Budget beer

As a beer connoisseur, it is easy to get lost in the world of increasingly exclusive and hard-to-find beers. This is because, as an enthusiast, you are always focused on the things you do not yet know or have not yet tried. In this column, I want to do the exact opposite: discuss beers that most beer connoisseurs, with their noses held high, steer clear of because they are too cheap and widely available, and therefore do not exude quality.

The reason for this is the silver medal won by Albert Heijn's revamped house beer, with the tautological name Brouwers Pilsner, at the Dutch Beer Challenge 2017With this second place, the beer sits directly below the exclusive luxury pilsner from Gulpener Chateau Neubourg and above lagers such as Heineken and Brand. The fact that a panel of beer connoisseurs preferred such a budget lager over various premium lagers in a blind tasting shows that quality and affordability are often closer together than the consumer thinks.

I have witnessed the same phenomenon at many blind taste tests. I love always including a number of budget brands in a lager tasting. I have the participants fill out beforehand which lager they *think* themselves are the tastiest and the least tasty. To everyone’s great amusement, the budget brands often score unexpectedly high in such tastings: ‘Ha ha! Henk always says he absolutely wants Hertog Jan because other brands make “headache beer,” and now he’s choosing Schultenbrau himself!’

The fact is that many of the budget brands are also made by renowned breweries. Brouwers Pilsner, for example, comes from Bavaria, and Klok Pilsner from Grolsch. Of course, not under the same recipe as their ‘A’ brand, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is bad beer. Some German brands are also sold at budget prices, such as Veltins and Oettinger. I have never in my life tasted a German pilsner that tasted bad.

So take a unique piece of advice from a beer connoisseur that can help you reduce your spending: Try a budget beer! The quality is usually on par with premium brands, where you pay for the advertising campaign, and the only way you get a headache from drinking beer is if you drink too much of it. That way, you pump less money into the lager giants and have money left over to use to buy a nice craft beer. Save on lager, invest in craft beer!

Ivo Thijssen
Beer sommelier

Ivo is an international beer sommelier, entertainer, and hospitality expert. He has an immense passion for beer, the hospitality industry, and hospitality. Ivo will write a monthly column for Horeca Groningen.