Labatt Blue

Brewed by Labatt Breweries (InBev)
Style: Pale Lager
London, Canada

Serve in Dimpled mug, Lager glass, Shaker

send corrections   |   shelftag   |   edit barcodes   |   update pic

straight from the bottle like a man... under-rated but the best canadian beer because it’s one of the very very few that you can have 12 or more and your body doesn’t start rejecting as toxic winey, carby, a bit sour...it’s my cheap reliable "go to" out of all the canadian brands..the rest will tox you out and make you wanna throw up from malt or bad grade hops drinkability (numbers and getting bombed by) should be a rating because this one deserves a 60% ( be bombed out and still not get grossed out ) I do joke because I am searching out and having the "best" 99-100 rated beers and becoming a half assed connoisseur. I think my mind will change when I get my taste buds on a cantillon if I can afford a dozen

Can. Canadian pale lagers all taste similar to me. The hopping is better than the big American macros and the body is a little lighter.

Can. Pours a clear straw with rapidly diminishing white head. Essentially no lacing. Aroma is pale malt, bread/dough, sweet, corn. Flavor is sweet, mildly malt, mildly bitter aftertaste, slight metal/soap. Moderate carbonation. light body, and watery texture. LIght, bland lager, you get what you pay for.

UPDATED: JUN 6, 2013 On tap @ Sportsman Pub, Ladysmith. Light honey colour- dark yellow. Head is thin and dissapears instantly, leaving no lacing whatsoever. Aroma is of corn and some fruits- malt sweetness on the nose as well. Taste consists of barley malt, corn, berries, distinct hops and some sweetness on the aftertaste. Medium bitterness; Some sour notes on the palate. Very heavily carbonated, takes a while for the carbonation to die down. This is a good pilsner- kind of reminds me of an IPA. Definitely one of the better mass produced pilsners in Canada. Cheers.

If you’re going to drink one of these beers, you could do worse. At least this has a wheaty flavor.

I poured a 24oz can into a large mug. There was no decipherable freshness date. It cost $1.81 ($0.08 per ounce).

Appearance: Clear, dark gold hue, plenty of carbonation visible. Forms a large, white, soapy head which actually retains and laces extremely well for a beer of this style.

Smell: Pretty typical adjunct pale lager aroma, but not nearly as offensive as most.

Taste: I don’t know what’s going on with me, but lately I’ve begun to notice that I’m either building up a tolerance to, or actually starting to acquire a taste for macro adjunct lagers. Most are not nearly as bad as I remember, and some are actually more neutral-tasting than they are bad. Case in point: Labatt Blue. Sure it’s a typical fizzy yellow lager, but it’s actually one of the better ones (for what that’s worth).

Most beers of this type tend to have their adjuncts and other flaws quite prominent right away. Labatt Blue is noticeably mild, though, as it does not have any kind of astringent boiled corn or cardboard taste to it. I actually detect a faint sweetness here at the beginning. A short burst of bitterness at the top of the swig followed by some sweet or toasted corn flavor on the finish. A lot of beers of this sort tend to have metallic and other off-flavors to them, but Labatt Blue is quite clean. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it tastes good, but I wouldn’t describe it as bad, either.

Drinkability: For a fizzy yellow beer, Labatt Blue isn’t nearly as spastic as some of the others of the style. It looks much more carbonated than it feels. Sure there’s a slight vibration across the tongue, but it goes down relatively smooth with little CO2 getting stuck in the throat. The 5% ABV seems about right, if not a tad high, though I could honestly see this being sessionable under appropriate circumstances (e.g. tailgating, camping, at a sporting event).

Bottle. Pours light yellow with minimal white head. Smells slightly spicy lager. Tastes amazingly like nothing. Just a touch of wheat. Not much.

I needed to get a cheap beer and I always heard that Labatt was one of the better ones. It really isn’t - the aftertaste is chemical-like and generally unpleasant. What you want out of a cheap macro beer is for it to go down easy and this didn’t fill that need - just pay the extra $3 for Corona and avoid the sickly finish.

Bottle. Pours a clear pale straw yellow body with a small fizzy white head that faded to a thin ring very quickly. The nose is pretty much just corn syrup sweetness and not a whole lot else. The flavor is pretty sad, a hefty dose of corn syrup sweetness with a wet soggy grain finish. No bitterness to speak of in any sense. Light bodied, super fizzy, and a bit sticky on the finish. This is even worse than I was expecting.

Pours clear light yellow. Tastes a lot like Miller High Life, especially the sweet corn aftertaste. Typical macro lager, not bad on a hot day.