The nationals

My last three posts covered what I saw of the craft scene on my visit to Bulgaria, and I make no attempt to define what I mean by "craft" there: Bulgaria has a fairly clear line between the small producers making IPAs, stouts, sour fruited beers and the like, and the industrial multinationals who do pale lager and very little else. I'm always interested in how the macro game plays out in any country, and so drank quite a bit of this beer, both by choice and by default when nothing better was available.

I guess the national flagship is Kamenitza: it is at least the beer I saw most often. The history of this one (they claim) goes back to 1881 in Plovdiv, though production now happens in the nearby town of Haskovo. It's one of the StarBev family of brands across central and eastern Europe, initially acquired by AB InBev at the fall of communism but now part of Molson Coors. As a national flagship goes, it's not a bad one: 4.4% ABV and pretty much as clean and dry as you would like. Inoffensive, but not dull, with a soft and bready texture and little sign of cheapness or cut corners. I got a very slight solvent note from one pour as it warmed in the afternoon sun, but I blame myself for that. It's usually about €3 for a half litre so is not meant for sitting over. 

StarBev's second brand is Astika, which I drank on the epic journey from Burgas back west to Sofia. This is lighter than most, at 3.8% ABV, and seems to be brewed to a price point that's displayed on the can. For all that, it's fine: crisp and clean when cold, with merely a tiny buzz of bitterness from what I'm guessing is hop extract. As it warms, which this one did in a non-airconditioned train carriage on a 30°C day, a note of pear creeps in, but it doesn't get unpleasantly estery the way some beers of this sort do. The price-conscious Bulgarian lager drinker is well-served here.

Occupying, I'm guessing, a place between the two in the StarBev portfolio is Burgasko. The branding here leans in to Burgas's location on the Black Sea, and the jumping off point for the many holiday resorts along the nearby coast. A sunbather adorns the can and, maybe I'm just the suggestible sort, but the beer seemed well designed for that context, being very light, very pale, very refreshing, but tasting of almost exactly nothing, just fizz. No need to worry about the beer losing character when served chilled to the maximum: there's nothing in here to be lost. Beach-resort drinking did not feature on my trip at any point, but if it had, I wouldn't have objected to this being the cheap local lager for it.

Naturally, Heineken has stuck its oar in for a piece of the pie, and their most ubiquitous brand is Zagorka. I had two pints of this, and slightly different experiences with them. At the hotel bar in central Sofia it seemed either poorly-made or very tired, with notes of disinfectant and metallic aspirin. But it was much better in the airport hotel on the way out, for a given value of better. It's quite surprising how plain and characterless it is for a 5% ABV lager: you might have thought there'd be a decent malt base at least. Instead, it's an exceedingly pale golden and, in good condition, tastes of almost nothing. Whatever their process is for sucking all the personality out of a beer, it works very well indeed.

Much as I didn't enjoy my initial Zagorka experience, I was charmed by the look of Zagorka Retro when I saw it in Carrefour a little later. "Retro" doesn't just mean the 1970s label, it's also unpasteurised, and I think that makes a big difference. Unfortunately it was very skunked, thanks to the green glass, smelling of fermented cabbage and old lawn clippings. The flavour is cleaner, and I couldn't really detect the lightstrike. Instead there's sweet cereal and a little noble grassiness. Beyond the too-obvious skunking, it's rather decent. I don't know if a canned version of this would fit the branding, but I reckon it's worth trying regardless. At a guess, this answers the demands of Zagorka drinkers who noticed how bastardised the main beer had become.

The Zagorka brewery also produces Ariana, though I don't know where on their premiumisation spectrum it sits. The beer is good, however. It's beautifully smooth and clean, with low carbonation and a soft bready texture. While only 4.5% ABV it's in no way thin or watery, showing some quite Germanic vibes. There's maybe a tiny estery element -- the suggestion of a headache -- as it warms, but I had to look for that. Otherwise it's quite a plain but satisfying affair. I didn't see it on draught anywhere and would have been perfectly happy with a cold mug of it.

The brewery also produces the Stolichno brand, of which I saw two different beers, both in German styles. It seems a little odd that a premium type of range didn't include a take on American pale ale, but whatever. First up it's Stolichno Weiss, claiming to be a normal weissbier, though at the toytown strength of 4.4% ABV. It's a little on the dark side, and not very hazy, but the flavour is spot on for accuracy. There's lots of big and mushy ripe banana, almost into the foam candy level of sweetness. Clove doesn't feature, nor anything much else, saving a soft caramel sweet side. There's a surprising amount of body given how light in alcohol it is, and it absolutely passes muster as a proper weissbier, just not one of the really good ones. File under "workmanlike". If it serves to introduce a Bulgarian audience to the wonderful world of strange-tasting beers, as Erdinger did for so many in my part of the world, then it has an honest and worthwhile purpose.

There's also a Stolichno Bock: a rare and valuable seam of darkness through this otherwise uniformly pale set of industrial beers. This has a bit of welly at 6.5% ABV, and with it it's dark and treacly, the flavour piling in gooey fudge sauce and burnt fruitcake, with some lighter cherry. That gets balanced by a very Munich-dunkel-style herbal bitterness, adding a tang to the finish and balancing all the dark sticky sugar. It's one of those beers that serves as a reminder that even Heineken Bulgaria's brewers have the talent and equipment to make really good beer, but mostly don't. This one was better than about 80% of the independent beers I drank, and it's readily available across the country in bottles and cans. It's not for the session though. One or two at a time is plenty.

Carlsberg's mainstay in these part is Shumensko, in its vibrant red can. It's 4.8% ABV and a slightly washed-out shade of golden, suggesting that high quality is not part of the spec, but sometimes we get lucky with these. Not here. It tastes cheap. There's a syrupy extract feel to the malt side, and a hard tangy metallic character in place of hops. If I look hard there's perhaps a bouquet of fresh meadow flowers as well, but I'm reaching for them and I can't sustain that picture in focus for long. A few seconds later we're back to pencil sharpeners and flinty sparks. I knew this round-up would include at least one basic-of-the-basic industrial lager, and here it is. Drink it if there's nothing else, or if you fancy it at c.90 cents the can in Lidl, as I did. 

Around the same price, Carlsberg also offers Pirinsko, which is 4.4% ABV. This is proper middle-of-the-road stuff, medium-bodied with a hint of golden syrup sweetness but nothing much by way of hops. It's... Carlsberg, essentially. There's the building blocks of decent lager but with all the corners cut and all the edges planed beyond smooth into a dull blandness. This is a beer it's hard to be offended by and, for example, consumed cold from a hotel fridge while sitting on a hotel balcony, is bang on. It's hard to write a review of it, however, because it's so purely average, and deliberately so, no doubt. Basic industrial lager is what this post is about, and Pirinsko is an exemplar. Full marks for that, I guess.

Britos seems to be quite commonplace in the east of Bulgaria, and this one may actually be wholly locally owned. I couldn't tie it to any of the big players and the company was only founded in 2012, even though it looks like one of the heritage brands. The beer itself is a very middle-of-the-road macro lager, and I doubt that bringing a quality drinking experience to the people was what the owners have in mind: this seems very much designed to be indistinguishable from the many other big labels. It's a middling 4.5% ABV, and nicely smooth, but the flavour is quite cheap-tasting: a generic mix of crackers and metal, which I've tasted in many, many hot country lagers, but which the Bulgarian big boys have mostly avoided. Anyway, Britos is fine if it's what's being poured, but is by no means a cut above the mainstream, unfortunately.

Finally we have Gayda: the bagpipe beer. A fully armed bagpipe, according to the label. Like they're not dangerous enough already. I'm not sure this should really be included amongst the industrial beers as it doesn't seem to be from a multinational, but it is contract-brewed and is a fairly standard pale lager. To wit: it's 4.8% ABV and a medium golden colour, smelling sweetly of honey-crusted breakfast cereal. That sweetness intensifies on tasting, giving it an almost bock-like sense of concentrated malt. For me it was quite tough drinking: the beer isn't big-flavoured, but what's there is at once sickly sweet and vegetally bitter. An overactive fizz is thrown in for bad measure. I wasn't charmed by this guy at all, finding it rough and difficult, even at a low fridge temperature. It has character; just not the good kind.

And that's all I have to say on Bulgarian beer, for better or worse. Of course, imports are available, and I'll be talking about those next.