When you want to knock a few back. (Fosters Lager)

Member Name: spiffo

Product:	Fosters Lager
Date:	09/05/01 (86 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap,, Quite strong,, A good beer when you're in a group and don't want to *think* about what you're drinking.

Disadvantages: Tasteless,, It's easy to get more drunk than you realise quite quickly,, The canned stuff is horrible.

The normal complaint you hear about Fosters is that it doesn't taste of enough to be worth drinking. It's not like a "proper" lager (if you ask most serious lager snobs which are proper lagers, you'll end up of a list of German and other European beers for some reason), you just drink it and it slides down your throat without you noticing it.

For some people, though, this is actually a good thing! When you're sitting in the pub with a group of people who you actually want to talk to, it's nice to have a drink that you can just have in your hand and take sips of constantly without having to think about it. That's one of the reasons that lager is so popular in this country, it's cheap and there are large quantities which you can drink for ages while you talk.

The taste itself isn't actually all that bad either. There's a bit of an aftertaste, but it's not that noticeable, and you often don't go long enough between sips for it to really kick in.

I'll admit that what I've described so far is nothing special, but then Fosters is one of the cheapest lagers around (about 15 or 20p cheaper than a pint of the average beer in most of the London pubs I go into). It's not particularly interesting or special, but it's a good basic draught lager.

As with any beer, there's a difference between the stuff you get in the pubs and the stuff you get in the Off Licence. It's in the cans that Fosters falls down quite badly. The Fosters Export, which is 5% is all right with food, but tastes foul when drunk on its own. The regular Fosters, which is 4%, is just a weaker version of the Export, not in the sense of having less alcohol, but in the sense of being weaker in every way. The taste and after taste aren't quite as bad in the non Export stuff, but that's because they aren't as strong.

Finally, a word on "Amber". I've seen lots of adverts
for this new beer from Fosters, which is meant to be just like Fosters, but which is smoother and easier to drink. I've seen Amber in a pub, but given that I've never tried a lager which is easier to drink without thinking about it than Fosters, I'll definitely give it a try if I ever see it!

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