REVIEW 171: ESTRELLA DAMM

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Spain

BREWERY:  Damm S.A.

STYLE:  Pale Lager

ABV:  5.4%

PURCHASE:  Six-pack of 11.2-oz. bottles, $11.99

SERVING:  11.2-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. My 20-second "normal" pour produced an initial head of two inches. My 30-second "slow" pour yielded an ideal inch to inch-and-a-half. Decent (if unspectacular) retention, particularly for a Euro lager from outside Germany. According to the Allstrom brothers at beeradvocate.com, the label used to list "stabilizer e-405" as one of the ingredients, which aids in the maintenance of foam in the beer. What is stabilizer e-405? According to Wikipedia, it's another name for a compound called propylene glycol alginate, a commonly used food additive. What is propylene glycol alginate? I didn't get that far. Fuck do I look like? A scientist?

APPEARANCE:  Golden, but a bit on the darker side of golden for a pale lager. See-through, but a bit on the hazy side for a pale lager. Slightly off-white tinted head. Typical bubbling action. Decent, but somewhat irregular lacing.

AROMA:  Bready at first, especially with the full head in your face. (Did that come out right?)  Teases of hops and malt dextrins. Generic veggie quality to it. Even a bit ricey. Rice is also listed as one of the ingredients on the label, but thankfully at only 1%. I suppose at such a low proportion, it doesn't qualify as an adjunct. 

TASTE:  Fairly thin with what I call "passive-aggressive carbonation"; in other words, the carbonation doesn't always have the same presence, but when it shows up, it seems to act up a bit. Yeasty backbone that runs constant. It seems to crescendo a bit at the finish along with an accent of malt. The resulting aftertaste is the most balanced part of the experience, as it is ever so slightly hoppy. It's somewhat sweet overall, and not in a sugary way; the far end of the aftertaste seems to take on a Sweet'n Low character. I know the taste of Sweet'n Low very well. I don't put it in anything. I know it because when I was younger, I used to suck down packets of it with the sole purpose of getting a reaction of whoever was within a few feet of me. Boys do that stuff.

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Estrella Damm dates back to 1876, when August Küntzmann Damm founded the brewery that bears his name in Barcelona, where it continues to crank out an entire line of brews. He named his flagship beer, "Estrella," which means, "star." It's the oldest beer brand in Spain, at any rate.

Küntzmann. Küntzmann. The umlaut--the two dots over the "u"--says it all. German. It was a German that originated this beer. A-ha. And watch how you pronounce that word. The two dots over the "u" is pronounced like the English short "i" sound (as in "stick"). 

It was an Austrian who founded Dos Equis in Mexico, and a German who founded Estrella Damm in Spain. In both cases, the modern version is adequate at best. Although, this is the better of the two.

The online beer snob community trashes this one, but it's really not bad. It's essentially Spain's version of Budweiser, but a tad better. And I've said this a thousand times by now: Every country has its Budweiser. Every country has to have that easily accessible "beer of all seasons," I guess. This fits that bill, though its clearly not the "star" its name alludes to.

After three of these, I think I now have Sweet-n Low breath.




GRADE:  C