Brew Review: Heineken Lager Beer

This is the first time I am trying this beer since my beer enlightenment. Previously, I've tried it before, but it never really impressed itself on me, and plus, I threw away half a can since I obviously didn't know how to appreciate beer back then.

I took this beer out of my stash to try. I got home today after work at about 6PM, and then chilled an R.T.P. can in the fridge and freezer alternately for about 3 hours.

Out of the can, the beer poured a golden straw colour with a dense head. The head took a little coaxing to come out. Halfway through the pour, with my beer pouring experience, I decided that this beer really needed a little more agitation in the pour, so I ended up doing just that and I achieved a perfect two finger head.

The nose was a good sign that the beer was not going to be a disappointment. The nose was malty, with a metallic halo, which I find is very characteristic of beers coming from cans. Upon further sniffing, there is a very distinct aroma of toasted wheat; this is not immediately apparent, but reveals itself subtly but not quietly.

 Carbonation is strong at first, showing itself as strong angry bubbles fizzing from the bottom of my weizen glass to contribute to the head, but dies down quickly.

After a while, the head dies down to reveal a more macrobubbly head that is about half an inch thick. It does not recede to form a halo - it stays floating like a cloud on top of the beer.

In the palate, however, is where this euro lager truly shines. Compared to its cousin from Sweden, also a Euro lager, the Mariestads reviewed in a previous post, this is lighter in body, more casual, friendly and inviting, with its toasted wheat and malt nose, and digestives and biscuits to balance out the moderately hopped body. The beer is a lot less mineral than the Tiger previously reviewed, and there is good texture and mouthfeel - the residual sugars dance on your tongue in a tango with the other simple, one dimensional notes that are somehow simple but harmonious.

The yeast does not show itself immediately, it hides in between the hops and I think that it is very charming indeed because it isn't that outrightly savory from the get go. It manages to hide the umami and stay refreshing. There is a hint of grain in the palate right about here, and I cannot decide if the fleeting teasing flavor was that or barley or rice. Nonetheless, a very pleasant dance on the palate.

 Nearing the end of the beer, the head thickens to form a one inch high macro bubbly head which contributes to the moderate lacing seen in the photo below. The finish is short with a wash of hops that coats your tongue and makes it water, making it a very competent thirst quencher.

Overall, I enjoyed this beer, and the weizen glass was empty before I knew it.

Component Intensities:

Malt: 5/10

Yeast: 5/10

Hops: 6/10

Overall Ratings:

Nose: 6/10

Body: 7/10

Finish: 5/10

Total: 18/30

N.B.: The component intensities are a bit low, not because the beer is not good; it is because it is a euro lager that manages to stay light without staying dilute. Stylistically, being able to stray on the light side without being the least bit diluted is a triumph. The beer is very one-dimensional, very simple and basic beer, but manages to charm with the well integrated and quality components. If anything, it is let down by its length of finish, regrettably, a little too short. 

It is not a complex beer. But that does not mean that it is not good at all.

A very good example of a standard euro lager by Heineken. Its performance to price ratio is very good; but drinking this one-dimensional beer everyday would leave me bored by like, what, day 4? 

I know what I'm tasting, and this beer is not lacking in quality and craftsmanship. For a million gallon lager, the quality definitely is higher than what the market expects, and its other competitors in the market.

Brew Review: Tiger Beer

So Singapore celebrated its 50th birthday this year - a good cause for celebration given all that we've managed to achieve.

My dad and I stumbled upon a good deal on Tiger beer, $2.20 per can, so we went to get a carton. 

The can design differed from the plain old Tiger can design because our own home-grown brewery, Asia-Pacific Breweries (APB) is in on the whole SG50 celebrations thing as well. 

For one, I very much prefer this can over the standard blue Tiger can. The livery just screams Singapore; and it looks brighter and less drab than the dark blue/silver can.

Isn't that much better than the ordinary can?

It says that the beer has won gold championships in Geneva and Paris. I wonder who gave them the medals? As always, as with wine, be careful about buying a drink just because it's won medals.

Out of the can, the beer pours a very large foamy head with microbubbles that refuses to die down. The staying power is there, different than other euro lagers that I've tried so far.

Even after a few swigs, the head still stays - it thins down to about half an inch.

Carbonation is heavy at first but really doesn't stay in the beer for long. The carbonation dies down quickly to give a very flat beer.

This beer is not a good beer to drink. It is flat, weak, and smells weird. Out of the can, (and the nose does persist even in the weizen glass), the nose is strong and fierce; it smells of green vegetal hops (like freshly cut grass; I don't like it) with a little malt, and a hint of a metallic scent just around the corner of the nose like an olfactory halo.

The lager is weak, with no appreciable finish at all. The bark is stronger than the bite. In the mouth, it tastes like watered-down Mariestads with a featherweight hint of biscuit, but without any of its redeeming qualities. It is very lightly hopped and I think the hop quality must be really bad for the beer to taste this vegetal, green and grassy. The water that is used to make this beer is very, very mineral as well. In a beer, that's a bad thing.

A little yeast and residual sugar is apparent in the beer but it is not well integrated. The components are all very separate from each other and very one-dimensional. There is no complexity present in this beer at all.

The alcohol is not well hidden and goes down a bit warm on the throat.

This is, true to its name, a pale lager. It is very pale indeed. In fact, it pales in comparison to all the other beers that I've had so far. However, it is a good introductory beer for someone who has never tried beer before; not because it's easy to drink, but because it's very similar to plain water, which is what most of us are comfortable with drinking (ever seen someone live without water?).

Also true to it's label, the taste of this beer is just not there. It tastes like a tiger with no opposable thumbs tried to brew beer, and canned the outcome as Tiger beer. 

Component Intensities:

Malt: 2/10

Yeast: 2/10

Hops: 3/10

Overall Ratings:

Nose: 2/10

Body: 3/10

Finish: 2/10

Total: 7/30

Conclusion: I do not like this beer. I would have gladly returned the entire carton of beer in exchange for just three pints of Paulaner Hefeweizen. 

Brew Review: Little Creatures Bright Ale

I had this beer at Bacon and Booze (you can find a list of all beers that they have on their webpage) at Punggol Ranch, a 5 minute walk from the Punggol Jetty. On a lazy Saturday after getting some work done, I called up my parents and decided to bring them out to dinner. Our dog, Tabby, came along with us.

After walking the boardwalk, we went over to the very hipster restaurant/watering hole and got down to ordering the food.

The ale pours orangey, and immediately, the first impression that I got was, oh, lots of tropical fruits on the nose. This beer is really really reminiscent of a Gewurtztraminer and the nose comprises of bright notes like lychee, passionfruit, lemon (citrus component). Drunk cold, the mouthfeel was bright and smooth with a good lagom feel to it.

Just out of the bottle, the head was small and the carbonation was very moderate. Nothing too heavy, and this takes some getting used to to get a nice fluffy head, if you're pouring from bottle to glass.

I thought it was weird for them to give a pint glass when this beer wasn't even a pint! The bottle contains 330ml of orangey Australian booze. 

The beer is very unique given the very aromatic nose, and very refreshing indeed. It's good as a thirst quencher, which I expect the Australians need a lot given the heatwaves that they have there. 

In the mouth, there is a top taste note of digestives, and the malt comes through weakly through that component. Here is a picture of me enjoying the beer with my dad at the ranch.

 As the beer warms up, the nose changes drastically. All of a sudden, the notes of honey and lemon becomes very strong and almost dominate the beer nose. Taste wise, the hoppiness opens up to give a very raw, bitter kick that is very characteristic. I could recognize this beer in a blind taste test. This beer has a lot of character. The hops become insanely apparent and insist on being more than detectable throughout the finish. Even Little Creatures themselves admit that they throw loads of hops into it.

The finish is well balanced with a very peachy and herby undercurrent, and the hops are the Pied Piper leading the orchestra of the finish. The hops are of a very high quality and it shows in the finish.

Parking is not impossible if you come during dinner time (7-ish) as I find that a lot of people drive off during dinner time; probably to eat at home. Moreover, the heat starts to die down and the place becomes very pleasantly cool with the sea breeze in your hair. It's family friendly and seems to make my dad happy (see picture below).  "HULK... SMAAAASH!"

Overall though, it is a very structured beer that is unique amongst the beers that I've tasted, for the sheer raw power of the nose. It complements the body very well with the notes of honey lemon, peach and lychee balancing out the digestives very well. Very hoppy finish with the sheer bitterness leading the way, and the other notes slowly trailing behind. The hop component is transcendent and the bitterness is very pleasant because of the high quality of hops that is used. 

The body, sadly, is very one dimensional with only the digestives showing up very shyly. 

Best suited to hot days when your air conditioner has broken down and you've given up on fixing it. This beer both cools and refreshes you and helps you feel a little bit better about the broken AC unit - it gives you even more reason to drink up.

Prost!

Component Intensities:

Malt: 4/10

Yeast: 3/10

Hops: 8/10

Overall Ratings:

Nose: 8.5/10

Body: 3/10

Finish: 8/10

Total: 21.5/30

Brew Review: Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel

Right.

Here goes!

The Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel is a contradiction. Dunkel is German for 'dark', and weiss is german for 'white'. So, translated into English, to the layman, it would be the Erdinger White Beer Dark.

Confused? I was, initially, too. Well, until you note that weiss can also mean wheat. So there you have it! Weissbier is a style, and so is dunkel! There are two kinds of weissbier (hefe, and kristall). Respectively referring to the cloudy (yeast suspended) weissbier and the filtered crystal clear weissbier.

The Erdinger Weissbier Dunkel is a dark lager wheat beer with an ABV of 5.30%. It doesn't explicitly say so, but if I were to classify this beer, I'd put it under the hefeweizen (cloudy wheat beer) category. It pours a cloudy dark brown with a dense, smooth, microbubbly head.

I managed to find this beer on offer at Cold Storage for $12 for two. Each bottle contains 500ml of goodness, which pours nicely into my sahm weizen glass well.

Everyone should try this at least once - drink beer out of non-traditional glasses. In this first sit down tasting of the Dunkel, I paired the beer with just normal homecooked food, and served it in a Schott Zwiesel Bordeaux glass. The aromas are well concentrated and the carbonation is better managed. Besides, it feels better drinking out of a glass with a thin rim. This allowed me to detect the nuances and various notes in the nose. Coming through very strongly are the notes of chocolate, toffee, caramel, and it smells yeasty. The aroma is sweet and malty. This is one shiok beer...

I finished the first one too quick. It's that shiok. Poured the second one into a weizen glass this time round. Aroma is tamer but all the components previously detected are still lurking around and volatile.

This time, I paired it with mooncakes (a surprisingly good pairing).

On the body, banana, yeast, caramel and dark chocolate come through very strongly. There is no doubt that what I am drinking is a beer of very high quality. This beer is rich, is dark, and is probably the closest you can get to drinking liquid bread. I would not hesitate to pair this beer with a fruitcake. But... that will have to wait till January. I'm usually too cheapskate to buy fruitcakes during the Christmas season. I buy them in January when no one else wants them, and the supermarkets usually offer huge discounts for them.

*evil grin*

Look at that glorious head! It does die down quickly though.

The flavors are superbly well integrated. Like I said, the moment this enters your mouth you know it is a quality beer that you are imbibing. The sweetness and the yeast balance themselves out nicely. The sweetness is not so cloying because it is balanced out by the slight salty tang that the yeast gives it. It is a very umami beer that would doubtlessly work very well with many food pairings. The alcohol is very well hidden.

Because the aroma is sweet and malty, not hoppy at all, it can be drunk as a dessert beer, but because of the richness and the umami component to the beer, it can accompany rich cuts of meat as well. 

Every time I drink this beer, there is banana on the palate, just on the edges of the tongue, tempting you to drink more to intensify the banana note. 

The slight hoppiness in the mouth gives it a very pleasant herbal feel to round off the cloying rich mouthfeel of this excellent beer without any significant bitterness.

I cannot detect any cereals or grains in the mouth or in the nose, but the head is very biscuity in aroma and it is very pleasantly malty.

The umami flavors dominate this beer just as they round it off - as I said before, it is a very very rich beer, but still very versatile, friendly and approachable. I mean, who doesn’t like chocolates, toffee, and bananas? This is a glorious beer.

However, the finish is what lets this beer down. Even though the finish is nice and long, there is a metallic note always ringing through the middle finish despite it coming from a bottle and being bottle conditioned. The consolation is that the metallic note does not last for all of the finish, it is only transient.

A minor letdown to an otherwise wonderful beer. Try to stave off the unpleasant note to the finish by taking one more long swig. You won’t regret it. I promise. 

Component Intensities:

Malt: 7/10

Yeast: 9/10

Hops: 3/10

Overall Ratings:

Nose: 8.5/10

Body: 9/10

Finish: 7/10

Total: 24.5/30

Additional Notes: Very versatile and rich beer. However, dunkel isn't everybody's cup of tea. Stylistically, it is very different as compared to common pale lagers and the richness needs some getting used to. I like to drink this beer slightly warmer than usual - I go for about 12 deg celsius. This is partly so because the higher temperatures increase the volatile compounds and makes the alcohol more apparent, which in this beer's case, is a good thing. I always follow the Mariestad's (see review here) with this beer. They are staples in my stash. P.S.: thanks Weilin for gifting me two additional bottles of malty dark happiness!

This... this is a beautiful beer!

Brew Review: Mariestads Export Lager

This beer can be found in IKEA at the Food Market (that's the place where you buy the famous IKEA meatballs in frozen form so you can go home and ask Maria to cook it for you). It costs $3.50 per can.

It's in a bright golden can in a matte finish. The livery is all gold and red, and it looks very garang. It immediately strikes you as higher quality than standard Tiger because of the finish on the can.

APB, take a lesson from them!

This beer pours a huge head full of macro bubbles that dissipates quickly, leaving you with a halo around the edge of the glass.

The first time I tried this lager, I tried it in a champagne flute, and I realized later that it was a huge mistake simply because of the heavy carbonation in the beer.

The head is damn big. And dies quickly.

This pale lager beer... is a super beer. I always start off a beer session with Mariestad’s - maybe because it’s so friendly and light and well balanced.

 The beer smells distinctly of honey, malt, citrus (mostly lemon) the first time you get to it. The beer, being a lager, is moderately to heavily hopped but it is evident the quality of the hop is not there yet. The body is cereal, biscuity, and is very obviously grainey in taste - it tastes a little of rice. It’s quite refreshing to be able to taste the grains and the cereal in a beer for once. It makes you wanna knock back on one more can again and again and again just so you taste the grains one more time.

Either that or I’m an alcoholic.

The finish is silky smooth. Goes down smooth and rounds off sweetly. There is no other way to describe the finish but round. The usual lager hoppy kick, surprisingly, is almost non-existent - it is replaced by a wash of biscuit hitting you in the palate.

See, it foamed up like crazy on another occasion as well, proving conclusively that it's not my fault!

Overall a good beer to chug down and even appreciate on a daily basis, but it's a superb ordinary beer. This should be the lowest common denominator all beer breweries should brew beer by. Refreshing and light beer that can even be had for breakfast. 

Ok, and when it's appreciated in a Weizen glass, the appeal goes up 6253%.

The flavors become more nuanced and the hoppy kick is better integrated. Not that it had a lot of hoppiness to begin with, but something about the integration of the hops is wrong with the nose concentration you get from a flute. Like the hops don't integrate well with the malt and yeast.

Component Intensities:

Malt: 6/10

Yeast: 1/10

Hops: 3/10

Overall Ratings:

Nose: 6.5/10

Body: 7/10

Finish: 8/10

Total: 21.5/30

P.S.: My friend Jon bought me a dozen of these beers and I couldn't be happier. This is a very very good staple beer.

Opening Post

This introductory post is to start off the Singapore Beer Review blog page.

I am the only contributor to this page for now; my name is Russell. I'm 19 this year.

I started out when I was younger drinking cheap wine. I thought that I'd slowly develop a taste for wine by drinking it regularly. At that time, on the student budget I had, I was stuck with Barefoot, Long Flat, the Wolf Blass Eaglehawk, Brooks Brothers, and the like. Contrary to my belief, I never did fall in love with those wines, and I still struggle to push them down my throat.

I must have felt like the coolest kid at that time, opening a bottle of wine in the middle of the night (usually cab sav, cos it sounds the coolest), and drinking it with my mum's stash of Godiva chocolate (which I later learnt is a great injustice to both the wine AND the chocolate - an awful pairing). Oh, but there's an exception to the rule - I found that Long Flat does an acceptable Moscato - it's one of the rare gems that come out of cheap buys - it is smooth, the alcohol is well hidden, the fruit and acid are well balanced - its as fruity as it is sweet and it only costs $17. Many Moscatos try to hard to imitate the aromatics of Gewurztraminers and smell like peaches/lychees, but this one is true to the grape and just smells like grape - which by the way is how a Moscato should smell like.

Mind you - up till this point, all I've tried consciously was Australian wine.

I knew a lot of people liked wines - and for crying out loud, I couldn't figure out why. I mean, wine tasted awful to me at that time!

I was only really opened up to wine when I found a wine I really liked on the recommendation of someone dear. It was my first French bottle - a nice old 4th growth Bordeaux red - I was blown away by the complexities in the wine. Figs, jam, coffee in the nose and a nice gamey taste full of umami hit me; I will never forget the final astringent squeeze on the tongue during the finish that I have come to associate with St. Julien wines. I've had many St. Julien beauties from many different years and every single one of them has managed to blow me away. In order, I've drank the Chateau Branaire-Ducru (Duluc-Ducru), both first and second wines of many different years, Chateau Lagrange (first and second wines), Chateau Talbot. Then I realized why people fall in love with wine - because there are genuinely good wines out there!

The purpose of this blog is to demystify the wine/beer culture that is propagated by people who want to seem smarter than they really are.

And really, the same can go for beer as well. (hehe, see what I did there?)

I could effortlessly draw a parallel between the wine and beer journeys that I've had.

For beer, I started on my journey an even longer time ago, when I was even younger than when I started out with wine, but I only just really got into it. I used to drink back at the back of the block (back then, mostly Belgian and German beers) - I liked them because they were not hoppy at that time and very friendly and drinkable. But to be honest, if you asked me to point out the differences between those beers and Tiger, I wouldn't be able to tell you. Honestly. Back then, it was all chug. 

But I drank because it was cool - again, it was a silly thing to do. But I did it anyway.

Right now, I'm getting started on my beer journey and I'm learning along the way just like all of you guys who are reading this page right now. I'll be applying my wine knowledge to describe the beers that I've tasted so that I can give you guys fresh perspective. Of course, to keep the content here fresh and sparkling (like a draft beer, heh), I might be putting in some wine reviews as well.

So, prost!

And plus, I won't be reviewing those funny beers that you can't find in Singapore (I mean, no point reading about beers that you chuay boh right!) I'll be starting on one review today just to get the ball rolling!