It is actually in Bavaria (this will shock you) that they established the Reinheitsgebot, or Bavarian Purity Law of 1516. This law states that the only ingredients that can be used in the production of beer are water, barley and hops. This was a particularly harsh law as the penalty for making impure beer was death. Not really, but the brewer who used other ingredients could have the questionable beer confiscated with no compensation. Let’s put it this way – Sam Calagione wouldn’t last 10 minutes over there. Again, this has nothing to do with this review.

The beer at hand today is Bavaria Holland Beer, also known as Bavaria Premium. It’s brewed by Bavaria Brouwerij in the Netherlands. I have no idea why it’s called Bavaria beer if it’s brewed in Holland, it’s just the company brand they put on the beer. A smart move no doubt – associating a stand out product (Bavaria beer) with a mediocre product (Holland beer). It would be like Chrysler calling themselves BMW Chrysler. Or tofu calling itself porterhouse tofu. Okay maybe it’s nothing like that. What we’re saying is don’t be fooled by the name – Bavaria Holland beer has little to do with Bavaria in terms of the beer – it’s more like your traditional Holland beer than the good stuff that comes out of Bavaria. And that just makes us sad in our hearts.

So, on to the review, eh? Bavaria Holland Beer (that would be like calling it Mexican United States Beer, no, wait…) comes in a 12 oz green bottle with an ABV of 5%. We got ours at Cost Plus World Market. For our test we used a British pint glass and got a starting beer temperate of 45.9 F.

You get an immediate bubbling carbonation when you open up the bottle. For our pour we got an average 2″ foamy white head that left a good amount of head lacing as it dissipated quickly. There was a medium amount of carbonation and the body was a clear sparkling yellow/gold color.

The aromas come in with barley, hay, lemon, pine, yeast, light ginger and a light skunkiness. It smells an awful lot like a Heineken and that’s not a compliment.

The initial flavor comes in with a light to moderate bitter that evolves in the finish to a light to moderate sweet and a light bitter. The tastes come in with grain, lemon, resin and some more of that skunkiness. We’re unsure how they get the whole skunk into the bottle with the small opening, but they do.

The finish length is average, the mouthfeel is watery and the tongue hit is in the middle. There’s a fair amount of body lacing left on the glass as you work through it. On the patented BeerFathers malt to hop scale it comes in one click to the right of balanced on the hoppy side.

For our bottom line notes we got a yes to drinkable, repeatable and balance. We got a no to harmony, memorable, wow factor and buy again.

Overall we’re not impressed. The taste goes hop-sweet-hop giving an odd 3 step taste to it. The malts are super thin. If you like pilsners (we notoriously aren’t huge pilsner fans) this is a mild example of one that makes you appreciate something like a Pilsner Urquell an awful lot. About the best thing we can say is its mild enough to be a textbook session beer, but there’s a lot of other beers we’d rather go to first in that category. This beer deserves to be on the shelf, so if you see it on the shelf at your local beer store just leave it there.

Lone Star Beer is brewed by the Lone Star Brewing Company. A bit of history on them – the original brewery was built in 1884 and was the first large automated brewery in Texas. It was founded by a group of businessmen in San Antonio and some cat named Adolphus Busch (yeah that one). The brewery closed in 2000 and now houses the San Antonio Museum of Art, which you’ll find out in this review is a significant upgrade. The Lone Star brand has changed hands many times, passing from Olympia Brewing to Heileman to Stroh to Pabst. Production is currently farmed out to SABMiller in their Fort Worth, TX brewery.

For our Lone Star (beer) review we used a shaker glass and got a starting beer temperature of 42.8 F (which may have been 20 or 30 degrees too warm in hindsight). The ABV comes in at 4.65% and it’s a traditional 12 oz bottle.

For our aromas we got straw, dried grasses and some yeast. Not much there on the nose. For our initial flavor we got a light sweet and in the finish we moved to a very light sweet and added a light bitter. For the tastes we got the straw, dried grasses and yeast from the nose, and added some soapiness, light lemon and light corn. The lemon comes through in the taste a bit more as it warms up.

The finish length is mercifully short, the mouthful is watery and the tongue hit is in the middle. There’s no body lacing and on our malt to hop scale it comes in balanced – not enough of anything to move it towards one side or the other.

For our bottom line notes we got a yes to drinkable (especially if you’re dying of thirst), yes to repeatable (if your mouth isn’t already bored to death) and yes to balance (not too hard to balance out a whole lot of nothing). We got a no to harmony, memorable, wow factor and buy again.

Overall we’d rate it as barely beer-like. It closely resembles a regular American pale lager and that’s not a compliment. The good news is you don’t need water with it to cleanse your palate in between tastes, you can just rinse your mouth with the beer itself. If you weren’t focusing on it you wouldn’t know there was any taste to it at all.

We can’t say enough good things about it. It would be ideal for keg stands. It would be an excellent 5th beer of the night. The empty bottle is a perfect representation of an empty bottle. To sum it all up – it’s a good beer for people who don’t like good beer.

This has an IBU of 40 and is 4.5% ABV and came in a 12 oz. bottle. Beer temp. was 46.5F – 7.9C and I used a pint glass. It poured a hazy amber orange with a 2 in. fizzy off white head that dissipated slowly with fair head lacing and soft carbonation. Aromas were caramel, nutty, toasted, citrus, floral, dough, butterscotch and nutmeg. Tastes were caramel, toasted, citrus, grapefruit, resin and soy sauce. The initial flavors were a light sweet and a moderate bitter. Finish flavors were a moderate acidic, heavy bitter and a moderate salty. Finish duration was long with an oily mouthfeel. The bitterness worked the back of the tongue and roof of the mouth the hardest while the malts work the front of the tongue. Body lacing was fair and on the malt to hop scale I gave it a 7 which is 2 to the hop side of balanced. I got a yes to drinkable as I finished it but got a no to repeatable, balance, harmony, memorable, wow factor and buy again.

This is I guess what an American pale ale is as opposed to one from England. It seems like Americans like to pound their pale ales full of hops but where does that leave a malt gut like me? That’s not a typo I just got a glimpse of me in the mirror. I look like a keg cut in half vertically and turned sideways. If the hop guys are heads us malt guys can’t be butts as that is a style of porter so I’ll settle on gut. Back to the beer. I’ll just say I was disappointed.

Coors Banquet, which also goes by Coors Original or just Coors, has been produced since 1873 in Golden, Colorado. It’s now owned and operated by the MillerCoors company. Surprisingly, Coors Banquet only has about 1.5% of the domestic beer market (Coors Light is around 15.5% of the market and Bud Light is by far the most popular domestic beer with about 34.9% of the market). You probably already know the story of Adolph Coors and probably wonder a little bit as you read this sentence why a strong, solid name Adolph isn’t that common any more. By this sentence you’ve probably realized why the name Adolph isn’t so common any more. We’ll leave it at that.

For our review we procured 24 oz (1 pint 8 oz) cans from the convenience store (Son Beer Love’s was even served up in a brown bag!) for $1.69 each. These are “cold activated” cans with a frost brew liner in them. The mountains on the can turn blue when the taste is completely obscured by cold. Only then is it safe to drink. Just kidding of course!

Coors Banquet weighs in with a 5% ABV and our beer temperature was 34.2 F, which was cold enough to activate the mountains on the can, which oddly, even when the can was empty, remained blue. We used a tall weizen glass for the pour which gave us an average 2″ fizzy white head that dissipated quickly and left a fair amount of head lacing in the glass. There was a lively amount of carbonation and the body was a clear sparkling yellow color.

There are just a few aromas we could note – grain and corn primarily. The corn smell is a little off-putting at first, but we think it just caught us a little of guard. As it warms we got some lemon and some light alcohol in the smell as well. On the taste side we got a mild lemon in the initial taste and the corn came in with the aftertaste. The initial flavor notes were a light sweet and the finish flavor was a very light sweet and a light bitter. The finish length was quite short and the mouthfeel was watery. The tongue hit was on the front of the tongue and there was virtually no body lacing in the glass. On the patented malt to hop scale it came in just about balanced. Not too malty, not too hoppy, not too much of anything.

For our bottom line notes we got a yes to drinkable and a yes to repeatable. We got a no to harmony, no to memorable, no to wow factor and no to buy again. We were on the fence with balance and can only say it had some – it’s super thin malts, but equally thin hops – so we guess that balances?

It doesn’t rub you the wrong way – it’s like a big glass of cold. We can say this – it smells like beer. Like it really smells like beer in the most common sense of the word – like the people on television who drink beer out of a can that has the word “beer” on the outside of it. It smells like that.

On a hunch, we took a swig out of the can and you know what – we think it tastes better out of the can than in the glass. Out of the can you get a nice little metallic profile that “works” with it. Plus, it just feels so right drinking this out of the can, the way you just know it was meant to be consumed. The way all those thirsty people in Atlanta no doubt drank it when it was delivered to them by Snowman and the Bandit.

It was a little bit of a surprising review for us. We felt pretty sure this would be one of our lowest ratings, but overall it wasn’t bad enough to pour out. The taste is somewhat like a slightly bitter flavored water. There’s more bitter in the finish of the beer than in a glass of water but not much. We actually did a blind taste test against the glass of water we normally have when we rate beers and the results, though not inconclusive, were quite closer than you would think.

It’s odd, we know, to rate something that doesn’t have much of anything to it with something higher than a zero, but would you rate a glass of water a zero? Something almost has to be overdone in the wrong direction to rate a zero. This isn’t enjoyable, per se, but it’s also not not enjoyable, if you catch our drift. Maybe the water from the Rocky Mountains makes a difference. Our final advice if you have to drink it – drink it cold, drink it quick and drink it out of the can.

And let’s remember, this one was for Jerry Reed, who’s up in heaven running his eighteen wheeler over motorcycles and feeding Fred all the hamburgers he wants. East Bound and Down, good buddy.

Beer temp. 40.2 F -4.8 C. Used a pint glass and got a 1 1/2 inch off white frothy head that dissipated slowly with fair head lacing. The color was gold-amber and was mostly clear but had a slight haze. Carbonation was soft. The aromas were honey, citrus, grapefruit, lemon, pine, resin and spices. Taste were pretty thin malts and a whole pot full of bitter. Initial flavor was light sweet, heavy bitter and a light tart. Finish was light acidic and heavy bitter. The finish was long, the mouthfeel was dry and the body lacing was good. On our malt to hop scale I gave it an 8 out of 9. I didn’t find it repeatable, barely drinkable, not memorable, no wow factor and wouldn’t buy it again.

Although this was just my second IPA I found that it lacked the great malty depth of the DFH 90 MIN IPA to balance the hops which gave me the 8 of 9 on the malt to hop scale while the DFH was a 6 which is just to the right of balanced. The aromas I pulled out were 7 with 5 of them hop aromas. I have to admit that after about 1/3 of a bottle the finish never left my mouth completely but abated somewhat, it kicked in hard and high with every new sip and lasted well into the next two beers which were mildly hopped. That’s way too long a finish for me.

Beer temp. 47.1F-8.6C. Using my go-to British pint glass I got a large 2.5 inch foamy off white head on top of a hazy amber orange body. Carbonation was soft and the head dissipated slowly with fair head lacing. Aromas were caramel, honey, roasted, toffee, floral, pine and earth. Taste were caramel, pine, resin and spices. The initial flavors light to medium sweetness from the malts and a light bitterness from the hops. Finish flavors were heavy bitterness and light sour. Finish duration was average to long and the mouthfeel was oily. There was almost no body lacing and on the malt to hop scale I gave it a 7 with 5 being balanced and 9 hoppy. I didn’t find it repeatable, drinkable, memorable and had no wow factor. I know I won’t be keeping this in my rotation.

This kind of reminds me of an IPA but without the malt depth. You might say “BeerFathers! This had 7 aromas and 4 tastes – what’s up with that?” I may have pushed it on the aromas and could easily have been 3 with pine being one of them, and pine and resin in the taste just doesn’t do it for me. I’m glad the finish wasn’t any longer than it was. By the way I didn’t care for it then and don’t care for it now. It was kind of fun though going through the old notes from 2 1/2 years ago.