Ragnar Strong Blond Beer

F: thin, white, not long lasting. C: deep gold, clear. A: malty, bit papery, caramel. T: simple caramel, malty, bit fruity, hint of metallic, medium body and low to medium carbonation, bit alcohol, can for 80c so no expectation here at all, I had even worse, 50cl can from Delhaize Chazal @ Schaerbeek in Brussels.

50cl can from a Delhaize in Ghent. Tasted some time ago, but with the brewer unknown I was unable to add the beer. So here it is, from Bavaria... Pours clear golden and fizzing with a thinning, frothy, white head. Uninviting aroma of grain, sugar, honey, artifical hops, maize, some citrus, iron. It tastes medium to heavy sugary sweet and light grainy bitter, already slightly metallic. Grainy finish with lingering sugar, iron and a wry wodka effect. Medium body, watery texture, fizzy carbonation. A terrible new product, but when it comes to Strong Lagers the Gordon Finest series has even worse examples...

Euro strong lager from a 50 cc can commissioned by Delhaize. The can itself does not bode well: a simple, machistic design of a sword-wielding Viking on a plain golden background. Medium thick, irregularly lacing, egg-white head quickly crumbling and thinning under influence of the alcohol, atop an indeed - as promised by the text on the front of the can - cristal clear, pure metallic 'old gold' coloured beer with a couple of tiny 'dots' floating in it, no idea what that could be. Aroma of old, sweet popcorn, honeyish white candi syrup, 'can' iron, 'papier maché', warm cloth representing crude pasteurization, honey 'wafels', wodka, methylated spirits, hints of grass and banana 'jenever'. Artificially sweet onset, lots of residual glucose syrup weighing heavily on whatever thin cereal base this lager has, otherwise simple and neutral with softish carbonation; simple and proportionally thin, breakfast cereal-like middle including iron shavings forming a sturdy metallic edge, with that pure industrial glucose-like syrup sweetness continuing well into the finish, where the only thing changing is an uprise of crude, harsh, wodka-like booze, heating up the throat yet admittedly remaining tempered by that ongoing syrupy sweetness yet still astringently piercing through it, even sticking to the teeth a bit. A clear and resounding metallic 'zing' echoes after swallowing, but there is no denying the harsh, eventually even throat-burning booze. Strong pale lagers from cans (or even bottles) are never encouraging to the true beer lover of course, this is the kind of cheap crap alcoholics can enjoy, and in that respect, this isn't even the cheapest of them all here in old western Europe. But it isn't the worst of them all, either, as the syrupy sweetness does deafen the harsh metallic, thin and overly boozy main character of this abominable beer. Within its own specific range, there are worse choices to make, but I am unable to finish a whole can of this cheap, half-hearted beer equivalent of cheap moonshine. Laws should be enacted against this particular class of dreary, depressing lagers. This is what Bavaria excells at - to think that Rodenbach's fate, through Palm, lies in this evil company's hands... Oh well, a tick is a tick I suppose, I knew what I had coming, and as said above, within this particular range it could have been even worse.