Tiger Beer

www.tigerbeer.com

Brewed by Singapore Brewery (Asia Pacific Breweries-Heineken)
Style: Pale Lager
Alexandra Point, Singapore

Launched in 1932, Tiger beer is a best selling brew from the small Asian country of Singapore. It is very popular and is Asia’s number one beer brand owned and run by Asia Pacific Breweries Ltd, formerly Malayan Breweries Ltd.

The brewing giant from The Netherlands, Heineken have always had a helping hand in the creation of this iconic brand. They came up with the idea of a brewery this side of the world, but were initially thinking of Indonesia, as the nation was a Dutch colony, but were denied. Singapore was then chosen. Together with Fraser and Neave (F&N), Heineken launched Malayan Breweries in 1931, and a year later we got Tiger Beer. Today, Heineken owns 42% of the shares of Asia Pacific Breweries.

Today Tiger Beer is brewed in 11 countries and is available in over 70 countries worldwide, from the US and the UK to the ever burgeoning market of China. The beer has also won numerous awards down through the years, including the Gold Medals for “International-Style Lager” and “European Style Pilsner” in the 2004 and 2010 editions of the World Beer Cup.

It is quite a popular beer, especially in Asia, and  has used “There’s always time for a Tiger” as its catchphrase since the 1930s, made famous by the British author Anthony Burgess, him of A Clockwork Orange fame, named his 1956 first novel “Time for a Tiger” (the first part of the Malayan trilogy The Long Day Wanes) after the slogan of the iconic beer.  

It’s not only Tiger lager that the brewery produces, they also have a “Tiger Crystal” which was launched in 2010, is a beer cooled down to a temperature of -1 degree Celsius. Its “Tiger Radler”, released in 2013, uses natural lemon juice with the beer. In 2016, Tiger Beer introduced “Tiger Black”, a type of black beer that is steeped with Asian black rice, which sounds very interesting,  and “Tiger White”, a type of German wheat beer infused with coriander, clove and citrus.

Review: 500ml bottle of Tiger Beer: 4.8% vol.

Can find it as 5% vol. in other regions of the world. Comes in a bottle, can or from the tap.  Popular in Asia especially as it is the perfect beer to have as the sun goes down.

Unlike a lot of other Asian beers, Tiger actually use quality ingredients from Australia and Europe. No shitty rice beers here!

Love the famous iconic branding, the famous tiger logo and nice big colourful lettering, the blue, orange and gold. Stands out for sure. On the bottle we get “World acclaimed Asian lager”, born in Singapore and this is an “award winning full bodied beer”. 

On the pour I am getting a nice clear golden coloured beer with a white head that is a little on the small side. Some slight carbonation. Ok on the looks. 

The aroma is not great, very light, an ok lagery smell, all malty and grainy on the nose but too light and a little too much corn and very sweet.

The taste is easy enough to appreciate, was very soft on the tongue, nice and crisp.

Nice frothy mouthfuls initially, and also getting some corn in the taste.

Tasted like a regular lager, no real complaints there. Perhaps a little creamy off taste but generally it was ok. Getting the malts and grains, and the fruits, with the hops on the low level.

To be frank I was a little disappointed as the overall taste was ok but nothing too exciting, a bit bland in fact, nothing to set it apart from the millions of lagers out there. Disappointed as I have had this beer many a time when I was in Asia. In fact it was my most favourite beer that side of the world, lovely from the taps. I just guess it doesn’t travel well, and not so exciting in a bottle thousands of miles away from home. Perfect for the hot humid Asian cityscape, not so when its piddling down in bog town Ireland!

Overall it was light, smooth and drinkable but with no kick or standout features. Boring.

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Nøgne Ø Two Captains Double IPA

www.nogne-o.com/

Brewed by Nøgne Ø
Style: Double IPA
Grimstad, Norway

Founded in 2002, by Gunnar Wiig and Kjetil Jikiun, Nøgne Ø is a Norwegian beer that has been kicking ass for a while now on the various online beer review sites.

Nøgne Ø, is an old Danish word for “Naked Isle”, highlighting the barren and rugged landscape off Norway’s rough coastal waters. It was selected from a 19th-century Norwegian poem called Terje Vigen by Henrik Ibsen.

In 2013 Hansa Borg Bryggerier, a family run Norwegian brewery and distribution company which markets beer, bottled water and carbonated drinks, acquired a majority share in Nøgne Ø. This resulted in Nøgne Ø growing in production in size and output, and now make more than 30 different styles of craft beers and ales, and export to more than 40 countries worldwide. The styles include seasonal beers, a wide variety of pale ales, Belgians, lagers and traditional ales, porters and stouts and anything else they can think of. For a while they also produced their own version of Sake, a first in Europe, but have since discontinued this, best to leave that to the Japanese I think!

Review: 0,33l brown bottle of Nøgne Ø Two Captains Double IPA: 8.5% vol.

Listed in the top 100 breweries in the World by a certain beer rating site every year since 2006 to 2018, so this better be good so. It will be my first try out with a beer from Norway.

This award winning beer, first brewed in 2010, had its recipe made up by an airline captain and part time homebrewer Jan Halvor Fjeld. Nøgne Ø’s head brewer at that time was also a pilot, hence the name, Two Captains! 

Interesting brown bottle with a logo that looks a bit hisptery, an “avant garde” style. 

On pour looks great, a lovely amber colour and a small but decent white head. Doesn’t look too bad at all, very inviting.

The white head although small does maintain very well, small but steady, Some good lacing apparent.

It really is a good looking beer, lovely to watch it swirl about in the glass, has a deep look, that captivates. Very good so far!

The smell was also lovely, had the “wow factor”, gorgeous in fact.

Deep smelling, IPA style, like a good ale, floral and hop notes, but the citrus and lemon stand out a lot here. Also got a nice whiff of caramel. 

The aroma is a nice combination of lemonade and fermented fruit drenched in alcohol. Amazing on the nose, a very seductive smell and one so powerful they could sell as a perfume. 

So to the taste, and well……..wow! It is very strong in the taste, all that double hopping has produced one hell of a strong tasting beer. Hopped to hell, and very, very bitter, very strong in the taste.

All a bit “urgh” to me, finding those hops are just impossible to enjoy, going down very slowly and with great difficulty. Too strong and bitter to truly appreciate or enjoy. One for the hardcore IPA heads to like, but not for me. And to be fair to them they do warn on their website that this isn’t for the faint hearted..

The extreme bitterness (100 IPU) is very overwhelming, killing everything in its reach. Got the hops for sure, but also found the caramel, the fruits and the sweet malts. 

Very strong in the alcohol too, they are using English ale yeast so therein lies the strength of this brew, can feel it for sure, and don’t mind admitting I was a bit pissed after the two bottles. The 8.5% is definitely alive and well here, all clean though. I can imagine downing a few of these bad boys you would be on your head in no time! But I wonder if it is possible to drink more than two with how bitter and disgusting they are? Best avoided………

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Windhoek Premium lager

https://windhoekbeer.com/

Brewed by Namibia Breweries Limited
Style: Euro Pale Lager
Windhoek, Namibia

Windhoek Lager is a beer brewed by the Namibia Breweries Limited (NBL), a Namibian brewery founded in 1920. Namibia is a country in southwest Africa of about 2.5 million people, in case you were curious, where the famous sprinter Frankie Fredericks was from, remember him? Windhoek is the country’s capital and the name given to the lager. 

In the early 1900’s, two friends, Carl List and Hermann Ohlthaver acquired four small breweries with financial difficulties. The breweries were merged under the name South West Breweries Limited (SWB). In time, SWB changed its name to Namibia Breweries Limited when Namibia gained independence, from South Africa, on the 21st of March 1990. Ohlthaver & List Group of Companies are still the majority shareholder.

Before its independence in 1990, the area was known first as German South-West Africa (Deutsch-Südwestafrika), then as South-West Africa, reflecting the colonial occupation by the Germans and the South Africans. That perhaps might explain why they have some colonial throwback to brewing German style beers in accordance with the old Reinheitsgebot, also known as the “German Beer Purity Law”. As a reminder, the law prohibits the use of any flavourings, preservatives, or colourants during the brewing process and allows only three traditional, natural ingredients: malted barley, hops, and water. Following the rules means a slower more nuanced quality produced brew as opposed to a mass produced beer doled out quickly in a matter of days by speeding up the process with additives and inferior ingredients.

Namibia Breweries Limited produce and sell all the regular beers one would expect from a large brewery, their lagers, a few shandies, some soft drinks, and also some speciality beers perhaps unusual to Africa, like their Urbock, a winter bock beer. Most of the beer is sold to their neighbour and massive next door market, South Africa, with over 60% of NBL products heading in that direction, with the rest going to about 20 countries worldwide. 

Review: 330ml green bottle of Windhoek Premium lager: 4.0% vol.

Reads “crafted with passion since 1920” on the bottle..

Looks good on the pour, a very nice white frothy head, quite big, and a lovely golden coloured beer. Good carbonation, fizzing around. After a while it all settles down to look a bit flat.

Overall it is a solid look. Ok

Aromas of grains and pale malts and citric notes, typical lager smells, all light, but ok.

Not getting a whole lot from the bottle, all fizzled away perhaps. The initial taste is not bad, grainy and am getting nice big malty mouthfuls, but afterwards the beer does die in the taste department, goes a little flat in the mouth, very fast in fact. 

Getting usual lager traits, of malts, grains, and sweet corns. Also got a slight off taste to the beer.

Overall, despite initial promise, this is a very thin and weak brew, a boring and bland generic lager, very forgettable, and not worth purchasing again. Not quite as good as it gets, far from it!

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