Compañía Cervecera de Canarias: Dorada Especial Tostada (Spain: Vienna Lager: 6.5% ABV)
Visual: Darkened caramel brown clear body. Large frothy browned head that leaves suds. Only a little carbonation.
Nose: Roasted nuts. Treacle. Glacier cherries. Ovaltine.
Body: Caramel. Black liquorice. Treacle. Nutty. Smooth. Brown sugar. Malt loaf.
Finish: Black liquorice. Malty. Light hop oils. Light chalk touch. Brown sugar. Toasted teacakes. Slight rough alcohol character.
Conclusion: Ok, first up, this is a pretty liquorice touched beer. Liquorice is hard one to get to work as a flavor in a beer for me. Which is why I am surprised I am actually enjoying this one as much as I am.
Lots of heavier, darker lager flavours but delivered on a smooth. Lightly oily mouthfeel. There are malt loaf and sticky toffee flavours that should feel weighty, and are in flavor , but that smooth texture makes them surprisingly easy drinking.
There is a savoury nuttiness to it, and a toasted teacake character that both are very useful that means that despite stuff like brown sugar and treacle showing up here it manages to still be restrained in the actual sweetness.
It is a solid, flavoursome and easy drinking Vienna. Can see why the smaller bottle as in a full sized it could be dangerously drinkable at 6.5%. Only real bad element is some rougher alcohol air in the finish which lets it down. For a macro beer though this is remarkably nice, and in case that feels like damned with faint praise this is very drinkable by any standard.
Background: This was a kind gift brought back by my friend Edd from holiday for me to do notes on it. Many thanks. I’m not sure if the date on it indicates bottled on date, or best before date as I am not up on the laws in Spain on that. If it is bottled on it is very fresh. If it is best before, it was just past. So, keep that in mind if you do know how the numbering works. I guessed this was a macro brewery beer, but on googling turns out it is a “Subsidiary of Anheuser-Busch InBev”, so more macro than an entire Excel spreadsheet. However, as hopefully you can tell from the notes, I try not to pre judge. Not every beer from the big conglomerates are bad, even if the company sucking up other companies business shit is. The bottle for this is tiny, I presume as for as macro beer it has a higher abv. Went with Bloodywood: Nu Dehli as backing music. Something to perk the energy levels up. The beer boasts a longer maturation. They say 50% longer but done give an actual length, so unsure what the baseline is. Any which way, for lagers, longer maturation is generally good in my experience.
