My favorite beer is Reissdorf Kölsch, but if you are from around here thats kind of in your genes..
In France my favourite beer was 1664, in the Netherlands Grolsch(I just love the bottles )
hoppa wrote:If I want to enjoy a beer and sip it I usually go for the darker beers like LEFFE, GRIMBERGEN, CHIMAY, CINEY or what they have in the pub.
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Where available I very much enjoy DE KONINCK aka BOLLEKE.
Idem dito!
hoppa wrote:In holland I NEVER drink beer because they don't have any.
My favourites since I went to London this March (and August) have been Stella Artois (my current favourite), Kronenbourg 1664 and Grolsch of the international beers. I love the new Stella Artois glasses because I like to "play" with the neck! The Grolsch bottle is very good design. Of Finnish beers I like Karhu the most, but Lapin Kulta is fine too. I like also Carlsberg but I think they brew it here, too, so it is not a "real" import beer.
I hate Budweiser. That's dog pee. Bud Light is good. It's one of the best selling beers in the US but I don't think you can get it here.
Oh, I almost forgot, I love the taste of Hoegaarden! I love the glass where it should be served. If you ever go to Britain, you've got to try their best-selling lager Carling.
Super Bock is my favorite (specially the Stout - black beer - variety), and I appreciate Erdinger A LOT, but I also occasionally drink Heineken, Carlsberg, Corona and Budweiser.
The most important thing: There is no brewery that brews beer in Finland. There are a few that claim to do that, but believe me, the stuff they make is not beer.
The worst one of the Finnish beers is actually mentioned in the topic of this thread. Lapin Kulta ("The Gold of Lapland" or "Lapland's gold") is often referred to as "Lapin Kusta", "kusi" meaning pee and "kusta" being a partitive form of that word.
Karhu is the most drinkable of the Finnish beers, but still I always try to stick to foreign beers. As long as they're not Swedish (have you people ever tried Kopparberg's peach beer? Don't.), one can trust they are better than the Finnish ones.
Also I like Reissdorf Kölsch. It's got kinda mild and full taste, so it's very good when I want to "just drink something good because of nice sunshine".
Nowadays the beer I buy the most is Saku. It's an Estonian beer which they started selling for Finnish prices when Estonia joined the EU. Before a can of Saku was about twice as expensive as a can of some Finnish beer.
An interesting point is that Saku Originaal costs 2,80€/liter in a can and 4,30€/liter in a bottle. That's because of the Finnish bottle recycling and taxation policy.
Every now and then I enjoy a good bottle of Kozel Dark or Staropramen Dark. They're both typical dark lagers, Kozel having a bit sweeter - somehow almost caramellic - taste. Though, in the other hand Staropramen feels generally smoother, although the first impression was a bit "spiky". At least for me.
Sometimes I also drink a bottle of Krusovice Schwarzbier.
In Vienna I somehow liked the beer of which name I can't remember but which had a blue label on it. It's quite a typical pilsner, but has some power in its taste. Normally I don't like that kind of stuff, but this was an exception.
Generally I divide my beer drinking to a few categories. In some Finnish party I drink Saku. When I'm bicycling around and feel like drinking something in a nice place, I stick to dark beers.
If I sit in a nice restaurant without eating anything, I like to drink all kinds of special stuff. Especially dark beers are great. Though unfortunately the Finnish import beer prices are ridiculously high and I normally can't afford anything decent.
Back home I often end up drinking Finnish crap because my friends living in the same appartment don't care of the taste as much as the price.
If I'm in Germany, I try finding the speciality of each town. At least Alt and Kölsch are great beers.
Then about the Finnish beer pricing:
Typically a 0,33 liter bottle of Finnish beer is slightly over 1€. However, there are often cheap prices for 12-packs. Right now you can buy a 12-pack of Finnish beer for about 7€. A 24-pack of Saku is typically a bit over 20€.
Foreign beers pricing starts from some 1,60€ (cheapest Staropramen price) for a 0,33 liter bottle and a bit over 2€ for 0,5 liter bottle.
A bottle of Kozel Dark is 1,99€ in Alepa shops. Krusovice is something like 2,6€ and the more special ones are often almost or even over 3€. In some grocery stores I've seen beer prices of over 4€ for some foreign specialities in a 0,5 liter bottle.
The lucky thing is one can get to Tallinn fast and for a cheap price. It's a one-day-long trip costing some 20€ there and back. There you can get better beer for far lower price. You only need to buy a few boxes of beer and you've already saved money because the saving in the beer's price is more than what you have to spend for the ferry. Plus, you've also visited a very beautiful city :)
How my thread moves people... and very nice, interesting and informative answers. The "Lapin Kusta" is still making me smile. Well, honestly, the best about the Lapin Kulta was the nice label on it. It lacks the full taste. This is also the reason why I do not drink alcohol free or light beers.
"Bitburger" is indeed one of the outstanding German beers but to me it is too bitter. I wonder why nobody has ever mentioned "Warsteiner", the most successful beer in Germany and I like it very much, too.
Me, I like the "Erdinger White Beer" very much. These white beers are brewed of yeast which is the reason why the proper German word is "Weizenbier" with "Weizen" meaning "yeast". From the Weizen, I like most the "Prinzregent Luitpold".
For Pils I have no preferance. Like some other people, I like to drink the local beers when I am travelling around. Yes, and I never thought that good beers can also come from North America. During my holidays in the USA I had a Coors almost every evening.
Do you also know what a so-called "dirty-beer" is? Well, pour some Coke in the glass, pour the beer over it and see how the foam is going to change its colour. The more disgusting it looks, so much the better. And it can be extremely disgusting-looking...
Yeah, nice topic and nice answers. I look forward to read more from you. Maybe, add "cheers" in your language. In German, we say "Prost". (Originates from Latin "pro sit", which means "be it good".
Meine Angst, dass die Autokorrektur einmal etwas Obszönes ausspuckt, wichst täglich.