Youngs Golden Zest

Formerly brewed at Youngs
Style: Golden Ale/Blond Ale
London, England

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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MGC with a medium size shortish lasting pale yellow head. Aroma is a mild multigrain and biscuity malt and a light flowery hop. Palate is on the thin, side, with a rubbery low carb feel. Flavour, hummmm, reminds me of a very low quality medium bitter low sweetness stale macro lager, Eczematic covers that aspect pretty well. Might just be a stale bottle ?

maris otter, styrian hops - how can they go wrong? trust youngs to find a way to make a potentially tasty beer thin, metallic and chloriney. in a blind taste test i would classify this as a crap german supermarket lager. the good thing is that it’s got some bitterness, but it’s a mess of thin, brackish, pinched flavours, with a lingering taste of thin lagery malt in the finish - hard to believe it’s this bad with those ingredients. the mouthfeel is all wrong - but there are some hints of nice lemony, peppery hop flavours and bready malt that never get to express themselves.

Orangey-gold, very carbonated to thick, puffy, off-white head, not stable. Light caramel, honey, grassy hops, jute, cat’s pee. One good thing first: it’s sourish, hoppy-ish, and NOT sweet. In fact, hopflavour dominates the whole taste & palate, again grassy and jute-ish hops. But nothing else. Very light, even watery texture; bit of hopoil in the aftertaste. Worth existing - but nothing more. Mind you, if this were cool cask, and outside 30°C summer, I might talk differently. WHY the clear glass bottle, for cats Peete’s sake?

Well it was over 35 degrees as well as being a bloody long day so this went down easily enough despite being pretty average. Aroma was a touch of hops and also corn and raisin. Colour was golden orange with a short lasting white head. Wouldn’t say it was too fruity but I could pick up marmalade, sweet, with a touch of bitter on the finish. Not a lot of body but I have had a lot worse.

Bottle. I expect better of Youngs. Golden coloured, quite carbonated no head after 20 seconds. Aroma is corn, lager, some fruit and malt. Tastes like a fruity lager. Poor.

Bottle. I found a lot of marmalade in this. Quite a malty mouthfeel with a slight bitterness, but I do quite like malty beers, very refreshing, would be nice to try this on cask.

Bottled. A very light golden beer with an odd biscuity, metallic, lagerish nose. There appears to be some hops in there but the taste is predominantly washed out and uninspiring. Would definitely be better on cask.

Not one of Youngs best. A bit like a lager that went wrong.Quite fruity and refreshing.Perhaps its because Youngs set such a high standard that I was so dissapointed in this one.

Clear bottle. Golden colour as its name suggests. Not much foam, light fruity sour aroma. Amazingly refreshing and drinkable. Probably the most refreshing English ale I’ve ever had.

UPDATED: AUG 12, 2004 Bottle. My son Piers bought this to help us kick back and relax after a day spent moving house. Surprisingly bland with a soapy finish. A half-hearted attempt at a citric buzz up front. Hops settle eventually into an acceptable bitterness. [2.7] I grabbed this one off the supermarket shelf to match it up with Badger's golden ale Golden Glory. But there's no real comparison. Young's beer is very much in the pilsner end of the Golden Ale spectrum. I think this would do a handsome job of standing up to a Pilsner Urquell or a Budvar, and it might be worth doing a taste off with some British cask lager/golden ales against some European pilsners. The hops give off a beefy whiff when the bottle is opened that could be claimed as "skunky" - it's a sort of rusty malt aroma like the Wychwood beers have. It's gone now. Anyway - 2.7 seems an appropriate score for a drinkable lager.