#pale lagers

In some ways, this was a nice find: a beer I'd never seen before and was wondering how to track down. Until, that is, I accidentally spotted it through a shop doorway not far from my house whilst out for a run.

As soon as the sun finally came out, it was time to wander back to Lordship Lane and liberate a bottle or two from the fridges at my local Eastern European bodega, which I didn't actually know existed until this point.

Brewed in St. Petersburg, Russia, Baltika No. 3 is strangely hard to find in the UK. Strange because the No. 7—which I assume to be pretty much identical—is all over the place. It's a regular fixture in any branch of Spoons, for a start. There are probably some other numbers in the range. Who would know.

Initially, it's hard to find anything to say about this beer to make it sound interesting. It simply isn't. It's a bottle of 4.8% lager with quite a smart label. It's cold. It tastes of lager. The bottle is quite big. If it were more than 5°C on my park bench this afternoon it might even be quite refreshing.

But there is a little bit more than that going on in there. There's a fairly solid malt base, a faint aroma that I guess is from a Noble hop, such as Saaz, and some vanilla ice cream notes that suggest the brewers have at least tried, even if they are owned by Carlsberg these days.

Fine. Nothing life-changing to see here, but this isn't a terrible beer.

Facts and Figures

Falcon Export

Carlsberg Sverige AB, Sweden

Euro Pale Lager - 5.2% ABV

FIRST BEER FROM SWEDEN! And it's my first beer in over a couple weeks which isn't too normal for me but budget cuts are in place after all my money was wasted away in two separate trips to Canada. God Canada, you're way too expensive. I need to stop going.

What The Hell Did I Just Read? Pretentious Reviewer Excerpt (SWEDISH EDITION)

Burk från SB. Luktar malt och bröd. Smakar malt och bröd. Ganska mkt alkohol slår igenom.

Some guy from Sweden on ratebeer.com

Special thanks to my coworker Sarah for bringing this back to me from her vacation. What a gem. And if you guys want to win my heart over, all you have to do is travel and bring back some foreign beer to me. 

Perhaps I missed a trick by not covering this Munich-brewed lager during October. Or at least during Oktoberfest, much of which—in a rare departure from the traditional Teutonic common-sense approach to matters—is in September.

In fact, this one had been sat around the kitchen for a while before I noticed the Mindestens haltbar bis Ende date on the bottle. I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds fairly sure about it, so we'd better get a move on.

Behind that quite handsome, ornate label sits a predictably pale, golden lager with a thinnish head of white froth which doesn't hang around.

On cracking open the bottle and pouring, there's a strong waft of a beery, slightly stale aroma that's neither alluring nor especially offputting.

There isn't a great deal of flavour of course: German lagers tend to be made for drinking by the Steinful and getting heartily yet pragmatically sloshed in the Bierkeller rather than savouring slowly by the fire.

There's a sort of maltiness in there somewhere, along with some strangely sharp-tasting fruit notes, but not even the faintest hint of hops, at least to my palate, which admittedly is more accustomed to gigantic American-style IPAs and whatnot.

All in all, Augustiner Hell isn't an unpleasant beer by any means, and might be quite refreshing if drunk chilled in the Biergarten in the Munich sun, but it's hard to get excited about this one.

Facts and Figures

Now then. Finally an actual bottle of pale lager that has no pretensions of being anything else. There are—perhaps unsurprisingly—very few of these in The Book, and whilst I'm by no means a lager drinker, I'm willing to consider that the handful that are in there are chosen for a reason.

Apparently Ichiban (meaning "the first") is made with the single, first pressing of the wort in the mash tun. The finer points of the mechanics of brewing are lost on me, but I suppose that must be the beery equivalent of making extra virgin olive oil.

Kirin Ichiban certainly looks the part, with its very smart silver and gold embossed label featuring Japanese text and an ornate depiction of what seems to be a horse/dragon hybrid creature.

It's pretty fizzy and pale, as befits a lager, with a generous frothy white head. There's a nice malty whiff to it that I'm starting to learn is typical of the better quality examples of the style.

Ichiban is actually rather tasty. It's fuller-bodied than expected, and very refreshing, but with enough of bitter finish to make this really quite a satisfying bottle of beer. Not bad at all.

Incidentally, I note that my bottle is actually brewed under licence in the UK, by Wells & Young's of all people. It would be interesting to see how the original Japanese version compares.

Facts and Figures