Bought on a Thursday, opened on the Friday, a 473ml can into a willi becher. Deep amber and perfectly bright, under a white head that leaves rings the whole way down.
Blood Brothers have built this on pils with Spalter Select in the kettle. 3.9%, 28 IBU: unremarkable numbers on paper, and the beer is better for it.
The palate is where it earns the score. The Spalter Select bitterness arrives early and holds through a finish dry enough to pull you straight back to the glass. Nothing sags in the middle, which is the failure mode for most lagers.
The whole point of a beer at 3.9% is the second and third glass, and this survives both. There is no cloying edge, no fatigue in the finish, and the hop character stays legible right through. That is harder to achieve than a big beer, and it gets a fraction of the credit.
Getting flavour into a beer this light is the hardest trick in brewing, and there is nowhere to hide when it fails. This does not fail.
This is a perfectly competent beer with nothing much to say for itself, and there is no shame in that. At $3.80 / 355ml it is a reasonable trade. Whether you would choose it over the two better things beside it on the shelf is a different question.
Bought at Blood Brothers Bloor (in stock at the time of writing). The correct beer for a weekday. Keep four in the door of the fridge.
Buy it if it is in front of you and nothing better is. That is the whole review.
