Beersalot

After finishing my article about local beers in the June issue of Bayon I realized there was lots more beer tasting to do since I hadn’t touched on the dark beers and stouts. And since I made such a point of the superior quality of bottles over cans, I also thought I ought to see if I could taste the difference.

One thing I realized in the process of writing the last beer article was that downing a brew is different than drinking for the purpose of critiquing it. While some beers will impress you right off, whether positively or negatively, in most cases you don’t have clear thoughts about what you’re drinking unless you’re concentrating on thinking about describing it.

Further, I thought I should try to be a little more scientific about the tasting and rating by setting up a blind taste experiment. Three of us participated, two blind tasting, the third did the pouring so knew what he was drinking. The blind tasting is important because we all have prejudices which affect our choices. That is similar to how people in medical experiments who receive placebos think they’re getting better.

The first experiment was with five stouts; ABC, Black Panther, City Black, Guinness and Angkor Extra Stout. The last two were in bottles, the rest in cans. Black Panther and City are cheap beers in the $.50 retail category, the other three cost over twice that amount. All are 8% beers except for Guinness which is 6.5%. There are actually quite a few varieties of Guinness circulating in both cans and bottles - awhile back I came across a can that was only 4.5% alcohol which seemed very strange to me. At any rate, I only saw the 6.5% bottle when I went out buying so that’s what we tasted.

As it turns out, somewhat to my surprise, all three of us were in substantial agreement with only minor differences. We all placed ABC and City in the top two spots with ABC rated highest by two of us and City by the third. I wrote ‘bright and bubbly’ for ABC, my pick for first, ‘good but lighter than (ABC) for City my second choice. The other blind taster wrote ‘nutty, alcohol taste, full body, hoppy, lingering after taste’ for ABC. For City he wrote, ‘not impressed, caramel notes, sour, sweetish; but in the end after tasting all five he picked City as his first choice. All three of us placed Guinness at number 4, practically a shock considering its worldwide popularity. I wrote, ‘not great, a little bitter’. The other blind taster sniffed all five glasses before tasting any and correctly picked out Guinness by its smell. He wrote, ‘nutty, semi-heavy, fruity, not much aftertaste’. Myself and the pourer placed Angkor at number 3 and Black Panther at number 5. My fellow blind taster placed them just opposite. For Angkor (which I imagined I would choose as number 1 before the tasting began) I wrote ‘thin but good taste’, the other blind taster put ‘soapy, light, bitter, not much after taste’. For BP I wrote subtle, thin, not much to it. The other wrote ‘sour, light body, (thin).

After touting City lager in the last beer article, it was quite gratifying to see City Black rate so highly in the blind test. I had my doubts, considering how cheap and obscure City beer is and how quite a few people have trashed it, but at least in this case my taste buds came through. They are two different beers so one doesn’t necessarily carry over to the other, but still…

As for non-stout dark beers there are only two that are produced regionally: Kingdom Dark and Lao Dark. Both are lagers, Kingdom is 5%, Lao is 6.5%. The tasting came after drinking the five stouts, which meant I was already climbing way up the tipsy scale. The pourer had shorted himself on quantity – not sure why – so the remaining two of us drank about two mugs worth of stout – equivalent in alcohol content to three average beers – in a relatively short time. That might have been a mistake. The drunker you get the less discerning your palette – at a certain point you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the worst beer and the best.

First to come up was Kingdom, which I correctly identified, though of course I didn’t know that till later. It’s got that expensive-ingredient craft-beer taste, which I like, besides I’m very familiar with it. I wrote ‘bright, light, sweet’. My fellow blind taster wrote ‘sweet bubble gum, light weight body, slight caramel, bright in mouth’. For Lao he wrote, ‘first (choice) at first sip, light, heavier body than (Kingdom)’, (after further tasting) he wrote ‘still number 1’. I wrote ‘thicker’. The other two guys chose Lao over Kingdom, I preferred the later. In hindsight, just for comparison’s sake, I should’ve picked up a bottle of an expensive imported dark like Leffe. I’ve drunk Leffe a few times and it never impressed me as worth several times the cost of a cheap beer, but, as remarked above, you don’t really know a beer until you drink it for the purpose of describing and rating it.

My greatest disappointment regarding beers in Cambo is the dearth of dark beers and the total absence of ales, not to mention bitters, porters and other oddball varieties. I’m not sure why it’s so easy to produce stouts and seemingly insurmountable to brew ales, but I can’t wait for the day that some brave local brewmaster takes on that task. In fact, we do have an unusual homebrew here in Kampot: Angus at Café Espresso is brewing an 8% alcohol ginger beer. It’s not always consistent, but still ranges from good to excellent. Back in my commune days one of the guys put together a few kegs of homebrew. You buy a ready-made can of malted barley flavored with hops with yeast included, toss in an equal amount of sugar, fill the keg with water and keep warm and in a few days you have green beer ready to bottle. It was excellent. However, there were times when we couldn’t wait to let it age properly and guzzled it down green. Wow was it bad tasting, but it sure got you blasted when it didn’t also make you barf it all back up. At one point he flavored his beer with local indigenous herbs. It tasted great and I wonder why nobody has thought of producing herbal flavored beer commercially.

The next day I set up an experiment involving three sets of bottles/cans to see if we could discern the difference. That involved Angkor, Heineken and Cambodia. First up was Angkor, which I thought sure was Heineken. I also got the bottle/can thing wrong. My fellow blind taster got the bottle/can difference correctly and described Angkor bottle as ‘full body, smooth, balanced, and the can as tinny, bright, sour. As for Heineken, which I thought was Angkor, I couldn’t even guess regarding the bottle/can difference. Once again the other blind taster got it correctly. For the can he wrote, ‘tingly tongue, sweetish, heavy for a lager’. For the bottle he wrote, ‘skunky, non-descript’. He was right on about the skunky smell, though I doubt if I would’ve noticed without him mentioning it. Still, anyone who’s ever been within a mile of a skunk that’s let loose knows that smell intimately. If you happen to be in close proximity when it does its thing, you have to throw your clothes away because there’s nothing you can do to get the stink out.

The third set was Cambodia, or was supposed to be. Somehow between the time I dropped off the beers to be sampled the day before at the friend’s place and tasting time the next day the Cambo can had mysteriously disappeared. Well not so mysteriously, it obviously had been mistakenly imbibed. So what was the poor pourer to do after searching in the fridge high and low? He decided on double blind testing us by pouring a Ganzberg in place of the Cambo can. By then I’d gotten everything wrong – though of course I didn’t know it yet – and continued my losing streak by mistaking the Cambo bottle for a can. The other taster got the bottle thing wrong, his first mistake. Neither of us caught the Ganzberg substitution. Most surprisingly, both the other guys chose Angkor first for taste and Ganzberg second. I was totally flustered by then and couldn’t even choose which beer I liked best.

Compared to the first day when everything, or almost everything, was consistent and clear and we were in substantial agreement, the second tasting day was largely confused and out of sorts, although I’m obviously saying that because I simply was useless at telling the bottle/can difference. The other blind taster got everything right except for the double blind substitution, which nobody could be expected to get. If there actually had been a choice between Cambo bottle and can he might have also gotten that right. There’s a good reason why good quality beers are always put in bottles, not cans, in spite of the extra cost, but I sure couldn’t tell by tasting.

Aluminum reacts with food compared to glass which doesn’t so there must be a subtle difference. In fact I should buy bottles instead of cans out of principle because, regarding food, I never cook out of aluminum pots and am very reluctant to eat cheap, down-home local fare because the food sits in aluminum pots all day. My aversion is helped by the knowledge that they use massive amounts of salt, sugar and MSG, though, except for that, it usually doesn’t taste all that bad.

The blind tasting was edifying and fun and I’ll have to do it again sometime, meanwhile a couple of comments on Kingdom, still my favorite local beer. Whatever financial problems they might’ve been experiencing (if any) have been mitigated somewhat by Brunty ciders leasing one of their bottling lines. For at least a year they’ve got an extra income stream. If Brunty’s is successful, they’ll set up their own plant. So far, they say they’re doing well. I tried a strawberry; it was good but had an unpleasant aftertaste.

One complaint/suggestion I have for Kingdom has to do with the graphic arts on the bottle. The artwork, the animal drawings, are very nicely done but so indistinct I can’t tell what animal it is without my glasses on, and then still not easily. Considering most beers are consumed at night and many of those in dimly lit venues, that’s surely a deficiency. Sharp and clear is what is what all marketing and product design needs to be. Ditto for the writing on the back. The font is so small I can’t possibly read it without glasses even in bright light, though I can read a newspaper under those conditions, though not easily.

Cambostan