed’s Baby Jupiter Bar on York Place after 10. It’s a small basement establishment and, despite it being loud when there’s live music on, we find it really relaxing for a beer after hockey training. The beer selection matches the surroundings in that it is quite limited but of a pleasing standard. Leeds Best on draught or from the fridge, Sagres on tap spreading north as I suggested it might earlier in the year, Zatec, Modelo, Duvel, Old Peculiar and Vedette.

Pac Man and Zatec @ Baby Jupiter

They do simple bar food over lunch and early evening and have selected live music. In keeping with a smaller bar the bar staff are friendly and personable and it’s always a bonus to have good service to go along with good beers.

Our favourite selection from the fridge is a nice cold bottle of the Czech Zatec (pronounced Jhatets). It’s a sweet, hoppy lager with natural honey aromas and a low carbonisation which combines with the sweetness to give a syrupy effect. The label touts the purity of the water used in the brewing process as a key component, a fact bourne out by the crispness of the flavours, and a reminder to all beer fans just how important the H2 O is in the whole brewing equation.

The final triumph of this beer is the natural honey aroma left in the empty glass. It is no wonder that it was included in the 50 top beers as listed by the Independent last month.

I’ve had some issues recently with a distinct Fairy liquid tint to some of my glassware.

Frustrating as that is to taste at the best of times, it’s particularly annoying when you are trying to get the best out of some of the world finest and most complex beers.

The situation came to a head whilst drinking William Bros Ceilidh, the Scottish breweries lager offering. After a couple of false starts and a bit of mild cursing directed at the industrial scented washing products at my disposal, I eventually managed to find a glass that didn’t have a ph count of 78.

And eventually we we’re off.

Williams Ceilidh sets a good standard for lagers that offer a little more than your typical lager beer

Williams Bros make good beers, from their traditional range through to more modern ales such as Birds & Bees (their tayberry beer is very good!). And they make good lager too. But, for a company regularly making above average ales, is it an above average lager?

So my notes at this point start with ‘hoppy for a lager’. At least I think it was. I’m pretty sure that had nothing to do with the Fairy taste. Washing up liquid rarely smells pleasant or hoppy, so I’m guessing I’ve got that right.

The beer is fresh, a touch citrusy and you can taste it’s worldy influences, particularly the pilsner malt which gives it a continental body more akin to European pils than Scottish ale.

For me that makes it above average. There are maltier lagers and lighter lagers, there are crisper, more refreshing lagers – but this is still a fine and balanced example, less potent than BrewDog‘s 77 but which much more to it than the Carlsberg Export’s of the world.

There’s a place for lager at the real ale table and it’s this sort of offering that sets the grade.