Heineken

Brewed by Heineken Nederland
Style: Pale Lager
Zoeterwoude, Netherlands

Can. A - Light straw color with an average sized foamy white head. Disappears pretty fast. Minimal lacing left. S - Lager, corn smell. Slight skunky smell and faint grassy and floral hop. T - Similar to the smell. Pretty typical Euro-lager beer. Grain and corn sweetness upfront with some skunkiness. Decent amount of grassy/floral hops for beers that are similar to it. M - Light and highly carbonated. Crisp. D - Decent. The flavor isn’t great, but compared to other Euro-lagers it isn’t bad. Easy to drink. Notes: Decent for a Euro-lager type beer. Not good, but decent for what it is.

Pours gold with white head, aroma is bread and cereal. Taste is slightly dry with some cereal and hay finishing dry. Ok for a mass produced lager, would get this over many of the others.

Bottle: Pale golden to golden, sweetish papery-cardboardy nose with some greenish hops underneath; light bodied, mucous MF, light sweetish-bitter flavour; wet cardboard and vegetables in the sweetish-bitter finish. Quality sells.......

Overrated but easy to drink, Lets face it: Heineken is a Wedding reception beer.

I enjoy trying various authentic European beers, but one style I don’t like is the green-bottled pilsner and pale lager. Few beers of this type are at least average, let alone enjoyable. So I gave Heineken a try since it’s the most famous beer on the planet of this type. In retrospect, I’m sorry I even bothered.

POUR, COLOR AND AROMA

Heineken’s stubby bottle shape lends it to a rough pour. The green bottle also enables the beer to easily lend itself to skunking, which is exactly what my bottle (and every bottle of Heineken I’ve smelled at a bar or party) smells like.

The body is a crystal-clear, dark gold color with enormous amounts of carbonation immediately apparent. The head is bright white, fizzy and dissolves quickly leaving no traces to its existence whatsoever.

TASTE

I’m not a big fan of mass-market lagers and pilsners, because most have no genuine craftsmanship to their taste and that is true of Heineken. Many of the European beers of the style that I have tried have been at least crisp and clean, maybe even creamy. However, the same cannot be said of this beer which is just plain watery with an off-putting taste.

The first thing I notice is an extremely grainy flavor which finishes with a heavy, dry, yeast-like taste. In fact, the beer has almost of a metallic flavor, which is likely the product of the grainy taste combined with the skunky smell. The flavor bad to the point of making the beer only tolerable to drink. There’s simply no appeal at all.

FINISH

Due to its highly-carbonated content and bad taste, Heineken is a surprisingly difficult beer to actually drink. As soon as it hit my mouth the beer fizzled so much it was annoying (although I’ve had worse). Its gassy composition also makes it difficult to take back-to-back swigs if you know what I mean.

BODY

At 5% ABV, Heineken is most likely intended to be enjoyed as a session or party beer, but I’m not sure who would want to drink more than one.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I’ll have to give Heineken the benefit of the doubt and simply assume I got a bad or old batch. Still, from what I can gather about this beer, even under ideal circumstances it’s nothing to write home about. It’s a cheap, imported lager that’s not any better than American brews of the type and how it became so world-renown I cannot fathom. So it’s a beer with little value - avoid it.

NOTE: Watch the video version of this review at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxcLJZyXWpE

Skunky smell with a small white head. Beautiful color with light carbonation. Tastes a bit hoppy with a small hint of herbs. Overall, not a horrible beer.

In a can on a flight from Columbus to Charlotte then on to Las Vegas. Great aroma, but wasn’t so "extra cold"

Bitter, skunky and watery. The fact that this is mildy expensive and still popular boggles my mind.