King Cobra

Brewed by Brouwerij Palm
Style: Strong Pale Lager/Imperial Pils
Steenhuffel, Belgium

Serve in Lager glass

send corrections   |   shelftag   |   edit barcodes   |   add pic

Well this beer was a pleasant surprise, I can’t really say that I like the style of European Strong Lagers because generally all you can taste is the alcohol. The colour of the body was a dull pale straw, trying to be golden, with a large frothy white head that almost hung around the distance. Aroma of dough and lemon. Smooth tasting with light malt characters and hints of cheese, balanced alcohol, some citrus and the bottle conditioning helps as well.

Bottle. Golden beer with a light head. The aroma is light and the flavour is lightly dry. Overall a nice beer for the style.

Big bottle in an Indian restaurant. Golden with a big bubbly head. Aromas are biscuit, toast and butter with sweet lemon and spices. Flavours are toasty with dry biscuit. Also hints of lemon. Not especially complex - more soft and light in character. Still, not bad.

UPDATED: SEP 7, 2006 This is a beer brewed to the original Cobra Lager recipe but at a higher alcohol strength by the Browar Belgia (Palm) in Southern Poland. Shipped to the Belgian Rodenbach brewery (Palm) where it’s "flash pasteurised and re-seeded with yeast" akin to that used by Trappist monks, it then undergoes warm-conditioning for second fermentation in the bottle for two weeks. The end result comes in a dark brown 750ml champagne bottle, corked and caged, looking unlike any other lager in the world~~ BB 28/01/2007. A: pours a straw hue with a rocky, foamy head which is spongey-textured and fed by lots of accelerating big and medium-sized bubbles ascending non-stop; dissipating slowly and leaving uneven white lacing along the way. S: grainy maltiness and sweet-lemony, noble-hop profile dominates the nose, along with fruit esters and resinous aroma imparted by the thick froth; after the beer head dissipates and swirling, more exotic fruity note comes through, like unripe kiwi-fruit+green apple, mixed well with a refreshing grassy note--intense and focused aroma, it’s pretty different for a strong lager with its exotic fruitiness attributed to Rodenbach’s yeast in the bottle apparently. T: strong flavour of grainy lager malts hits the palate upfront, with a slightly astringent mouthfeel and alcoholic warmth coming together; quickly giving way to a prevailing fruitiness mixed of mellon and lime juice, leading to a slightly spicy yeast aftertaste and a lightly bitter hops, on top of sugar cane-juice like fruity overtone; finished rather dry and slightly tangy deep down the palate, with just a tinge of alcoholic warmth felt down the throat. M&D: a bit overly fizzy and astringent on the mouthfeel initially, while the texture does soften as the flavour evolves from one level to another. The 8% alcohol is not as stale but "hot" as other super-strong lagers; however, being second-fermented in the bottle with Rodenbach yeast, this beer’s texture perhaps could benefit from some more months to really soften, and now is still too early to judge the true quality of this beer. But overall this strong lager has shown more subtleties than most of its counterparts, with an enticing aroma and an ever-changing flavour profile to add to its uniqueness.Well worth a try!