Time for Inedit

Inedit is a beer with a different look on the beer shelves. The designers at the Spanish Estrella Damm brewery have made a beautiful bottle that makes me think about champagne bottles. The bottles therefore easily stand out next to beer cans and 0.5 litre and 0.33 litre beer bottles in Norwegian supermarkets.

The beer is sold in 0.75 litre bottles. It is especially made as a beer to go with food. Inedit is supposed to be enjoyed from white wine glasses, and the bottle should be kept cold in an ice tin. All this promises an exclusive beer. But what about the content in the bottle? According to the brewery Inedit is a combination of lager beer and wheat beer. I therefore chose to try out Inedit in a wheat beer glass.


Inedit is a pale coloured beer with a lot of carbonation, but it builds a medium sized head. In the nose there is banana and a touch of malts. The beer is sweet with some bananas and herbs. In all, Inedit is not a stellar beer. I find it pretty average, but perhaps it would be be much better than a boring San Miguel or Estrella Damm pale lager with a plate of tapas?

Lagers in Spain

Two months has passed since I left Lanzarote, so a report on Spanish beers is long overdue. These days Spring is in the air here in Norway, and the bliss of warm weather and beach life is a memory. So are also Spanish beers, although I can find San Miguel in several supermarkets here at home in Norway. The stronger version, San Miguel Especial, is sold at the stately alcohol outlet Vinmonopolet, and Estrella Damm can be found here and there in shops.

Beers in a Lanzarote supermarket. Here are Spanish beers and international brands.

I did not try (nor find) any Spanish craft beers, so I drank mostly Spanish lagers. They were found more or less everywhere. In Lanzarote the Canarian brands Tropical and Dorada seem to have a large share of the market. Mainland beers where also common, but according to local people the Canarians prefer their own beers to the mainland brands.

Local Canarian lager Tropical from draught.

My favourite Spanish lager was Tropical. It is brewed on Gran Canaria and is commonly found everywhere in Lanzarote. Many restaurants sell this beer from draught, and in shops it can be found in bottles and cans. Tropical is s a pale lager with some malty taste. It is a little bit fizzy, but normally without a big head. This is a great thirst quencher, and I enjoyed it both by the pool, on the beach and on the terrace of my hotel room.

Dorada from tap.

Dorada is also a Canarian brand, but it hails from Tenerife. It is even lighter than Tropical in colour and very watery in taste.

Dorada from can.

There is also little carbonation in this beer, which falls through compared to Tropical. So does also Reina Ora from Gran Canaria. It is more tasty than Dorada with a more malty twist, but all in all both Reina Ora and Dorada are worse alternatives than Tropical.

A half litre of San Miguel as bought in a Chinese restaurant.

Mainland beers were easy to find in Lanzarote. San Miguel is available in several versions. From draught this was a light coloured lager with some carbonation and little head. It was more sugary than the Canarian lagers, and the San Miguel Especial version from bottle and can had an even more sugary feel. San Miguel Especial is stronger in alcohol than its Canarian cousins, and it has an alcohol taste in it as well. My favourite is the San Miguel version with less alcohol. It is tastier, but compared to Tropical the Canarian lager is my favourite.

This glass of Cruzcampo was bought in the mountains of Lanzarote.

Cruzcampo lacked most of the sugary nature of San Miguel. Otherwise this was a pale lager with little taste and medium carbonation. This is a nice beer for warm Summer days, but it fells through compared with other Spanish beers.

Estrella Damm has more in common with San Miguel Especial than the Canarian beers. The sugary tones are very accentuated but it lacks some of the alcohol scents of its mainland relative. Estrella Damm is also maltier, but the combination of tastes in the less alcohol version of San Miguel makes for a better offer.

What to drink, then? And when? On cold Winter nights, I would rather have San Miguel Especial of all these beers. In warm Summer days Tropical is to be preferred. It is Ok from bottles and cans and best from tap. In Lanzarote it costs about 1 Euro from supermarkets. In bars you pay around 2 Euros for a half litre. This is a good price compared to Stella Artois and Carling, which can cost 3 to 5 Euros.

Spain (sort of)

The last part of January was spent in Lanzarote. I have never been to Spain before, but as Lanzarote is one of the Canary Islands, some might say that I have not visited the real Spain.

A rocky beach near the village Orzola.

The Canary Islands is a popular vacation spot for Norwegians in wintertime. Getting away from snow, ice and freezing temperatures is always nice when the alternative is sun, beach life and different food (and drink).

Timanfaya National Park is a must for tourists to Lanzarote. This is the
symbol of the park: "El Diablo" by the local artist César Manrique.

Lanzarote is not the most popular of the Canary Islands, but the international airport still has about 5.5 million visitors every year. The island is volcanic of origin, and lava stones and sand is to be found all over Lanzarote. The special Lanzarote rock formations are an interesting view, and the black surface gives the island a different character.

Volcanic mountains inside the Timanfaya National Park.

I stayed in Costa Teguise for a week, and these days this is a tourist machine. Most of the little town consists of hotels and tourist apartments. There are also many restaurants, pubs and bars - and almost all of them cater to the tourists. Waiters more often than not speak to you in English and German, and often you find British citizens as proprietors. Everywhere you hear English or German spoken - and here and there some Spanish. If you live in the UK, visiting Lanzarote must be like visiting a warm version of Blackpool.

English bitter is widely available from tap in Costa Teguise.

The hotel I stayed at had evening entertainment, but watching parrot shows and local dancing is not my cup of tea. Most evenings were thus spent outside the hotel. Watching soccer is one of my favourite pastimes, and I got to see two Liverpool games live in Lanzarote. Food was also tourist based. There was only one night I had Spanish food, but the tapas were good. I also had some Italian and Chinese food, and one of the days I treated myself to a large portion of English fish and chips. That was great - but greasy!

Beer from a Netto supermarket in Costa Teguise.

Here you can find both local beer from the Canary Islands,
Spanish brews and international labels.

As Costa Teguise is a tourist town, the English pubs had some of the popular beers sold in the UK. Lagers such as Carling and Stella were available together with various bitters and stouts. Tourists could also try Spanish and other European beers from both bottles and tap. I even found a restaurant catering for Germans that sold draughted Erdinger weizen. Unfortunately I did not have the time to try it, as I have earlier enjoyed several wheat beers from Belgium, Germany and the Czech Republic.

Spain is first of all a wine country, but the Spaniards also brew beers. I have heard of Spanish craft beers, but in Lanzarote I only found the most well known Spanish lager beers and some local brands. According to some of the local waiters I talked to, people from Lanzarote prefer beers from the Canary Islands. Gran Canaria has its Tropical beer, and from Tenerife hails Dorada. The same waiters also told me that mainland Spaniards do not like the Canarian beer, and they will prefer their San Miguel, Estrella Damm or Mahou.

More beers from a supermarket in Lanzarote. Spanish brands like Mahou, Dorada and Cruzcampo are sold together with German Warsteiner and American Budweiser.

Of Spanish beers, I only drank Spanish lager while visiting Lanzarote. I did not find any other Spanish beer styles in the shops or bars I visited. Spanish lagers are nice in the warm climate, but they were a big letdown compared to the Czech beers I tried while visiting Prague in December and January. Most of them lack taste, and some of them are sweeter than I prefer.

Lanzarote's airport is found just outside the island's largest town, Arrecife.
Here you can see the line for an EasyJet flight to Gatwick.

The next few posts on Beer Sagas will present my views on some of the Spanish beers I tasted in Lanzarote. What do I think about San Miguel? Should the Canarians be proud of Tropical? Is Dorada to be preferred compared to Mahou or Estrella Damm? And what about Reina Oro? Is that a dark horse?