5.4

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 5.5

Can from Euro Food Centre, Banbury. Bought for the new country tick, and consumed whilst watching Eurovision alongside a European buffet which was also mostly sourced from the excellent Euro Food Centre. Clear gold with a foamy white head and moderate to heavy fizz. Buttery and grassy with a light minerality and some dust in the mildly bitter finish. Better than I expected; unusually for a lager I actually almost enjoyed this one.

5

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5

Bottle, as Golden Pheasant. Pours clear gold. Floral, grain, little sulfur, little watery, little apricot. Light body. Fine.

5

Barva zlatava. Pena vysoka a hned pryc. Vune sladova, trochu nejakych citrusu. Chut sladova, nizsi horkost, dojezd do bonbonova, trochu kysely. Kukurice. Lehci az vodove telo. Zadna hitparada, cekal jsem neco pilsnerovateho. Tohle je sladsi euro lager. Druhy pokus cepovany. Sladovejsi, horkost stredni. Vodovejsi asi jo, ale ok velkolezak

5

12%

5.4

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5

Can, 0.5l. 5% ABV. Clear golden pour, one finger soapy white head, short lasting, no lacing. Sweet and grainy nose, pretty much average. Thin body, watery mouthfeel and texture, lively carbonation. Bittersweet taste, more on the bitter side. Usual lager taste, grains, malt, grass. Subtle hop bitterness. Short lasting finish, lingering bitterness. Average macro.

5

Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 5

Aroma 5. Appearance 3. Taste 5. Palate 2. Overall 10. Grain aroma. Taste of cereals, mid-sweet, and a hint of grass.

4.8

Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 5

Slovak Pilsener named after – and depicting – the humble pheasant, bottle from a Russian supermarket in Ghent. Snow white, thick, foamy, cobweb-lacing, coarse but very stable (iron-enhanced) head over a crystal clear, pure ‘old gold’ coloured beer with visible sparkling. Aroma initially lightstruck (the dreaded ‘cat pee’ effect) but otherwise exhibiting lightly toasted white bread, bitter garden weeds, minerals, dry bird seed, bitterroot extract and decorator’s wallpaper paste. Neutral onset, very fizzy, minerally and ‘clear’, sweetish-sourish dull graininess, slender but with a touch of white-breadiness (maltiness) to it still; strong glueish or indeed wallpaper paste-like side flavour, calcium-like minerality and a metallic ‘zing’ somewhere (though the latter does not dominate at all). Grassy hop bitter finish, short but still more bittering than your standard industrial pale lager, while this wallpaper paste flavour continues as well. Being so close to the Czech Republic (and having been united with it for a long time), it is no surprise that the Bohemian style pale lagers have their equivalent in neighboring Slovakia as well, but as this example demonstrates, the Slovak versions usually are no match for the Czech original. That said, I had way worse pale lagers than this one so that plastery effect and it being lightstruck aside, this is certainly above average if regarded as a standard pale lager rather than a true Czech ‘světlý ležák’.