Carlton Empire Lager

Formerly brewed at Carlton & United Breweries (CUB)
Style: Pale Lager
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Serve in Dimpled mug, English pint, Lager glass, Shaker

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Bottled. Fizzy golden, very brief head. Corn aroma, Very sweet with sharp, hard, fizzy mouthfeel. The dominating flavour is boiled vegetables. Low bitterness. Really awful.

UPDATED: OCT 17, 2003 Everyone is spot on, this tastes like any other lager from CUB. It actually would be interesting to do a blind taste test of CUB lagers, i seriously reckon they'd all taste the same. "Late Hopped for an extra smooth finish".....wow, amazing, thats a revolutionary technique. Funny how i can't taste any hops, and funny how the finish manages to be fizzy and adjuncty rather than smooth. A stupid beer. On second thoughts this is even worse, we still have heaps of cases at work of this, that just aren't moving. What a wank of a beer. Wank, wank, wank, wank, wank, wank, wank, wank, wank , wank, wank.

not as bad as expected. zero aroma, looks like beer. says it's late hopped for an ultra smooth finish. not offensive tasting like cold shot. quite sweet. was served very cold at cronulla rsl and i'd say that was just as well

Pale golden, clear, medium head. I wouldn’t go so far as calling this "foul", but it is pretty boring. Sweet malt is really all you get for flavour (the same as all corn-adjunct, over-processed pale lagers on the market). I wouldn’t choose to drink it again if an alternative were available, but I wouldn’t turn it down if the beerfridge was empty on a Friday night. This is my standard review for all "two-star-or-less" piss.

UPDATED: JUL 15, 2006 This is a new one from CUB aimed at the 18-25 year olds I suppose the cold shots didnt do it for them as they are giving a 4 pack away with every carton of carlton cold. Anyway back to the Empire I thought it wasnt too bad for a 41 year old, good aroma, average size head, minimum lacing, the taste was smooth ( due to the late hops? ) grapefruit and hints of cheese maybe some butter. Anyway it wasnt too bad specially after having it straight after an Eisbock!

Draught, at the Paddington Inn, Sydney.
Pale yellow colour with bright white head. Bitter sweet aroma. Bitter flavour to begin with but then a long sweet aftertaste lingers on the palate. Drinking at extreme pace with some old mates, I haven’t yet made up my mind on this beer. All I do know is that the marketing of the stuff has gone crazy since I was last here.

Guam SwillFest 2004: Pours a golden yellow with a thin white head. Light fruit aroma-again there is the grape thing going on with all these Australian beers. Lightly hopped flavor with more fruitiness and a bit of alcohol, even for a 4.3% beer. Overall, not bad. Refreshing.

Geez, why did I even bother? Talk about hard to down, this beer is possibly the biggest joke to hit the shelves of the local Liquor store since Carlton Cold!!! Warning bells were there just from the label and the clear glass bottle, I should have put it back. Poured into a Pilsner glass, medium soapy white head formed quickly atop a crystal clear straw body. Heavy metallic aroma, skunky, and something almost like Ouzo and coke wafted from the glass. Carlton Cold in the mouth, very soapy and Diacetyl slick, chemically derived carbonation and clamminess across the palate, yet oddly flavourless. Almost not beer at all. I don’t know what drugs the Bean counters at CUB are on because this is an insulting Drain poor of a ’drink’. ’Nuff said!!!

Has got to be serious contender to CUB’s worst beer, quite a note worthy achievement. Clear light gold just like a bunch of other macro largers. Adjunct malts on nose? CUB staleness lurking as well. Very dry, crisp palate with underlying stale notes and faint syrupy, manufactured malts.

So, Siimon, Nikki and Damon were sitting around the table in their advertsising agency office, contemplating the new brief they had received from CUB. After the debacle with Carlton Cold Shot they knew they had to perform. The problem was that they had to promote a beer that was deliberately brewed to be nondescript. The product description and brief they had from CUB was that the beer was 'smoother and less bitter' than other CUB beers and that the target audience was the 18-29 'late nighter'. The unopened 6 pack sat on the table, all 3 realising how fruitless it would be to taste it as they all hated beer. If it didn't have rum or vodka in the glass with a bunch of unpeeled citrus fruits that had to be smashed with a big stick, as was the rage in all the bars they frequented, then it wasn't worthy of being called alcohol. Damon did like the odd Campari however. Anyway they thought long and hard about the advertising campaign and name for the beer. Yeah they had to come up with a sexy name. How about Cruiser? No that was taken. OK, what about Carlton Wet?..... naah people might think it was too watery (how prescient). "Bugger I don't know, they could just have added a dose of eccy to each bottle and no-one would have cared", Nikki exclaimed. "We could even have called it Empire or some other stupid irrelevant name like that and no-one would have given a damn". Anyway, strangely the beer went out under that name so all of the 18-29 male demographic could apply their thoughts to how much this country does not need to be a republic. Rather, they can marvel at the amber body and smooth white head atop an entirely bland beer. The hops were so late that they missed the trip entirely, which is just as well as they didn't have to fight with the malt presence to exert their superiority. This is certainly the beer for late nighters, as the last thing that matters on the sweaty, smoky dancefloor is a complexity of flavours that combine beautifully to provide the market with a quality beer that is a delight to drink.