Monday, January 24, 2011

Beer tasting round-up

Looking through my tasting notes, I see that there are many beers I have tasted that I have not written about on this blog. Therefore this post will focus on six of those beers.

Hansa Premium is one of the most popular pale lagers from the Norwegian brewery. This is a fizzy beer that builds a large head that dissolves quickly. It has aromas of grass and wheat, where the wheat malt dominates. In the mouth it is watery with a wheaty touch before a somewhat hoppy finish. This is a nice session beer, but I would prefer it with a fuller body.

Beck's is one of Germany's best selling pale lagers. I have had it earlier both from bottle or tap, but this was the first time tasting Beck's from can. It is an inoffensive pale lager with an aroma of malts and sugar. In the mouth hints of sweetness and some malts dominate the palate before a semibitter finish with some hoppiness. This is an average pale lager that I feel is on the boring side.

The pale lager Småland from Sweden is a much more interesting beer. This is a beer that has tastes of toffee, biscuit and bread. It is a lovely lager, and I feel it is the best Swedish produced lager I have tasted.

Zeunert is also a very good Swedish pale lager. In the mouth it is a malty beer with a touch of hops before a partly bitter finish. The spirit based taste found in several Swedish starköl beers if fortunately not to be found in Zeunert.

Fuller's ESB is one of the British bitters available at Vinmonopolet in Norway. It is a very good beer with a nose of fruits, lemon and some yeast. The beer has not much carbonation and builds a medium sized head. In the mouth there is some caramel and some citrus before a finish with toffee taking the lead. Lovely!

Innis & Gunn is also British. This is a pale beer with little carbonation and a medium sized head. There is toffee in the nose, while the beer has a distinct taste of caramel and toffee. I liked this beer for a while, but then I got bored of it. A bottle is more than enough, as the taste tells me that this is no session beer.

1 comment:

  1. I have had a Hansa beer..Forgot whether or not this was from Germany or Norway..Either way it's hard to find here. As with Becks, our US supply is brewed by none other than Anheiser Busch now and it tastes like utter crap. This used to be a good session lager back when. However, St Pauli Girl is a great alternative.

    Gil

    ReplyDelete