Asian beers, homebrews and low alcohol lagers rated in March -98

The Swedish lagers were mostly solid lagers, the best being like the malty and decently hoppy Munktells Stark&oumkl;l from Åbro. None of them overly exciting though. Another brewery you can trust is Pripps. Their new effort, the 8.0% adjunct lager Bulldozer goes as the probaly the worst beer I've ever tried. The five of us stood no chance of finishing a 0.5l can of this chemical swill.

Somebody has started importing beers from the Danish brewery Thisted Bryghus under the name Bison to Sweden. Please stop doing that. It occupies precious shelf space in the stores,space that could be filled up with anything else than boring adjunct lagers. Their Ekoöl was at least a half decent beer though, but on the other hand Guldö Extra Strong is a disaster. Send us Danish porters instead!

Of the four Asian beers we rated Kirin Ichiban brewed under license in the UK was our favourite. As most Asian lagers it wasn't very distinct and exciting, but at least it was quite creamy and had soome flavours which qualified it to a position in the middle of our rankings. Also Anchor Beer Pilsener from Malaysia were at least half decent, while the two Indoesian beers is nothing we'd like to recommend. Still given a choice between Bali Hai Pilsener Bir and Anker Pilsener Bir chose the first. Both of them have disturbing off-flavours, but Bali Hai has more body.

The arrival of a number of new US micros is something I enjoy. Among the five we tried this time were two distinct and enjoyable brews from Sea Dog Brewing Company in Maine. Their Blonde Ale proved to be one of the groups favourites. A balanced refreshing ale with tones of vanilla. If their Blonde Ale was a fairly "easy" beer their India Pale Ale was the opposite. Heavy malts, quite a lot of alcohol and hops, hops, hops made it somewhat controversial, but at least I enjoyed this flavour overkill. From Spring Street Brewing Company in Minnesota we got Wit Amber Ale, an excellent Belgian style wheat beer, and from Pete's Brewing Co. we got two flavoured ales which I personally weren't too fond of, but others enjoyed it.

The low alcohol lagers were as unexciting as usual, the best being a weaker version of Kaltenberg Pils, and the worst a weak version of the already dreadfully tasteless Oranjeboom, so no surprises there. The only interesting bottle among these were LionKing Special Pils. The bottled did not state anything about the brewery or even the country of origin... We suspect that this is a German label, but we don't really know. Can somebody help us?

Over to the homebrews. This time we had recieved four lagers, and as usual I was very impressed by how rich and complex they were. The two darker ones ended up as our overall favourites of the four with Uddala Kalasöl way up in 28th place.