To be honest I don’t know how much of a difference there is between this and Cobra, I’d need to have them one after the other. This similarly hits the spot with a curry though, and that’s the important thing.

Cafe Saffron, Shrewsbury

670ml lager. Pours deep gold with a medium head. Aroma is sweet, grass and corn. Taste has sweet straw malt to start and a grassy finish.

This 670ml brown bottle was the first beer in one of my ’random beer tasting evenings’ (9th Sep 2011). Brewed using an old Indian recipe according to the labels on the bottle. Poured into a La Chouffe glass and two stemmed lager tulips: good golden lager looks, the usual snowy white cap that doesn’t last topped the beer off. The smells coming from the brew were of straw, with a few hops thrown in. The taste had a hop front, a really dry mouthfeel and less carbonisation than most lager/pilsners and I reckon it would accompany a curry very well. Not bad at all, but yet another addition to the already over-flowing UK Lager scene, they can’t all survive! New bit: I visited an Indian Curry House in Cambridge (Dec 2011) and found this on-tap: really enjoyed it, felt just right with the hot food quenching my thirst and keeping me cool, had to have two pints though!

670ml bottle from Tesco, Hastings. Well - it’s pretty obvious from the name what this is designed to compete with! It’s a typical curry houe beer, straw coloured with a billowing white head; corn syrup aroma; corn syrup flavour, sweet with a touch of gently bitter hops to finish. Designed to drink with spicy food, and there’s nothing wrong with that.