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?

There’s a week in autumn when suddenly the weather takes over the UK. The beautiful yellow, orange and golden leaves are washed from their trees by cats-and-dogs rain and violent winds. The rain thrashes down on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. This week was such a week.

But a gathering storm wouldn’t put the British off burning Guy Fawkes at the stake.

There’s something primeval about Bonfire Night; communities clubbing together everything they can find that is 1) of no use or value and 2) slightly flammable. The roads come to a stand still as normal people with centrally-heated houses rush to cold, wet, muddy fields to stand around a huge fire eating hot dogs.

And it’s generally brilliant.

This year we avoided the throngs of people who descended on Roundhay Park in Leeds (the twenty-something curmudgeons we are meant that we couldn’t face 70,000 people and the dogfight for parking).

So off to the local rugby club (union not league which is a story in itself in these parts). A juicy burger fresh from the griddle, candy floss, bouncy castles and merriment. An ice cold beer, well deserved after a torrential week in terms of weather and workload.

Under the creaking terrace, crammed in like sardines, we sat back and enjoyed the pyrotastic delights, craning necks to see the rockets and bangers that shot so high that those clammering at the back of the stand couldn’t see for the overhanging roof.

And then to the lounge bar: pies and peas, salt & vinegar, reminiscing, joking, betting on the weekend’s X Factor and admiring the sports stars of the local team during years gone by. More perfect, wonderful pints of Fosters served in plastic glasses that burned our fingers with cold condensation. The table is littered in the carrion of good time, remnants of a pint of Wainwright’s, and a plastic cup of rosé, chips and gravy for sharing.

The magic of Roundhay Park? No thank you, the magic of the local community on Bonfire Night thank you very much.

Just what beer do you take to a summer music festival?

With Glastonbury only a few days away there’s a big supermarket trip around the corner to stock up on all the liquid lunches we’ll be needing over the 5 days we spend wallowing in mud, Carlsberg cans and the reverberation of  thumping speakers.

But what is the perfect festival beer?

What's the perfect festival beer?

At Glastonbury you can take what you want. Unlike other festivals, once you’re in, you’re in, and you may freely waltz around with your chosen tipple without fear of eviction. Last year one chap had 3 cans of Stella strapped to each limb with duck tape. He was never without a beer.

The perfect drink has to be light. Multiple car trips are not good so you need to be able to pack it in a rucksack, pop it under your arm or balance it on your head for the long walk from car park to chosen pitching ground.

The perfect drink has to be refreshing. If the sun comes out it needs to revive; if the mud rises up it needs to make you feel fighting fit to grapple through the bodies and lost wellies.

This enigmatic tipple mustn’t be too strong. No-one wants to miss the single unmissable act of the day, not drink too much and earn themselves an early retirement to the tent. You want to be up from 11am until 4am, with perhaps a mid afternoon nap in a quiet folk tent near the tippees.

You need to be able to drink all day and never feel under the weather.

And this magic beer (or other alternative beverage) must be passable, nay even enjoyable when warm.  In a perfect world it will chill quickly too and never warm up, if nature or some fancy technology (aka cool box) gives you the opportunity.

We could try lager. Widely available in lightweight cans of various strengths. It’s refreshing when hot which ticks an important box, but crucially though, it’s a bit rubbish when not ice cold.

So in case of warm conditions perhaps we should take some ale. Bottled conditioned is an absolute no-no, and even simply bottles are a bad idea. Stone’s Bitter or Tanglefoot anyone? A choice between garish orange or red, unless you want to risk Smoothflow, of course.

Then there’s the alternative solution, cider. Before you conjure images of vagrants and teenagers on a park bench, just remember the criteria.

Lightweight.

Not too strong.

Easy to carry.

Drinkable warm.

Suddenly Strongbow seems more appealing than ever…

The usually quiet fields of Pilton in Somerset are normally full of cows and green, green grass. But for a few days they'll be home to us and 140,000 other revellers (as the meeja like to call festival folk).

A couple of months ago during one of the 30+ hours I spend online each week , a little pop-up window asked me if I’d like to take part in a survey. I knew straight away it was advertising related and, working in the business of developing online advertising strategy, I’m always intrigued to take these surveys and gain a little insight into how other companies are tracking the branding effects of their digital marketing activities.

This one just so happened to be beer related therefore being of interest to more than just the day job. Specifically it was about lager brands, and asked my thoughts on five of the leading names and their recent advertising.

Lager Advertising Survey from RealAleReviews on Vimeo. Read the rest of this entry »

Serving beer (Wikipedia)

Last week saw a host of articles on lager, CAMRA and why the two don’t always have a harmonious relationship (see articles by Barm, Mark Dredge, Woolpack Dave, Tandleman & The Guardian).

The same week r’ Sam couldn’t quite work out if William’s Brothers Grozet was a lager or a beer, with conflicting online reviews and it being deceptively lager like for an ale.

It’s fitting that the lager debate and lots of lager chat surfaced on the week we unearthed a parody of our sites, real-lager-reviews.com, and actually the Guardian article that kicked much of this off was one of the ways we cottoned onto our spoofers (thanks to an innocuous comment on there by the Real Lager Reviews lads).

It seems the question of lager brings up some awkward discussions. CAMRA clearly don’t associate themselves with CO2, which rules out a lot of lagers, but it doesn’t fundamentally rule out lager per se.

Which leads us to what is a lager: what it is and why is it different? Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

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.

My first sips of Zeitgeist didn’t blow me away. I had sort of been expecting a revolution. I think a little bit of hype, excellent design and lots that I’d read had built up my expectations, and that I was expecting a Road to Damascus style realisation that pale lager could not quench my thirst and that black lager would suddenly take me a higher level.

Well, the first sips didn’t go down well. I found it flat and uninteresting, completely underwhelming and disappointing.

Zeitgeist Black Lager by BrewDog

But within a couple more sips I realised that I’d drunk half a bottle within about 53 seconds.

Wow, this stuff is drinkable.

And then I noticed its subtle complexities. And they are subtle, but highly enjoyable.

The darkness of the taste is refreshing. I love dark milds and in the right mood I can devour stouts, but they are styles I turn to only when in the right frame of mind. Zeitgeist offers much of the dark coffee that I love in beer (but hate in coffee!), and hints of biscuity, chocolately, nutty joy that dark beers often revel in, whilst being one of the most drinkable beers I’ve ever tasted.

I use drinkable quite a lot when I’m reviewing. It’s very indicative, simple yet effective at conveying the fact that a beer slips down the throat whether light or not.

Zeitgeist is the former, in abundance. They could advertise this stuff next to Malteser’s and even with the weight of the bottle the dark liquid would easy outfloat it’s hollow chocolate counterparts.

At 4.9% Zeitgeist is deceptively, deceptively strong, and from an uninspiring first sip, it is really a very interesting beer.

My first bottle of Zeitgeist developed from an unassuming start to the point where I couldn’t believe it was finished and I ended up craving more. This is a beer that might not tickle your tastebuds like a hop monster, but will go some way to satisfy my darker, thirstier urges that is very, very, easy to drink!

Right it was day two of the Super 8′s yesterday in the Twenty20 World cup and England took a good old tonking off the Saffers. Let’s see if we could get our own back by pitting one of own nation’s fine ales against the Cape shandy that Smithy and his boys will have been sitting down to last night.

South African – Castle Lager, 5.0% abv

In to bat first is the South African opener. I had mine ice cold, just how I like my lagers on a warm day, but have to admit that it hasn’t really kept it’s cool under the pressure out in the middle. I like the fact that it was flavoursome and malty for a lager, justifying it’s premium tag. It was, however, a little disappointing in terms of texture. Oddly, because I usually find lager too fizzy, this feels strangely flat in the mouth.

Score (out of 20) – Good opening partnership but a disappointing middle order – 8

Blighty – Extra Special ASDA Golden Ale, 4.5% abv

I purchased this beer in advance, hoping the weather would respect the cricket and allow me a clear crisp evening outside on the patio. It did not. Having said that, the beer is actually maltier that it’s golden appearance suggests and, while it is by no means heavy or dark, it has a sturdier backbone than I was expecting. I would therefore say that it is probably more suited to a crisp springtime evening than the strong midday sun.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with this ale and I expect that it is widely, and relatively cheaply, available through ASDA supermarkets. Certainly it is worth a taste to see if you agree with my opinion that, while it does not have the sweetness and finesse required to find itself on any shortlists for great golden ales, it grinds out a solid win for the English code of the game.

Score (out of 20) – consistently above average throughout without shining, ground out the win – 14