Anyone who's ever had a beer will most likely have had a pale lager. It's the industry standard drink, and has been dumbed down for decades, reduced to the status of a commodity for massive beer corporations. I thought we'd take a look at three offerings from craft breweries, from Ireland the UK and from the U.S, and see how they measure up.
Let's start with the home team, 8 Degrees brewing with their Barefoot Bohemian Pilsner. It pours very much like the fizzy yellow beer everyone is used to, and to be frank, didn't smell too different either. Lots of grassy smells, with maybe a hint of maltiness. Taste-wise, at only 4% I wasn't expecting a huge amount of body to the beer, and I didnt get much. It seems pointless to me to call yourself a craft brewery and then make a product that tastes just like the macro lagers you're trying to replace! Nice and light for a Summer's day I suppose.
Next up is the infamous Brewdog with their 77 Lager. This is also a pilsner-style lager, although this one poured with a much nicer head, ice-white and nicely pillowey, and it stuck around to the end of the glass leaving nice lacing.Slightly hazy, it gave lots of fruit in the aroma, particularly orange and citrus, with a little bit of hops. No problem telling this one apart from your supermarket staples, it gives a nice crisp, fruity taste, with just enough hop bitterness to make you want that next sip, at ten Euro for six bottles in many off licences, this is hard to beat.
Last but not least is an offering from Brooklyn Brewery based out of, you guessed it, Brooklyn New York. Their take on a lager is actually a Vienna Style lager as opposed to a Pilsner. We'll leave it to the nerds to fight over the difference. The obvious difference is the colour, which is far darker than our previous examples. Being an american craft beer, it's also more hop-forward than our other beers, although by no means 'Hoppy'. Again we poured a nice frothy head which was going nowhere. The taste offers a nice malt backbone, with a slight caramel sweetness. This is a perfect crossover beer for anyone trying to expand their taste in beer and get away from the Heineken/Carlsberg/Stella cartels.
My personal favourite, taking both taste and value into account is the 77 Lager from Brewdog. Cheap, easy to find and a great quality beer, what's not to love?
