Summer on a budget

The German discount supermarkets are great when summer rolls around and your requirement is for things merely decent, cheap, refreshing and in quantity, for drinking outside. Normally I wouldn't look beyond Aldi's Spaten or (and) Lidl's Crafty Brewing IPA, or any of the dry Irish ciders they both carry, but during a recent sunny spell I spotted a couple of new candidates and thought it only right to give them a go.

Lidl's Perlenbacher marque has been a byword for cheap lager since time immemorial. I hadn't seen Perlenbacher Radler before, or maybe I had but passed it by because the half-litre green can resembles any old tin of budget beer. It cost €1 and is 2.5% ABV, a whole 25% stronger than Lidl's Austrian radler which I reviewed last year. I didn't think much of that one, but this is way better. The sugar level is far lower and there's the tang of real lemons front and centre. The carbonation is gentle and the overall effect is like sherbet lemon sweets, the flavour finishing mostly cleanly with only a slight residue of syrup. And the whole experience, while not exactly high-class tippling, is really aided by the large-format can. This is perfect for glugging back to quench a thirst before opening a proper beer, though it's probably not a good idea to drink more than a couple lest the sugar jitters set in.

The next one is a seasonal and came from Aldi. The season in question, according to the label, is the beginning of Spring so perhaps Schwaben Bräu's Das Frühlings Festbier has been sitting around a while. This is badged as a Märzen and certainly has that classic rich dark gold colour typical of the style. It's a full 5.7% ABV and I detected a certain thickness as it poured, the tight foam head forming slowly. And the flavour... is rather plain, unfortunately. The big texture is certainly there, and I found myself chewing past it to find nothing very much. There's a little bit of the wholesome breadiness I expected, right on the foretaste, but it disappears quickly, as does the mild golden syrup sweetness. Where a hop bite might have been installed there's just a slightly unpleasant plastic burr. This beer meets the bare minimum standards for a medium-strong pale German classic, but it feels like a rush job, a festbier that's lost its party spirit.

Back to the Spaten then. Celebrate!

Scoop creep

Decent dark lager for home drinking can be hard come by in these parts. Dublin's Czech pubs are a handy source of draught Herold Tmavé, which goes a long way towards scratching the itch, but you can end up feeling left out when you feel like staying in. Then I got a recommendation of a cheap-as-chips schwarzbier sold in Lidl so I picked up one of those and noticed a couple of other German offerings alongside and decided I'd make a mini session of it.

I waited for a sunny day before tackling them, mainly because the radler kinda demands it. It was only when I took it out of the fridge that I noticed Landbräu Radler isn't even German: it's Austrian. At 2% ABV and less than €1 I wasn't expecting much beyond refreshment. And I'm not sure it even delivers that. Though authentically cloudy it's extremely sweet, sickly even, and the lemon aspect is more detergent than zest. There's no citrus bite, and that fatally harms its ability to quench thirst. I drank it quickly at fridge temperature and still found it tough going so I dread to think what happens to this once it begins to warm up. Best avoided.

On then to the more serious Festbier, from an unnamed brewery in Baden-Württemberg. It's a delightful auburn colour, darker than I'd expect for a German märzen or festbier and resembling more the heavier American approximation of this style. The head piles up enthusiastically on pouring, then settles to a fine, tight layer of white mousse. An impressive aroma unleashes a heady torrent of green noble hops, luscious and grassy, and screaming to be slurped down. A soft texture helps make that possible: light carbonation lending it a creamy smoothness with no hard fizzy edges. Malt dominates the flavour, the classic moist cakey sweetness of strong German lager, with a richness that almost veers towards milk chocolate. Those hops are reduced to a minor supporting role adding a mild metallic tang to the finish that just about qualifies as balancing. Four mouthfuls cleared the half-litre and much as it hit the spot I'm not sure I'd be on for opening another straight away: it's just a little bit too heavy for session drinking, even though the ABV is a relatively modest 5.5% ABV. It's a very well-made beer, though, no question.

So I was all keyed up for opening the Schwarz Bier, weaker at 4.9% ABV, an opaque cola-brown and not in much of a rush to form a head. The aroma is mild but promising, offering more grassy hops but also a pleasantly bittersweet liquorice twang. As expected, it's another unfizzy beer, which is in its favour, but the flavour is quite muted. Caramelised sugar is at the centre and I was expecting a supporting cast of bitter hop bite and dry roast but they never really materialise. It tastes as though corners have been cut, in a way that the Festbier definitely does not. Thankfully the sweetness doesn't build as it goes, so it remains easy drinking all the way down, but there's very little that's distinctive or interesting about it. Inoffensive, sessionable, but not a great ambassador for the schwarzbier style.
Edited to add: I'd be reasonably confident that outside Oktoberfest season this is also sold as Perlenbacher Schwarzbier.

I guess I lucked out with the Festbier. A good lesson in why it's always a good idea to buy the two beers either side of the one you went in for.