Hong Kong beer bars

Hong Kong has quite a few beer bars dotted around town - the problem is they're all the same. The names are different but there the similarity starts; they're all part of the same chain with the same beers and menus.
Some comedian thought it would be amusing to divide the menu up into "boring beers" and "interesting beers".

At least it used to say "interesting beers" the last time I was here 5 years ago - now it's changed to "Exciting Micro-Imports", which both loses the effect, and is totally inaccurate. Fulller's, for example, are probably both delighted and disturbed to discover that they are in fact a micro-brewery.

Yes, a Grimbergen is considered an exciting micro-import, so even Inbev are a micro-brewery according to these beer gurus.
You might expect that a chain of bars that makes a big deal about having exciting micro-imports might just have some sort of clue about arcane concepts such as the optimum temperature to serve different styles of beer, but no, everything's served at meat-locker temperatures, so the exciting micro-brew you ordered might end up being not that distinguishable from a boring beer. Next time I'll try a red wine and see if it gets the same treatment.

This would have probably been a fine beer had it been put in a sauna for 20 minutes. There are large bowls of nuts forced on you constantly, the shells of which you are encouraged to chuck on the floor in an utterly hedonistic manner; the nuts themselves help to disguise any taste the beer might have had had it not been too cold in the first place.
The most well known of these is on Causeway Bay on Hong Kong island, and is nowadays named "Inn Side Out". This is immensely popular with local office workers at both lunchtime and evenings; rarely for Hong Kong you can "al fresco", if you don't mind queuing for one of the outside tables; inside it's easier to get a seat.
"Slim's" is another branch closer to the financial district. The pale ale they had on tap was splendid, and almost exciting.

On the south side of Hong Kong island is a tacky foreigner enclave called Stanley, where on the seafront can be found the small "Vern's beach bar". This makes a fairly feeble attempt to convince you that you are in Honolulu.
As in all of these bars, you won't hear much Cantonese spoken. In this branch, though, you will overhear many conversations taking the following form:

- "And I was like..... and she was like....."
- "Noooooo!!!!!......."
- "And she was like.... and they were like.... and I was like....."
- "Oh m'gaaaaaad.... like Daaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!"

There is in fact massive scope for devising drinking games whilst listening to such conversations, an exercise which I leave for the reader (Shane Watson - did you hear that?).

Korafuto Biiru

Germany taught both China and Japan to brew beer. In the case of China the diktat about all-malt didn't last long - the vast majority of beer from China is practically undrinkable piss, although it's cheap ("Portillo's wife defends crack habit").
In the case of Japan, though, the German influence still remains. All the major Japanese brewers continue to brew all-malt beers, and furthermore Japan is dotted with German style brewpubs, some even going as far as to dress the waitresses in Bavarian outfits. Unfortunately they seem to also have inherited the German penchant for fairly bland beers, and a restrictive conservatism - none of the main Japanese brews like Kirin, Asahi or Sapporo are particularly interesting.
They're very widely available in Hong Kong supermarkets and convenience shops though, and seeing as they're scarcely more expensive than the locally brewed adjunct ridden stuff, I might pop a few Kirins in the trolley sometimes to drink with dinner or something. Whilst in the foreigner oriented supermarket in Hong Kong's financial district though, I spotted some beers from Japan's nascent craft brewing scene.

First up was this stout from Echigo, "Japan's first micro-brewery". On the rear of the can there's an outline picture of a geezer playing a saxophone, so I imagine Echigo thought that you would sip this whilst in a jazz bar or something. The can also tells you that it's "high quality premium beer", which I think is blowing its own saxophone a bit. The beer itself was very good though, with a decent coffee after-taste. Reminded me of Sierra Nevada's stout. Niiiiice.

From the same brewery comes "Weizen", which on the reverse of the can tells us it's a "White Ale". There's a picture of what I presume is a Bock on the front, which was a bit confusing, and on the back there's a picture of a Bavarian-outfitted couple toasting each other. There's also a slogan exhorting us to "Craft Beer The World", which confused me even more.
Upon popping the can, I was greeted with a smell which made me think of a fizzy drink, an impression which wasn't diminished in any way when I tasted it. It didn't really remind me of either a German Weissbier or a Belgian Witbier - there was far too much carbonation. If Echigo are really attempting to craft beer the world they should probably try it with their stout.
They also make a red ale, not pictured, which was very decent. So as the famous piece of lard 'Meat Loaf' once told us, 2 out of 3 ain't bad for Echigo.

The prize for the most interesting bottle goes to "Ginga Kogen Beer", although at one point it was almost mistaken for a bottle of Chinese medicine, which would have been a shame. According to their website, their beer "delivers the charm of the beer based on German traditional technology." That may well be, but this particular one, "Silver Bottle" to me was  much closer to a Belgian Witbier than a German Weissbier, and was the pick of the four. Banzai.

Lagers Ying & Yang

Two beers found in Hong Kong supermarkets, both lagers but very different. First up is simply titled 'Hong Kong Beer'.

Most beer actually brewed in Hong Kong is locally brewed under licence Europiss like Carlsberg or Heineken, or San Miguel from the Philippines (you can get both the locally made and original San Mig in supermarkets). This one is a happy exception though: it's 'hand-crafted', although presumably not literally.
It reminded me straight away of a Brewdog lager I had once; floral hops, although there was something subtly different about them from the bog-standard citrus hops you seem to get in every IPA. My Mother-in-Law said it tasted like soap, although that was because it's probably the first hoppy beer she's tasted. I'm sure we've all overheard a conversation in a pub when, faced with a round of drinks on the bar and unsure which is which, someone might try one at random and ask "errrr... did someone order pineapple juice???" when it's actually a citrus-hopped beer.
As is depressingly  familiar though, to purchase this you have to go to a poncey foreigner-oriented supermarket; the local ones don't stock it, although there are a few bars around town that have it.

Next up: Mesquita from Cordoba in Spain.

To be honest I didn't know exactly how to approach this at first: I wasn't even sure if it was a lager or an ale. I had it straight out of the fridge, although the ABV strength of 7.2 and the dark pour suggested I might have been better off letting it sit for half an hour. It is a lager though, but unlike the Hong Kong Beer it was totally over to the malty end of the spectrum. When I taste a strong very malty lager I can't help thinking 'tramp juice' but this was far from it. Certainly one I'd look out for if I'm ever in Cordoba again (and if they actually sell it in Cordoba, of course. It wouldn't surprise me if you can't actually get it there.)

Stoke via Hong Kong

Not the Stoke which produced Lemmy, or the Stoke who like to kick lumps out of the shins of persons wearing red and white outfits, but rather the Stoke brewed in Nelson, New Zealand by the McCashin family.

Beer in Hong Kong is unfortunately dominated by the evil Triad of Heineken, Carlsberg and San Miguel. If you cross their path, you may wake up to find a bag of decaying barley under your bedsheets (which they would have otherwise used to make their foul excuse for beer.)
But if you make an effort you can find decent beer without much trouble. Even in your bog standard supermarkets you can find some decent imported stuff like this: and at less than £1.30 or so a bottle you don't have to be Li Ka Shing or borrow from loan sharks to afford one.
They claim it's brewed with 14,000 year old water, and is made "the old fashioned way", with "bespoke" yeast, whatever that means. Despite that it's a very decent quaff, especially on a humid day. The 'gold' in particular has just the right floral / spicy side without getting in the way of things.

Estrella Damm Inedit

There are quite a few brewers of watery adjunct ridden pissy lager who, presumably to stop their brewers hanging themselves, will sometimes have a stab at making a decent beer. Thus we have Super Bock "gourmet", Peroni "gran reserva" and this fella, who grabbed my attention in El Corte Ingles.

It comes in a 75cl bottle with some poncey tags and stuff hanging off the top, like those jars of jam with hats on that you find at some posh shop in Devon. With wheat, barley and spices in the ingredients this promised to be another southern European brewer having a shot at a Witbier.

Spices in a Witbier should be like the icing on a cake, not the cake itself. Here, the spices were too prominent because there wasn't enough backing to them from the beer - altogether too lacking in any guts. Perhaps Estrella Damm should stick to lager.

Portuguese Craft

Porto is of course known mainly for Port wine, but if you look hard enough you can also find some craft beer, or Cerveja Artesanal as they say. "Sovina" is a beer brewed by Os Três Cervejeiros in small quantities and available at a fair few places around town, although it's not something you'd come across accidentally.

The entire range is unfiltered and includes an IPA, but when I popped round Mercearia das Flores they had just the witbier and the stout - the others had sold out.

It's got all the lemony zesty spicey type stuff you'd expect from a good witbier.
As for the stout: many stouts are bland. This one isn't by half. It's got an enormous burnt coffee taste that is a whisker short of being overpowering - the most interesting stout I've had in a long time.
Good show Sovina.

Gourmet?...

What do you do when your regular product is called "super" (even though it's not), but you want to have one product which is more "super" than the rest? Well, declare it "gourmet" of course.

"Super Bock" is a cruddy range of beers available all over Portugal, advertised with idiotic nonsensical English slogans, which in its regular form is your average adjunct filled lager. The "gourmet" version however boasts that it is 100% malt (presumably only gourmets don't want maize in their beer), and the "Abadia" denotes that it is supposedly imitating a Belgian abbey beer.

I was surprised by the colour, quite a fruity amber, and the decent head. There's definitely something in there, and compared to the piss that the rest of their beers are, I wouldn't mind making this a regular if I lived in Portugal. Buy it in a pack of 4 and it works out about 80 cents a bottle, so its price / taste ratio is not at all bad. They should drop the "abbey" claims though.
The thing is, you won't actually see it in a regular supermarket or booze shop - to get this, I had to go to El Corte Ingles, an upmarket Spanish shop, a bit like Galeria in Germany. So there you have it - piss tasting regular variety, available everywhere. Reasonable tasting variety, only 20 cents a bottle more, available hardly anywhere. Stands to reason really.

Portuguese Beer

The law of beer advertising states that the quality of a beer will be in inverse relationship to the amount that it is advertised. That's not to say that all beers that don't get advertised are good; rather that if a beer needs to be advertised it's probably crap.
After all, if your product is some revolting excuse for a lager that is bunged full of adjuncts and has a one day lagering time, it's not like people are going to drink it because it's any good. But sponsor some sporting event, bung it on TV every 30 seconds, maybe pay to get James Bond to drink it instead of Vodka Martinis, even drape it in a national flag, and people will be lining up to guzzle it with scarcely a care for that fact that it tastes like piss.
This law pretty much holds wherever you are. In Germany the few "national brands" that you see adverts for like Paulaner are renowned for being crap. Portugal isn't known for its beer, but there's a few home grown brews which pretty much reinforce the law.
"Super Bock" is advertised everywhere (there's probably a similar law for things that are sold as "super"), and comes in a number of varieties. Look on the ingredient list and it's adjunct city, predictably. This particular variety is called "Abadia" and lists sugar but no maize unlike the others. "Tagus" is another one that I encountered in a posh supermarket which I hadn't seen elsewhere, and seems to do without advertising - its label however proudly proclaims it to be an all-malt beer.
Any decent lager has an immediate crispness, and Tagus certainly does. It's nothing to get excited about, but is a perfectly pleasant drinkable brew with a lemony zest. "Super Bock" definitely lacks it - the contrast between the two is enormous. The bland, almost non-existent taste suggests that the budget went on advertising rather than lagering time.
There was also a Super Bock stout. It wasn't very interesting.

Kreuzberger Molle

"Distinctive" is not a word that you can usually use when describing German beers. There is a distinct conformity clogging up the whole of German brewing, visible nowhere clearer than in German brewpubs. Almost without exception they will offer the same tedious triad of beers; in Bavaria it will nearly always be light lager, dark lager, and wheat beer, with some slight variation in different regions of Germany.
It's a relief then, to find the odd exception, such as Berlin's Brauhaus Südstern, which offers "special" beers including IPAs, brown ales and fruit beers.
One of its beers, an unfiltered lager, is available at Berlin's "Max & Moritz", one of those places described as an "institution", although for what type of inmate it doesn't specify. This means that hardly any of the punters in there will be speaking German, the menu will have English translations, and the food will be overpriced. Never fear, though, for the beer, "Kreuzberger Molle", is one of the most distinctive in Germany. It has a surprisingly creamy element for a lager, and like Franconia's unfiltered lagers it goes down without you even noticing it. Fosters it ain't.

Berliner Weisse

"Ohne Schuss???!!?!?!!!?!???????!?!?!?!?!!?!??!?!!!???!?!?!?!?!?" The question is asked with great incredulity, and even suspicion if you are a foreigner. Does this idiot know what he's asking for? Such is the response when you request to drink Berlin's and possibly Germany's finest beer without the addition of red or green syrup.
And there you have it: an enormous portion of the beer drank in Germany is exceedingly bland and tedious, and yet they consider it to be the finest in the world. And then, when it comes to an excellent beer like Berliner Weisse, what do they do? Turn it into an alcopop. You just couldn't make it up.
Even the tourist literature tries to put you off: one pocket Berlin guide opines "Unfortunately Berlin's one native beer, Berliner Weisse, is only palatable with the addition of a fruit cordial". They must have a different definition of "palatable" to me, as with Schuss it tastes like a Creme de Menthe or something, and with the addition of the straw that they serve it with, it could well be Mark Almond's go to beer when in Germany.
The first time I tried it without this noxious addition, I braced myself for what I expected would be a mouth puckering sourness, and yet it isn't even remotely in the same ballpark as a Geuze. In fact the sourness is quite mild, and makes it a nice gentle quaffing experience.