Baltika 3 Klassicheskoe (Classic)

Brewed by Baltika Brewery (Baltic Beverages Holding - Carlsberg)
Style: Pale Lager
St. Petersburg, Russia

Pale yellow pour with a small to medium white head. Grainy sweet aroma, maybe some faint floral character. LIht body, rather thin, but not watery at least. Flavor starts off sweet, and the light hopping does bring a soft bitterness and a marginally dry finish.

Pours light and clear, deeper color than most American pale lagers, has some hop aroma, kind of grassy, but generally weak smell, tastes a little sweet, sort of neutral except for a little hop bitterness. Not much body, not much at all.

Clear pale yellow body with a large frothy white head. Sweet corn, grain, slight skunk aroma and a touch of grassy hops. Sweet grainy honey flavor with light grassy hop hints. Light body with fairly high carbonation and a smooth but grainy finish.

Lets go to Russia! Appearance of pale yellow american lager when poured from a 17 oz bottle. Nice head at first but then it fades rapidly to a teafroth. Taste is typical american pale lager but has it’s own unique spin. Some yeasty pale lager aromas. Taste is relatively acceptable for a lager lover. Cannot really taste too much hops as described but that is a good point. When I refill the glass the foam hangs. Some industrial , possibly plastic bite on the finish, but overall not bad. One of the better baltikas I’ve had. Probably on par with Baltika 5. Finish is lagerlike and non assuming. Does not possess any of the industrial processed adjunct off flavors of many american cheap lagers.

Sampled from a can: Weak lemony grain aroma. Paleyellow pour with a thin vanishing head. Weak sweet corn flavor. Plastic and sugar water aftertaste. Cheap tasting and unpleasant.

500ml bottle. pale gold color. almost non-existant head. tiny malt aroma. light carbonation. crisp and refreshing. would be good after a long hot dirt bike ride in the Mojave Desert. being from Russia I expected it to be as nasty as Russian cigarettes(which are dreadfully horrible), which it is not.

Gold color. An ordinary pale lager. Corn and sweet malt. Its redeeming quality is that it is not offensive.

Bottle. A hint of hops, sweet malt and a corn sweetness on the nose. Pours pale yellow with a thin rocky white head. Flavor consists of sweet corn with a metallic finish. Not a lot going on here. Medium bodied. Inoffensive, but not complex.