Asmara Lager Beer

Brewed by Asmara Brewery
Style: Pale Lager
Asmara, Eritrea

Serve in Dimpled mug, Lager glass, Shaker

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Bottle courtesy DSG via Hansen. Nice head with good duration. Color is pale yellow. Aroma and taste are malt, straw and hops.

Bottle sample at a tasting at Dancing Camel.Thanks DSG. Murky pale golden, white film. Sweet, molasses, corn aroma, generic bitter taste, something artificial tho. Light body, rather soft carbonation, bitter-sweet finish. OK.

Bottle sample at a tasting at Dancing Camel.Thanks DSG, Pours pale yellow with a medium head, aroma of grapes, wort, sweet to sourish tones, flavor is bitter and herby with some maltish tones, light to medium bodied, nice

Bottle shared at a tasting at Dancing Camel. Almost clear golden. Cereals aroma with corn. Sweetish grainy flavor with a bit of corn and a dry finish with light bitterness and sourish hints. Light to medium-bodied. Quite drinkable.

OK, so it’s been eight years since I tasted this beer, but at one time I drank quite a lot of it. When I arrived in Eritrea for the first time in 2002, the country was still recovering from Ethiopian occupation a decade earlier, to such an extent that the beer didn’t even have a label. There was something very nourishing about drinking a beer from an unadorned brown bottle in a country that hardly had electricity. My score for appearance (4/5) is for the sight of a few mls of beer hitting the concrete floor of the bar you were in - it was custom to pour a little onto the floor to make sure it foamed up. Foam = drink, no foam = send it back for another one because this one had gone pear-shaped in the production process. When there was foam, Asmara Lager was a very clean, crisp lager beer and one I never tired of drinking.

Several bottles, 33cl, back in the 90s. I was in asmara 3 weeks on a IT infrastructure job, and even back then I found pleasure in beer, and new exotic beer. The brew was somewhat similar to faxe fad, a little less bitter than HOF, and a little bit smoother. Also very slightly sweeter, but it is more or less just like any other macro lager. At the time i found it pretty good, as it was definetly drinkable. I ususally only rate from notes, but this is an exception - i’m not going back to asmara, eritrea anytime soon, although it is a nice town, located on a plateau on the mountain with very nice climate due to the high location.

Pours yellow with a thin white head. Smells of creamed corn, some appley hints, skunky. Tastes sweet and chewy with some stray hoppy hints on the finish. There is a weird saccharine like taste on the finish.

Pretty similar to the Harar, this one does not have much body or character. Some malt, some hops, just nothing special.

The bottle looks good, the beer in the glass also, but not much foam. Aroma sourish and a bit sweet. Tastes washy, a bit malty, finish a little bit drier. Very drinkable and good lager!

This is a nice, clean lager that tastes more like a standard lager than the Ethiopian Harar or Meta. It looks similar to Harar, being a deep straw yellow, very faintly hazy, with a fairly big, creamy white head that slowly shrinks and leaves some light, creamy lace. The aroma is light and sweet but pleasant, mostly light dough with honey and a hint of flowers. The taste is also light but quite pleasant. It’s a bit sweet with no bitterness, a clean flavour of apple with dough and honey and a hint of mineral, plus a lightly noticeable, but pleasant alcoholic warming quality. It’s smooth and drinkable.