Ten Green Bottles (Grolsch Premium Lager)

Member Name: merv

Product:	Grolsch Premium Lager
Date:	11/01/03 (1696 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pleasant taste , Some really good offers about

Disadvantages: Skunking - whatever that is!

I used to work with someone who was a bit of an anorak about beer. A member of CAMRA, he was the fount of all knowledge as far as the amber nectar was concerned. There didn’t appear to be anything he didn’t know about the subject.

Most of what he said went in through one ear and out of the other, as my only interest in beer is drinking it, but one thing did stick in my mind. He said that beer should never be bottled in green bottles because the green glass attracts sunlight and causes ‘skunking’.

I never asked him what skunking was, what it did to the beer or whether it affected the taste, but as often happens to gullible people like me, when presented with half-truth and rumour, I proceeded to avoid beer in green bottles like the plague. Until last week that is, when I realised I had been duped and had been missing out on a rather pleasant and a very good value lager.

It happened because we were off to a New Year’s Eve party and I needed some beer and wine to take. It was 5.30 pm on New Year’s Eve and the only place I could drive to by closing time was the local Kwiksave. Everybody seemed to have the same idea - but half an hour earlier, which meant that by the time I got there the shelves were practically empty.

I picked up a couple of bottles of wine and then turned my attention to the beer. Plenty of cheap label cans left but I really did want to take bottles so I was left with no choice but the last ten-pack of Grolsch in the shop. Throwing caution to the wind I made my purchase deciding that ten green bottles was better than no bottles at all.

And what a pleasant surprise I had, though by the time I’d taken off my coat at the party the ten green bottles had already started to disappear despite there being plenty of Stella and Budweiser available.

Grolsch is a Dutch beer brewed since 1615, which means its been around even longer than the awful 80’s boy band,
Bros, who you may remember, wore jeans and Dr Marten boots held together with Grolsch swingtop bottle tops. It is a typical Pilsner style lager, golden in colour, with a moderate ABV of 5.0. The manufacturers claim that it is brewed using only the highest quality of ingredients to allow them to export it to Germany where the ‘Reinheitsgebot’ ensures that beer can only be brewed with water, malted barley, hops and yeast. The critical factor however and the one that forms the centrepiece of Grolsch’s advertising campaign is time - "we only let you drink it when it's ready".

The bottles that I bought were brewed under licence at Burton on Trent. Someone at the party said they preferred the imported beer, which has a ‘swingtop’ - a trademark of the company. This is supposedly better than the Grolsch commonly sold in all our supermarkets, but nevertheless I found the UK variety distinctive and pleasant, a bit fizzier than some of its rivals with a nice, clean, slightly bitter taste and a definite smell of hops. It is a very clear lager a quality achieved by a cold, triple filtering process and unlike many cheap lagers it has a lingering taste.

It’s not as smooth as San Miguel – my favourite lager at the moment (originally bought because of its brown bottle!) but it does have a creamier texture than many similar lagers. It sounds as if I’m contradicting myself here, one moment I’m describing it as sharp and clean and the next I’m saying its creamy, but in my opinion that’s how it tastes – a sort of combination of the two. I’m sure if you give it a try you’ll see what I mean.

It comes in a variety of bottles and cans. The ten 27.5cl bottles I bought cost me £5.00 which, at 50p a can is extremely good value. I saw a similar half price offer in Tesco recently 24 x 27.5cl bottles for £11.99 and 24 x 44cl cans at Somerfield were a ridiculously cheap £8
.99. Has beer in supermarkets ever been as cheap as it was this Christmas? – I stocked up for the summer and there’s now no room in the garage for the car!

Check out Grolsch’s entertaining web site at www.grolsch.co.uk - it has some amusing games to play.

So, no longer will I shy away from beer in green bottles. Anybody know what ‘skunking’ is?

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