Kornuit

Newish version of Grolsch Pils, from a green bottle, bought at an Albert Heijn supermarket. Thick and frothy, cream white, thickly lacing head over a cristal clear, deep golden blonde beer with delicate sparkling. Sweetish an dull grainy aroma, popcorn and corn sugar jumping out of the glass, old cake, dry cookies, some iron but less so than in many other ’macro lagers’, some wet paper, faint hint of grassy hops - more faint than I hoped for. Fortunately there is no ’lightstruck’ skunkiness in spite of the green bottle. Taste is a bit better than the aroma would suggest, but still bland: restrained sourish ’graininess’ and corn sweetishness, soft carbo especially for a pale lager (but in that sense perhaps closer to a ’real’ Pilsener), minerally, smooth and lean body, slight bready pale malts in the middle, considerably less metallic than I had feared, with a tinge of simple grassy hop bitterishness in the finish, a bit more perhaps than in the regular version, with a faraway leafy hop bitterishness in the end, but it never actually becomes ’really’ hop bitter - instead, the malty and corny sweetness simply continue till deep into the throat. Still, I think the difference between this and its regular predecessor lies more in the somewhat fuller malt body than in a noteworthy difference in hop profile; it feels a bit ’heavier’ and ’creamier’ than is custom in mass-marketed Dutch lagers. Slightly above average I’d say, but for a pale lager that is - I see no reason why this should be listed as a Pilsener (and as a matter of fact, all pale lagers are referred to by the word ’pils’ in Dutch language, hence the confusion?).

Fresh and smooth beginning. Slightly too much carbonation for me - not too easy drinkable from the bottle. The beer itself is not too seep, not too sweet and slightly dry-bitter in the end. Fresh with floral hints, but too undefined-bitter till the end. 8/12/9/8