Needs less hops

Not long after I posted a much-delayed review of the Finnish Mosaic Lager that appeared randomly in Lidl, another lager from the same brewery arrived. This time it's a half-litre can and the lager is a Black Lager. Sign me up!

It pours like a stout, coming out thick and looking shiny and purest black in the glass, topped by a dense tan-coloured head. The label subtitles it as an "American schwarz" and the aroma makes it clear what that's supposed to mean, offering a blast of pine and grapefruit. The texture is as thick as I was expecting though it's still lager-clean, with no warm fermentation features. On the downside there's very little of what makes schwarzbier worthwhile; that dry roasted crispness flashes only briefly in the finish. The flavour is dominated by those piney C-hops, all oily and resinous. It ends up like a black IPA, to which I have no objection, but isn't what I was in the mood for when I opened the can.

I guess I should be glad when a supermarket cheapie has as much flavour punch as this does, and it's not at all a bad beer. That doesn't stop me feeling gypped by a schwarzbier that never was.