Beer # 499 Lone Star Lager (Canadian Version)

Beer # 499 Lone Star Lager

Brewery: Sleeman Brewing and Malting


Type: Wholly owned by Sapporo Breweries Company  Est.:  1988

Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Beer Style: Lager

ABV: 4.9%      IBU: 10

Format: Aluminium Can  Size: 473 ml

Cost: $2.0 CAD     Purchased At: LCBO

sleemanbeer

    @sleemanbeer

Ok... This beer is iconic and intrinsically linked with Texas, except, it is brewed by a Japanese company in... Guelph, Ontario, Canada? Well... yes, and yes... The original Lone Star Brewery was built in 1884 in San Antonio Texas. It was Texas' first large scale mechanised brewery; originally put together by Adolphus Busch of Anheuser-Busch fame and a group of local San Antonio businessmen. Busch had bought the Alamo brewing company in 1874 and used it to build the new Lone Star Brewery. Lone Star Beer itself, wasn't brewed until1940 by Peter Kreil of Munich (It is very much a Munich Lager). The Lone Star Beer Company has had many masters over the years. It has been moved to several locations in Texas, it was purchased in 1976 By Olympia Brewing from Washinton,

No.. Not that Lone Star.

and again in 1983 by G. Heileman Brewing. Stroh's bout Heileman in 1996, and then Stroh's was bought by Pabst in 1999. Pabst now contracts all the brewing of Lone Star out. So where does Japan and Canada fit in? Glad you asked. Stroh's Canada was purchased by the Sleeman Brewing and Malting company which was later bought out by Sapporo of Japan. Sleeman's brews the Stroh's line Including Lone Star, Old Milwaukee, and Pabst Blue Ribbon. Still billed as the "National Beer of Texas, even though this one is brewed North of the border... Let's give this one a try. 

Let's use the Schwartz on this Lone Star...

Clear gold in colour with a thick, bright white head made up of small bubbles. The aroma is corn syrup and malt extracts. Rain watery German-style hops and hints of wet dog. The first sip is sweet and corny with a very light malt profile. Taste is very flat with a watery texture. There is a clean crispness to the beer, but it comes at the cost of very little flavour in the actual beer. Aeration makes it taste like sugar water.

Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional 


Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 5/6 PASS
Beer Style: 3/6 SO-SO
Re-Order:  1/6 FAIL
Experience: 3/6 SO-SO


Final Thoughts:

This is a very boring beer. There is really nothing to it but sugar and a hint of malt. I get the feeling that if you drank too much of this the gut-rot and headache the next day would make you wish you were dead. It tastes like an underage party... one where you cobbled together anything with alcohol in it. It's not so bad, that if someone offered me one I could drink it... but I would politely decline a second one.

CJT

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Beer # 92 Castello Lager

Castello Lager

Birra Castello SpA

San Giorgio Di Nogaro, Italy
Independent
Lager 4.8 % ABV Brown Glass Bottle 330 ml.
$1.95 (Canadian) At LCBO

Twitter: @birracastello (in Italian)


This beer I picked up on a whim as I had never seen it before and had not added an Italian beer to my list of hepatic accomplishments. I could not glean a lot from the website as most of it is in Italian by I managed to understand that this is a relatively new beer, founded in 1997 (Their slogan is "The Beer without a history"). Birra Castello purchased a large facility that had previously been producing, at separate times Birra Moretti, and Heineken Italy; they gutted and retooled it making it one of most modern brewing facilites in Italy. The company brews beer very scientifically, even on their website they list brewing calculations that mean very little to the average drinker. The water is drawn from four mountainside artesian wells and the highest quality ingredients are sourced from around Italy..

Avanti! On with the Tasting:

Light gold in colour. Thin white head that disappears rapidly. Nose is sweet and floral with traces of raw honey. First sip gives a strong indication of the corn content. The taste is even and balanced moving from corn to light or crystal malt, wet grain and a mild hay-like hop note in the finish. Aeration give us a woodiness and a little more of the herbaceous hop quality. No one flavour stands out. The product is simply a nice mild lager.


Impressions: Fail, So-so, Pass, Exceptional 

Cost: 5/6 PASS
Colour: 5/6 PASS
Beer Style: 5/6 PASS
Re-Order:  4/6 PASS
Experience:  4/6 PASS

Final Thoughts:

This beer is fine...Just fine. It doesn't stand out, it just does it's job. I imagine this is the average blue collar Italian's beer. It would go well with food, pizza especially, as it would not add a lot to the experience, nor detract from it.

Cheers
CJT


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