REVIEW 114: HARP LAGER

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Ireland

BREWERY:  Guinness Ltd.

STYLE:  Pale Lager

ABV:  5.0%

PURCHASE:  Draft (20-oz.), $6.00

SERVING:  Harp branded weizen glass. From the tap, semi-dense 3/4-inch head with better than average retention.

APPEARANCE:  Transparent brass color with your everyday white head. Visible steady bubbling. Virtually no lacing until the third beer, when, seemingly due to some beer snob magic, some appeared. (I had all three in the same glass; maybe that had something to do with it.)

BOUQUET:  Fairly clean aroma, with a hint of floral hops. Mostly generic, however.

PALATE:  Lightly carbonated beer with a standard body. Essentially a "straight-ahead" palate, like most pale lagers, until the aftertaste that sees a slight accent of hops and yeast. Before that, though, this doesn't seem to undergo any sort of "arc," taste-wise. Starts generically grainy, finishes generically grainy. 

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Bleh. Irish beers are like the Mexican beers of Europe: Very, very few of them are truly mediocre; but very, very few of them are truly great.

This one does nothing wrong. It just doesn't do anything well.




GRADE:  C-