Fosters Lager

Brewed by Fosters Brewing (CUB)
Style: Pale Lager
Southbank, Victoria, Australia

Bottle. A - Light, clear golden color with a decent sized white head that disappears pretty fast. S - Faint smell, mostly of sweet grains. Typical smells for the style. T - Also fairly typical for the style, but with a touch more fruitiness and hops. Dominated by a sweet grain/malt taste. A touch of hops present. What really distinguishes it though is the hint of apple and lemon. M - Light bodied, well carbonated and crisp, pretty typical for the style. D - Easy to knock back a few and has enough taste that linger that I may want to (if I not necessarily in a craft beer place/mood). Notes: Fairly standard Adjunct Lager, but that hint of fruitiness makes it a bit more desirable for me. However, it is still light, watery, and pretty much devoid of hops and most other tastes.

Foster’s Brewing Group--Foster’s Lager--Taiwan--1999 12 oz. Bottle. 4.90% ABV (2.5 / 5.0) Pilsner--Clear straw golden color. Tangy floral, not Saaz, hop front in light pilsner style. Carbonated with light lace. Crisp smooth light malt body with a little caramel. Clean finish missing hops. Sampled 11/9/1999.

This is a bland pale lager. With that said, there are worse. I have had maybe 2 years ago and I doubt I will ever have another.... there is nothing here. It tastes like metallic corn malt with a lot of water added.

Refrigerated bottle poured into a glass. Pours a really pale yellow with extremely small white head that dissapates almost immediately. Taste is corn malt and metallic. Foster’s is Australian for crappy beer.

Doughy aroma, clear, pale, no head, little flavor apart from the carbonation, thin feel, no finish.

750 mL "oil can" from a mug. Pours a standard lager golden color. Tall 3 finger fizzy head that disappears rapidly. Surprisingly leaves decent lacing on the glass. Aroma of basically nothingness - a slight amount of grains. Taste of corn. There really isn’t much flavor here to speak of other than standard pale lager graininess and a slight metallic aftertaste. "Australian for Beer?" For Australians’ sake, I hope not. Its on par with the American macros.

Since I’m nearly a decade too late in reviewing this particular beer, I think it goes without saying that Foster’s is not truly an Australian imported beer, but a Canadian brew of an Australian recipe based on a generic American-style lager. This isn’t to say that Foster’s is a bad beer, but it’s not a very good one either. It’s basically a light beer with more weight and taste.

POUR, COLOR AND AROMA

Beers that pour to crystal-clear colors, no matter what they may be, always impress me. It’s basically looking at colored water and this is true of Foster’s which is a clear blonde. It forms a foamy, bright white head that doesn’t have much taste or other notable features. It does leave quite a lot of lacing on the glass, although the head doesn’t linger for very long.

There isn’t much of an aroma here at all, just a very generic beer smell. Mainstream lagers aren’t known for their intoxicating aroma, just their intoxicating alcoholic content when consumed in high enough quantities.

TASTE

I have no problem with a beer with a flat taste, because sometimes you just want something easy to drink. Foster’s is extremely reminiscent of our current king of mass-market lagers, but actually has a cleaner taste.

The problem is this beer should be drunk at very cold temperatures otherwise its acetaldehyde component becomes noticable (it’s almost a green apple taste). Since the beer is pretty flat, it’s best consumed as a partner to dinner or snack foods (i.e. while watching “Monday Night Football”).

FINISH

If drank while ice cold there is no bite to Foster’s at all, but as it warms its bite becomes stronger. But since this isn’t the kind of beer you’re likely to drink as an appreciator of the craft of brewing, you’re unlikely to encounter this effect.

BODY

For a mass-market lager, Foster’s is surprisingly light in body. It’s probably the closest a beer can get to being a light without actually falling into the “light” category. Foster’s is generally drank arbitrarily so there’s no reason it should have anything other than a light-medium body. In fact, it’s probably easier to drink in large quantities than most major American and Canadian lagers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Although there isn’t much to Foster’s, I do find it slightly tastier and lighter than most mainstream American lagers. It’s priced just slightly higher and its availability is pretty close to those beers it attempts to compete with. It’s certainly no masterpiece of brewing, but as a social beer it’ll do.<a href="/review/Yuengling_Traditional_Lager/con />

12 oz Bottle. Pours a light golden yellow, very slight malt/hop nose, almost artificial fruit flavor. Frothy head actually had some staying power and laced a bit. Slightly bitter aftertaste. Overall, not much substance, but if it were one a few commercial beer choices, I might grab for one.