Al-Ahrem Beverages: Stella (Egypt: Pale Lager: 4.5% ABV)
Visual: Pale clean banana to gold. Small dash of a head. Small amount of carbonation.
Nose: Caramel. Soft cake sponge. Vanilla. Palma violets. Slight orange zest. Light liquorice.
Body: Lightly chalky. Light but not excessive fizz. Slightly sherbety. Vanilla cake sponge. Light hop oils. Lightly milky if held. Slight palma violets.
Finish: Caramel. Slight orange freshness. Low hop bitterness. Lightly oily. Light liquorice. Milk bottle soft sweets.
Conclusion: The first, and possibly only, time you will see me doing notes on a beer called “Stella” and it is in Egypt
So, how is the unfortunately named beer that I see all the time around here?
Ehh, its passable. And I don’t just mean as in it passes through the body. Its not , you know, good – but it has some good points. It also has some bad points, so lets get into some of each of those.
Nose is initially simple; sweet caramel mainly but does also have a fresh orange zest that gave me hope there was something nice going on here. There was also a mild liquorice touch which made me more nervous. It seemed I needed to move onto sipping and the main body to see which side won out.
So I sipped and it turns out…neither. The body has a light chalkiness, not too much, slight cake sponge, but is mainly just wet and there. The conflict between fruitiness and liquorice had been put on abeyance for a while.
You do see a, slight, return bout as you get into the finish. Unfortunately it is the more leaden liquorice notes that show through more than the orange, but there is still a touch of freshness.
For a drink that proudly states “Drink Cold” on the label it actually worked better when I let it warm a touch to just cool. Like that there are some German hop feeling (if probably not actually noble hopped) palma violet notes and some nice hop oils.
Overall, you probably already know what it is, it is a holiday beer for a warm country. In that case a country that really doesn’t have a huge beer market for its own citizens. It’s there to be cold and beery. I don’t actively hate it, but it is just …there.
Lets see if the other drinks of my hol do better.
Background: So I recently did a holiday to Egypt. Noooot the most beery of countries. From googling it seems it has three macro breweries, though I can’t find evidence of two of them still making anything, prob still are, but nowt I could find, So all my notes will be on the main alcohol producer Al-Ahrem Beverages. This, Stella, not to be confused with any other lager called Stella, is pretty much the most popular and best known beer in Egypt. So was the first I did notes on, I was relaxing midday in the bar on a cruise down the Nile when I did these notes, so very relaxed. Not a big cruise person in general, but this one gave plenty of time for actually, you know, going on land and doing things, so felt more like a prettier bus trip than the big ocean cruises that exist. Incidentally, I did not do notes on the other well known main lager Sakara Gold, so a short comparison here, Stella had bigger flavours but more rough edges, Sakara was more refined but a cost of losing much interesting flavor to grip hold onto. Over the trip I went back on forth on which was the better of the two well known lagers, but neither is a big must have.