Pabst: Blue Ribbon (USA: Pale Lager: 4.6% ABV)
Visual: Yellow body with moderate carbonation. White head.
Nose: Slightly eggy and farty. Lemon. Creamy. Cinnamon.
Body: Custard. Very fizzy and slightly chalky touched. Slight lemon. Vanilla toffee. Slight lime. Black liquorice.
Finish: Slightly chalky. Slight cardboard. Quote clean. Vanilla custard. Slight sulfur.
Conclusion: So, one of the most mocked “hipster” beers, and yet also wildly popular. Then again, Budweiser is popular. The American one, not the decent one. Anyway, let’s put all that ballshit aside for now. Hipster seems to have become a term to insult people enthusiastic about different stuff to you, and I don’t really care about popularity – I care about good beer. So, is it a good beer?
It is..varied. Nose is a bit shite – slightly eggy sulphurous – though in its defence it does have a pleasant creamy lemon sweetness under that. The tail end finish is sulphurous again and slightly cardboard like. All a bit rubbish so far, no?
The thing is, the main body is actually ok. A bit too chalky and fizzy, but generally soothing custard sweetness with pleasant citrus side noes. Notably it has near no bitterness or hop character. Between that, the sweetness and the easy going texture I can see how this can have mainstream appeal outside of the usual people who are beer fans.
There isn’t really much more to it than that though – it doesn’t suck enough to deserve the level of hate it gets, but it is hardly lining up for praise either. It is no Fosters or Tesco value lager for shitness – it is ok to weak, but I could hardly pick it out of a line-up for good or bad.
Background: I don’t know how this is received in the USA, but in the UK it has a bit of a reputation as a beer that only hipsters drink and is generally mocked for that fact. Anyway I was given a can of this as a joke present at Christmas by Matt. Thanks. I think. Drunk while listening to some Erock – especially Jessica Jones Meets Metal. Mainly as I absolutely adore the Jessica Jones netflix series. If you have not seen it, watch it, just be warned it is dark as hell compared to normal Marvel stuff.
