(sample, can) Clear golden color. Medium white head. Sweet, grainy, sweet apple.

Bottle. Malty aroma and taste, mint, solvent notes, light to medium bitter. Light to medium body, malty bitter finish. Not good.

Bottle at the resort... Clear golden, white head. Malt and card board aroma. Watery, malty and slightly papery and perfumy flavour.

Egypt's 'national' lager, founded in 1897 in Alexandria by Crown Brewery, ironically by Belgian businessmen - but three decades before Belgium's famous Stella Artois was born; even more ironically, perhaps, this brand fell into the hands of Dutch Heineken in 1937... 'Stella' of course is Latin for 'star', nothing more, nothing less, but it does remain a bit confusing to this day that Egypt's leading beer brand bears the same name as Belgium's most exported lager without sharing a common descent. Big cheers to Ama Deke for the can, this is a country tick I have long been yearning for! Medium thick, consistently shred-lacing, snow white, fine-bubbled, stable head on a clear yellow-golden robe with disparate but active sparkling. Aroma of canned corn, cold pasta, withering grass, sweaty socks, pond water, margarine, a sweet note of industrial pastry, rubber, honey faraway. Thinly sweetish onset, no fruitiness and none expected, so a sweetishness from dull cereals (the label mentions malted barley plus "other grains"), with a vague sourish-grainy edge, moderately carbonated with stingy, minerally effect; metallic notes round the edge of a continuously dull sweetish middle, thin but not as watery as many other 'tropical' lagers I had before and even unveiling a powdery, slightly white-peppery bitterish touch in the end (hop extract) which tries to bring balance - and 'kind of' succeeds, as the finish is notably drier than the onset. The hop extract feel, a bit spicy in this case, even lasts for a while, more so than in any other lager I had that was brewed on the continent of Africa. It is what it is, of course, a bland, mass-marketed, industrial standard pale lager without any serious flavour ambitions, but that said, it is not 'worse' than most of the European standard lagers - and that includes Belgium's Stella Artois for all I care. Simple, effective and completely 'macro tasting', but less... well, bad, than I was expecting.