Zywiec

Zywiec (5.7% abv) is another Polish lager which is readily available in the UK, and from Tesco of course! Basically its similar to other Polish lagers, except it has more 'Pilsner' like qualities to it such as grassy hop character and a decent diacetyl hit (ie butterscotch like flavours). As mentioned in an earlier post, Zywiec is actually a small brewing empire who use a marketing strategy of grandeur. The self proclaim to be the biggest and best selling beer in Poland, which is actually false as apparently Tyskie is bar far the leading brand. The brewery was founded in 1852 by the Habsburg family when the Zywiec area was actually part of the Austrio-Hungarian empire. It was nationalised by Poland after the second world war and then sold of to Heineken in the mid-1990's to raise revenue for the state after the fall of communism in 1989. Otherwise an interesting beer! http://www.zywiec.com.pl/

Warka

An obscure beer pick up from Tesco, Warka (5.7% abv) is a pale, but strong lager from the Polish Zyweic brewing empire. The beer tastes pretty much like all polish lagers do, which is pretty plain with a spicy alcohol type aftertaste. These beers always tend to be really strong as well and you feel pretty smashed after just a couple of beers. Besides these few trivial facts, i don't really know much about the beers. I say just go and check them out? Website

Kronenbourg 1664

Kronenbourg 1664 (5%) is a continental lager of ambiguous French-German ancestry originating in the Alsace region (originally Germany, now France). I think to show my respect for the French people (aka surrender monkeys); I am going to say that it is a German beer! The 1664 in the name comes from when the first master brewer received his ticket to brew. The beer is a decent lager for one that is brewed in the UK under licence and uses ‘special’ hops from the Alsace region. People keep telling me that Kronenbourg is a very malty beer, but I can’t really taste that much malt, but it is the only widely available ‘standard’ lager here in the UK that you can actually taste the flavouring hops. It is actually rather hoppy for a lager! The beer is reportedly the beverage of choice for the French Foreign Legion where they drink it by the gallon and it even gets a pretty good rap here in the UK considering that its French – ur um German. The brewery even has its own wacky website: http://www.k1664.co.uk/
I enjoyed mine in can form which I picked up from the 7-Up, which is the mother of all off-licences. As a special bonus, I even got an extra 60 mL free of charge, which is very generous seeing as it’s brewed by Scottish and Newcastle. I have never received anything free from a Scot before. Anyhow I will put my prejudices aside for now and focus on drinking some new beers to write about next week!

Heineken

Ok I have to apologise for another sub standard Euro Lager! Again this one was a gift from our house guests and it would be rude of me not to indulge! This can came in a wifebeating 500mL!
Heineken is a mass produced Dutch euro-lager mega swill that comes in a green can. Every person who has been exposed to any form of advertising will know the brand and along with Fosters and Budweiser is probably the world’s most famous beer brand.
The brewery describes their lager as:

100% Barley malt, choice hops and pure water give this brew unsurpassed clarity.

Which is more than a little surprising?
Here are what some other punters have to say!

This beer reminds of the crowd at a sporting event... "Over rated, over rated..." OK beer at best, not so OK when you consider the price. Terrible aftertaste, reminiscent of Coors Light

And

Everyone knows this one, and in the bottles it tastes too apple-ish and light - not to mention its easy to look like a DB with it in front of you. However, I had it on tap for the first time due to a tasty price and I was pleasantly surprised. Still pretty watery, but highly drinkable.

And

From the bottle. Really nasty beer. Clear urine color. No real aroma. Tastes very bitter but yet with no real flavor to back it up. Not much to say about it, its just bad. I’d rather drink Michelob Ultra to be honest....

I could continue but I have already made my point!

Stella Artois

Ok, things are officially going from bad to worse! We currently have house guests who have travelled from the greatest country on earth Australia. Now down under Stella falls into the 'boutique' beer category and is considered a 'Premium' lager, however nobody informed my buddy Mark that Stella in the UK is actually brewed under licence in the UK and is pretty much akin to cat's pi$$. Here journalist wannabe Leah Simpson gives us the lowdown on Stella's bad rep.

Leah Simpson argues that the opprobrium attached to Britain’s favourite premium lager is really justanother excuse to have a go at working-class men. It is bad news for the street brawling, wife beating and - God forbid - football chanting yobs of Britain - or as some might call them, Stella Artois drinkers. According to arecent feature in the Daily Mail, local pubs are dropping the popular lager by the barrel-load in favour of more upmarket alternatives. Ironically, Stella, which bears the slogan ‘reassuringly expensive’, has been accused of attracting a rowdy, bad lad drinker. In response, Stella’s makers, InBev, plan to release a more ‘continental’ set of advertisements around the country in an attempt to reclaim the beer’s former reputation. What was once a premium lager is fast becoming the poor man’s pint. With a higher alcohol content than most brand names, Stella is the drink of choice for the unfortunate pauper who wants more booze for his bucks. Nevertheless, pubs searching for a better class of clientele are swapping the downtrodden lager in favour of trendier brands like San Miguel - despite the fact that San Miguel packs even more of a punch, at 5.4 per cent alcohol, than the slightly weaker Stella. When Stella first hit these shores, it enjoyed success by catering to the average middle-class male who wanted a little more for his money than the typical, urine-weak lagers that British drinkers had
tolerated for so long. But somewhere along the way, greediness took its toll and Stella was promoted to a mass market, undermining that ‘reassuringly expensive’ image. Suddenly there were regular cheap offers in supermarkets. When three quid or so could get you four cans of the beer, it inescapably became more accessible than other brands to the very drinkers - some say, yobs - that the brewers set out to avoid in the first place. The result has been a reaction against the brand. Sales of the now infamous lager in stores have declined by five per cent recently. If nothing else, the fact that sales have fallen while the panic about ‘Binge Brits’ getting hammered and fighting every weekend carries on regardless,
rather suggests that our drinking culture has less to do with what we actually drink than how much. Labelling Stella as ‘the wife beater’ might have started out as a bit of popular slang tinged with a bleak sense of humour. To take the label seriously is outlandish, implying that drinkers of a particular brand are more prone to be violent towards their partners. It’s also rather bizarre. Stella advertises itself with twee black-and-white commercials about continental priests in days gone by having a sneaky bottle or two. That hardly suggests that Stella is the obvious beer of choice for the inebriated thug going home to take his frustrations out on the missus. But, like many such lazy associations in the past, Stella’s reputation has more to do with denigrating working-class men than anything to do with the stuff inside the cans. So, working-class men are assumed to be constantly on the edge of brutal violence, with a whiff of beer all that is required to send them over the edge. That would suggest that domestic violence is commonplace, a notion reinforced by the suggestion that ‘one in four’ women have been the victims of it. But surveys that quote such figures can only do so by expanding the definition of violence to include things - like being treated badly or being forced to do menial tasks - which even the ‘victims’ themselves do not consider to be violent acts. We don’t need to have too much sympathy for the folks at InBev. While sales of Stella have fallen in UK and Western Europe, such figures are contrasted by strong sales in other countries. Total group revenues increased to €3.72billion, from €3.38billion. So, evidently, the drink is still going strong. It seems that it’s just the UK that is losing its taste for Stella. Unfortunately, it seems that our pundits and commentators haven’t lost their taste for lazy stereotypes.

Interestingly enough though I didn't mind the Stella. It is what it is and its still Beer! Even more surprising I didn't awake with a hangover this morning which is commonplace for Stella.

PS. BTW I had three cans of the old wife beater!