Ready to test

Beer enthusiasts like to say that people who argue over which industrial pale lager is best are missing the point, because they all essentially taste the same, and none of them are very good, anyway. I personally agree with that, and that now that there are so many good craft beers available everywhere, there's really no reason to drink this stuff at all.

However, beer enthusiasts also firmly believe that there are substantial quality differences between the macros. How can this be, if they're all really the same? And do we really know that there are quality differences, or is that just something we think, based on reputation and who we like the most?

I've seen many times that the preconceptions I take with me when I taste something really influence how I experience it, which makes me sort of skeptical that these beers really live up to the image we have of them. So why not do an experiment, and find out?

That's what I decided to do. I bought one can of each of the following beers:

Ringnes Pilsener

Hansa Pils

Aass Pilsener

Grans Premium

Bernard Svetly

The idea was to get my wife to serve me these blind. She would bring me a filled glass, write the number in the sequence on the can, and hide it in a cupboard. I would taste the beer and do a normal RateBeer rating, then make a note of what I thought it might be. Then, at the end, we'd match my ratings and guesses up against the actual beers, and we'd see if we could learn anything from the comparison.

Before I started, this is what I thought I would find:

Ringnes Pilsener Ringnes is the Carlsberg-owned near-monopolist that everyone loves to hate. I expected the beer to be a basic pale lager with a grainy taste, and an unpleasant yeasty aftertaste that gets increasingly worse as you drink it. Hansa Pils Another big Norwegian macro. I don't remember much about this one, but expect it to be much like Ringnes, but perhaps a little cleaner, and perhaps to have a slightly metallic bitter aftertaste. Aass Pilsener Aass is one of the smaller macros, a family-owned brewery that sticks closer to traditional brewing methods and ingredients than does Ringnes. I expected this beer to be quite clean, but without much flavour. Grans Premium Grans was started some decades ago in defiance of the stranglehold of the big brewers, but without any intention of brewing beers that were in any way different. Their main selling point is price, and they have a reputation for being low-quality. I expected this beer to be well below average, with butter and yeast flavours in it. Bernard Svetly Bernard is a Czech brewery that's quite highly regarded. They brew with traditional methods and ingredients, and their beers are not even pasteurized. I expected this beer to be clean and fresh, with a touch of hops, but without too much taste.

Then, over the course of a few evenings, we tried it. One evening I got two beers. Then we were busy and there was a long pause, after which I did the final three in a single evening. By the time we were finished I was really pleased; I had a clear ranking of the five beers, and I was pretty certain I had identified all five.

Then we went down into the cellar, and my wife showed me which beer was which. It turned out I hadn't identified a single beer correctly. However, there was a kind of match between the ranking and my starting assumptions. Let's go through it in detail.

Beer #1 This one was nice, clean, and fresh, with some floral straw and grass notes. Light hop aroma, with a touch of bitterness. I quite liked it, and put it first in the quality ranking. I identified this as Bernard, but it turned out to be Aass. So the beer I thought would be second-best came out first. Not so bad. Beer #2 This beer tasted of rubbery cardboard, and buttery metal. I didn't like it at all, and immediately thought it was Grans. I put it last in the quality ranking. However, it was Bernard, the beer that should have been first. Ahem. A total miss there, and I'm not sure why. Beer #3 This one was not too bad, with a light grainy apple and paper taste, with some salt and butter in the aftertaste. I thought the finish kind of harsh, and so put this fourth in the quality ranking, identifying it with Hansa. It turned out to be Ringnes. Not a bad miss, really. Beer #4 This one was clean, but sort of bland and boring. Very light in flavour, but some flowers and mint initially, then ending on a mealy papery aftertaste with faint salty floral notes. I put this second in the ranking, and since it fitted my mental image of Aass perfectly, I assumed that's what it was. It turned out to be Hansa. So apparently Hansa is better than I thought. Beer #5 Here I was totally confused. The beer was a bit darker than the others, and it didn't smell or taste like the others at all. It was as if it were in a different style, and not a pils at all. It was very bland, and tasted as though it were lightly oxidized. It was watery, caramelly, and had that paper taste I associate with oxidization. I decided I didn't know what this was, but that the wife might have cheated, and given me the old alcohol-free Christmas beer from the cellar. It turned out to be Grans. This makes sense, in a twisted sort of way, but didn't really fit my expectations.

Test winner

This is perhaps most easily digested as a table, showing the expected and actual rankings:

Rank Expected Actual 1. Bernard Aass 2. Aass Hansa 3. Hansa Grans 4. Ringnes Ringnes 5. Grans Bernard

So basically, Bernard didn't come out first as expected, but last, and Grans was better than Ringnes, otherwise it was as expected. I couldn't identify the beers; Hansa didn't have the harsh aftertaste I remembered, and Grans was more weird than bad. However, it really is true that the macro lagers are noticeably different. With some practice it should be possible to tell them apart in a blind tasting.

The bad result for Bernard still confuses me, however. I have no real explanation for it. I guess I'll have to do this again to see how it comes out.