Origin: Germany
Type: Pale lager
Color: Pale gold
Alcohol content: 4.2%
Recommended serving temperature: 5ºC/41ºF
Brewery:
It's been a long time since I've reviewed a beer in this blog. Ever so often I get tempted to do so with a truly great beer, but I never get around to it. Instead, it has taken a truly awful German beer to really push me to write again.
This dubious honor goes to Holsten Premium.
Featured above next to the sink where it will be poured shortly, this pale golden lager with a big white head is bursting with aromas of boiled veggies, chlorine, medicinal products and rotten eggs with a faint malt backbone. Mind you, a faint smell of boiled veggies is somewhat of an accepted characteristic in lagers (that's why at low levels it is not considered a fault in homebrew competitions), however this one takes it to a whole other level. The rest of the descriptors, though, are signs of problems in the brewing process, problems I will not get into so as not to bore you with technical details.
Should you still find the will to put this thing in your mouth (that's what he said), you will savour boiled veggies and chlorine and notice a non-descript bitterness. This will lead to a lingering residual sweetness and a tingling in the mouth from the carbonation, but that's about it.That's about it. No malt, no hops, no body, no nothing. At 4.2% ABV It doesn't even have alcohol, for chris'sakes.
I tend to give German beers not only the benefit of the doubt, but more of a suspension of disbelief, in the sense that even the crummiest looking can looks better to me than your average Spanish beer. However, thanks to Holstein Premium, I now feel comfortable saying in public that one of the worse lagers I've had in my life is German. This means that I will now no longer go for German by defect in front of a shelf of beers l don't recognize at a supermarket. That's something for which German brewers need to thank the Holsten Brauerei, I guess.
My mom meanwhile needs to thank them for making me drink my veggies.
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