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A cold can of my Grandfathers near beer. Presidents Choice is the in-house brand of Loblaws supermarkets and their subsidiaries. Alcoholic beer is contract brewed by Brick and sold and provincial Brewers Retail (The Beer Store) locations, non-alcoholic brews are brewed under contract and sold in the supermarket chains themselves.
Ingredients list corn syrup, caramel colour, and sulphite in addition to the usual water, barley, hops, yeast, and hop extract.
PC Blonde Brew is pale straw in colour, just as it's name suggests. Visibly active carbonation feeds a fizzy white head that takes about 15-20 seconds to disappear, leaving a surprising lace behind. I would think this was a pils, euro lager, or decent American macro if it were poured from an unmarked container.
Smells mildly grainy; furtively, transiently floral. Very very faint, but still at least slightly beer-ish. The taste could also be described as beerish, having a slightly sweet and mild cereal character finishing with a mild bitterness. Has a bit of medicinal and artificial quality to it in the aftertaste. Inoffensive if you don't let it warm up.
Thin and watery with a prickly carbonation. Refreshing and quenching when cold. Definately not for the beer geeks, but does a good job of imitating the mass market domestic lagers an old man trying to limit his consumption grew up drinking.
I've been seriously thinking about doing the same recently and reviewing some near beers. Why not? Websites like Beer Advocate are, after all, intended to be consumerist sites where people can read feedback about products and from there decide whether or not they'd like to purchase them. I have a few friends (friend's wives, actually, for what it's worth) who drink a lot of near-beers, for one reason or another. One of them was saying she's been shopping around trying to find the one she likes the best (the PC Blonde is her current favourite, her husband prefers the PC Amber).
There is undoubtedly a portion of the population out there who can benefit from reviews like yours, mintjellie, good for you for writing it. I might soon follow in your footsteps... if only I don't have to buy the full 12-pack!
I can tell you that the PC Blonde Brew sold at grocery stores that fall under the Loblaws umbrella is a lot better than the Masters Choice A&P store brand. Not surprising, as Presidents Choice products usually are better than other grocery chains in house product lines.
mintjellie wrote:I can tell you that the PC Blonde Brew sold at grocery stores that fall under the Loblaws umbrella is a lot better than the Masters Choice A&P store brand. Not surprising, as Presidents Choice products usually are better than other grocery chains in house product lines.
So Brick makes a better de-alcoholized beer than Lakeport. Not too surprising
Jon Walker wrote:There's really only one Canadian made near beer worth drinking...Upper Canada Point Nine. Head and shoulders above the rest.
Sleeman stopped brewing that a year ago or so. The only Upper Canada beers left are the Lager and Dark Ale, which are now marketed as discout beers, beng only a dollar a case more than Laker. Much better beer than laker though.
FWIW, I've tried quite a few near-beers and Beck's Non-Alcoholic Beer is the only drinkable one I've tasted. I get through quite a lot of it when I'm on-call, especially in the summer.
I'd be grateful for alternative suggestions though.
