As Bavaria 8.6 Original from 50 cl can. Decent, coarse but fairly stable (though eventually dissipating), snow white head over a deep golden coloured, clear beer with quiet fizz. Strongish but not very pleasant, sweet aroma of cane sugar, honey, tons of iron in a purely metallic way, raw vegetables, grass, gin, rubber. Sugary sweetish onset, with something blandly honeyish lurking in the background, sweetbread, evolving into a lightly but artificially caramelly, rather thin ’graininess’, very metallic, leading to a wry finish of lingering grain sweetness, a faint hint of simple grassy hops, a lot of wodka-like alcohol and of course, adding insult to injury, a chemical, burnt plastic-like astringency. Petrol for alcoholics as most of these cheap heavy lagers are. I have no idea whether this is better than its AB InBev competitors of the infamous Atlas brand, which were sitting next to it in the Albert Heijn shelf; I reckon this is a bit less offending, but it is still made with wrong intentions, though technically more or less correct in comparison with certain other strong pale ’Euro’ lagers. This style in general is about as bad as beer gets, but this particular example is not the worst, I admit.

Can. One thing I hate more than cheap watery maltose lagers, is strong cheap watery maltose lagers. This style add an extra layer of nasty alcohol to an already bad beer.

50cl Can from AH. ABV is still 8.6%, there are 2 versions of this beer, both called Bavaria 8.6 Special Blond Beer. The 7.9% versions are usually found in France and the Netherlands. So the ABV of this one here has NOT gone down to 7.9%. Either way, a lot of fuss for a supermarket strong lager. Clear golden colour, thick frothy white head. Aroma of some alcohol, grass, sweet stuff, fusels. Flavour is actually quite dry and bitter, light hoppy, alcohol, sweet cheap malts and fruits, alcohol bitter finish, a bit hot. Medium bodied at best. Better than the 7.9% version.