Can from night shop. Sweet dirty corn, cloying syrupy sweet. Very industrial. Bad

Can 0,5ltr: Clear golden colored brew with an slightly sweet bitter taste, i expected far more worse annoying sweeter taste. But its keeps closely by the Czech original from Plzen and even the ABV.

In March 2022, the Colruyt supermarket chain extended its infamous Cara brand to two - I quote - 'specialty beers' in response to demand from customers. The specialty beers in question are a rouge (sigh) and this strong blonde, almost certainly bottom-fermented (and therefore not a 'strong pale Belgian ale'), but as with the regular Cara Pils, Colruyt stubbornly refuses to disclose where and how these products are brewed - and, again quoting from their website, "will never reveal this well-kept secret". This policy bothers me intensely - it is a downright insult to serious beer lovers who have the right to know where 'their' beer is produced, and I hope to someday meet a corrupt or resentful Colruyt employee who, after several of these Cara Blonds, is willing to divulge this secret to me (I think Martens could be behind this again but I know a few people working in the technical side of the brewing industry and I am determined to find out one day). Anyway: can from the Okay (a subsidiary of Colruyt) in the Kortrijksepoortstraat in Ghent, bought for an indeed overly democratic price of 0,69 € - I guess I cannot expect quality of even the lowest level for that price, but let's see. Medium sized to thinnish, opening, cobweb-lacing, off-white head on a persistently crystal clear deep and pure 'old golden' robe with some thin strings of sparkling. Completely industrial aroma of corn syrup, green pea powder, damp kitchen towels, wet papier maché, granulated sugar, the cheapest industrial white rum thinkable (below Bacardi even), touch of methylated spirits if you sniff 'deeply' enough (not recommended), rusty iron, banana extract, industrial waffles out of a plastic wrap. Sweet onset in a very straightforward, non-natural way, like a cheap industrial lager (which is what this is), sweet graininess from the start without any flavour 'relief', corn syrup making up a very large part of the structure with only the thinnest and faintest barley breadiness, moderate carb, metallic notes here and there - and this monotonous graininess continuing into a still sweet finish, crudely dried by booze, again vaguely reminiscent of extremely (and unhealthily) cheap white rum, turning astringent in the end with no hops, yeast effects or breadiness to buffer it. This borders on the physically undrinkable for me - like the umpteenth variant on that godforsaken Gordon series or something alike. A Euro strong lager it is - literally the cheapest one on the market in Belgium today I guess, and it shows. Appalling alcoholics' fuel in every possible aspect - straight to the drain with this abomination.

33cl can from Colruyt Etterbeek Jourdan in Brussls. F: medium, white, quick gone. C: gold, clear. A: malty, grainy, glucose, bit caramel. T: medium malty base, glucose body, grainy, bit artificial caramel, alcohol touch, medium carbonation, €0,52 in 2022 and now still only €0,56 so extra point for that.