REVIEW 128: BECK'S

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  Germany/USA (As with Foster's, it you're drinking it here, it was brewed here. St. Louis, to be exact.)

BREWERY:  Brauerei Beck & Co.

STYLE:  Pilsener 

ABV:  5.0%

PURCHASE:  Case of 24 12-oz. bottles, $24.99

SERVING:  12-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. Standard pour yielded a standard head (little over one inch). A faster pour didn't change that. Mediocre head retention.

APPEARANCE:  Transparent but slightly hazy. The expected straw-brass color with the expected Alka-Seltzerish white head. Faint but steady bubbling. Lacing almost nonexistent. 

BOUQUET:  Fairly clean, no-frills grainy aroma. A tad floral, but also sports adjunct-like "cooked-veggie" notes. 

PALATE:  Smooth body--for the most part--with easygoing carbonation. Simple, straightforward, and unwavering mouthfeel of mostly generic grain, perhaps a fraction of a note of hops, and indecipherable adjuncts. Agreeable but unexciting taste; nothing grabs you. Off-putting metallic vibe in the aftertaste. 

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Here's a bit of trivia for you: According to The Accidental Billionaires (the novel on which the film The Social Network is based), this was Mark Zuckerberg's beer of choice while writing the software for FaceMash, the predecessor to Facebook. 

Here's another bit of trivia for you: Although Beck's is originally from Bremen, Germany, it is also brewed in St. Louis, Missouri, the home of Anheuser-Busch. That's right: Like Foster's, if you're drinking it in the USA, it came from the USA and not from its country of origin. No wonder this came off more as a North American adjunct than a European pilsener. Bleh, bleh, and more bleh.




GRADE:  D+