Budget destinations

I'm not in this for the clicks, but I have noticed that for some reason my blog posts about Aldi and Lidl beers are the most popular thing I write. It is a source of some dismay to one of such a refined palate as myself. And much as I hate to give the people what they want, there are very often new beers to try at the supermarket. Aldi tends to have the turnover and the most amusing knock-offs, but today's are Lidl's work, though very much in the same vein.

Birra Bionda (or "Bit of Beyond That", as it's rendered on Dublin's northside) is their  answer to Moretti. The cheery chap on the parchment-coloured background isn't wearing a hat, so it's a completely different look to Heineken Italy's original. This is stronger than Moretti, at 5% ABV, and it poured with a surprise Kellerbier haze. The label gives us no clue as to what country it was brewed in, but there's a definite German influence. The texture is candyfloss-soft, making it feel like a pillowy Munich Helles, and there's a lot of pale malt in the flavour. Then, however, it turns quite Prussian, introducing a spiky and dry herbal bitterness. Unfortunately they don't balance; there's just too much of both, making the beer loud and rough and lacking any sense of Mediterranean chill. I honestly couldn't tell you whether this is a result of a corner-cutting industrial brewery, or a smallscale operation that doesn't know what it's doing; nor whether it's better or worse than Moretti, a beer that's too forgettable to have left any mark on my memory. I didn't especially care for it, however, and I'm sure there's better lager in Lidl.

Is San Martínez one of them? This is borrowing the style of San Miguel, a heavy lager which I actively dislike, though I wasn't expecting this to be any way similar. The ABVs are close, however, with this slightly lighter at another 5% ABV. Are we sure it's a different beer to the above? It is still cloudy, though less so than the foregoing, and it's darker: close to San Miguel's deep amber but not quite reaching it. This still does the aggressive hops vs. sticky malt thing, but it's gentler and nearly palatable, were it not for the plasticky twang of hop extract. This is definitely a big brewery making lager as cheaply as it can. Drink it cold enough and that's not a problem, but it isn't one of those actually-good discount supermarket lagers.

Neither of these are. And isn't it a shame that the type of beer worth copying to get the most drinkers is the current trend for vapid, sunny-clime-coded industrial lager? Why can't everyone like good beer instead?