Noche Buena

Brewed by FEMSA
Style: American Dark Lager
Monterrey/Veracruz-Llave, Mexico

Thanks to El_Borracho’s dad for the sample, direct from the Texas/Mexico border. Light caramel nose and a fairly obvious corn syrup adjunct. Corn is also prominent in the flavor, adding a distinctive corn syrup cloying sweetness. Merely OK, meaning I kept it down successfully.

Bottle. Nice dark amber colour with a big fuzzy though rather short lasting head. Aroma of toasted malts, caramel and some hops. Smooth flavour of sweet malts, good hoppy bitterness, and hints of nuts. A nice long bit sweet dry aftertaste. This Cerveza Especial sure is special and in my opinion the very best mass produced beer in Mexico. The flower on the label is a "poinsettia". It turns red around winter time.

A nice beer and much different than most Mexican beers. No bitterness and a light sweetness to it. I sampled this in a Queretaro restaurant. Decent depth of flavor to it...very nice.

A bottle brought back and sampled in Calgary. Very strong toast aroma. Very bready. Copper coloured with a thin head. Toasty malt flavour is strong through the finish. A bit lite in the body. A dark toasted piece of beer.

Bottle, 5.9%. Metallic aroma. Clear brown colour, quite stable head. Weak bready aroma, not unpleasant. Low bitterness, not much flavour. Quite boring, a bit like cheap lager with a bit of colour.

Is this a seasonal? The poinsetta on the label makes me wonder, and the popularity of it when I was there in early January suggests maybe it is. Anyway, not a bad vienna I guess, similar to Leon. If you give it a chance to come up past freezing temperature you’ll get more out of it. Mildly sweet pale lager profile with a faintly earthy quality. I had it from a bottle and found there was no metallic taste at all.

Pouring from a 2006 bottle, this has a deeb amber body and a white halo in lieu of a head. The aroma is very caramelly with a smattering of candy corn. The two blend in the flavor into something that’s just a bit too sweet for my tastes. The finish is thick and candy sweet.

<font size=-4>Thanks to my The LoSBD colleague <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ViewUser.asp?UserID=2 for passing this along.<font size=-1>

2006 Bottle. Smells of faint and weak malt with bits of pepper and enchilada. Decent amber with a suitable head. Tastes like 1 part hopped pennies in 9 parts water. Six percent ABV? Seriously? Mineral water has more of a punch than this mess. Watery mouthfeel. Good thing I only bought one in Cozumel.