BREWERY: Amstel Brouwerij B.V.
STYLE: Light Lager
ABV: 3.5%
PURCHASE: Case of 24 12-oz. bottles, $30.99
SERVING: 12-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. You get an inch and change of head with a pour of usual speed; a little less with a slower one. Either way, it vanishes fast.
APPEARANCE: Your everyday straw-colored, see-through body with your everyday white head--when there is one. Steady post-pour bubbling action. Lacing, like head retention, is a joke here.
BOUQUET: Generic grain and a slight, slight sweet touch of hops. Fairly clean otherwise.
PALATE: Very easy to drink; that much is no surprise. A fair amount of carbonation in each sip. Very faint traces of the standard beer ingredients--banal malt and hops--in an otherwise unexciting taste profile. Slightly yeasty finish. A bit watery on the whole, and too "clean" for its own good; in other words, it's a light beer.
MUSINGS AND METAPHORS: European light beers are typically lower in alcohol than their American counterparts, and Amstel, at 3.5%, is no exception. But that doesn't make them any better. The taste is more or less the same: Adjunct- or grain-infused water.
That doesn't mean it tastes bad. Doesn't mean it won't go well with a bowl of chips during the game. But actual water can do that.
GRADE: D
