My take on Budweiser vs. real pilsner

Budweiser is by far the worst beer I've ever had, for at least two reasons. First, it tastes bland and uninspired. Second, Anheuser-Busch, the company that makes this beer, has the audacity to use the advertising campaign that characterizes this beverage as the "King of Beer." (Using this campaign, they're banking on the fact that a significant amount of the beer-drinking population is daft enough to fall for it and, unfortunately, they've been right about this for many years.)

We recently held a pilsner-style beer tasting at our house, and I recently posted the results of this tasting. At this tasting on January 22, 2011, I didn't have time to taste these beers myself in any systematic fashion, but over the past week or so I was finally able to do so. This post presents the results of my own pilsner beer tasting . . .

My tastings differed from the group in that I was not blind to the beers I was trying; in every other way, I tried to replicate the group process.

However, having experienced and reflected upon the group process, I did learn some things that I implemented with my tasting. The most important thing I implemented in my own tasting was that I approached my tastings with the goal of evaluating these ten pilsners on their own terms. I generally prefer ales, and I generally prefer highly-hopped beers (in this way I am a product of the Pacific Northwest), but I wanted to rate these pilsners on a 1-10 scale based solely on the style. If I were to rate the pilsner style on a 1-10 scale with the styles I prefer, the scaling would be different in that it would be skewed positively in favor of high-gravity, hoppy and/or malty beers such as IPAs, barley wines, imperial stouts, Belgian Tripels, doppel bocks, etc.

Overall Themes & Comparisons

Taking the time to study these beers carefully, and in spite of the fact that my palate is attuned to strongly hoppy and strongly malty beers, I was able to discern some noteworthy differences in the ten pilsners I tried.

The first difference I noted was that "old world" pilsners (Urquell, Czechvar, and to some degree Karlovacko) possessed a malt-based body and nuanced sweetness that none of the other beers had; the North American macro pilsners uniformly lacked a balanced malt-based sweetness to complement the hops, and the micro pilsners (Oskar Blues, Heater Allen, and Victory) were somewhat in the middle, though generally on the macro brew side of the spectrum. The one "old world" pilsner that defied the trend was Bitburger -- it had much more of the North American macro character than the other three old world brews.

The second difference I noted, related to the first, was that the old world brews -- with the exception of Bitburger -- had an appreciably more dynamic character than the North American macros; the micros fell somewhere in-between (again, Bitburger tended to be more like the North American macros than the old world brews.) By this I mean that Urquell, Czechvar, and Karlovacko (in that order) had a flavor profile that had more nuance from start to fade than the other beers. These beers offered an appealing spectrum of full malt sweetness, balanced by a floral hop hint, with a silky-sweet mouthfeel, followed by a nice fade of bitterness. The North American macros, on the other hand, were uniformly watery, with a monochromatic hop character that centered on bitterness at the expense of flavor and aroma, and that faded quickly to a bland watery-bitterness. The Budweiser was even worse: rather than provide the kind of bland, sorta sweet bittery water that Pabst and LaBatt offered, Budweiser had a shallow, corny/ricey type of surface sweetness that predominated over the very mild hop bitterness, and left me with an aftertaste of some sort of highly processed, sugary emptiness.

How I Ranked the Pilsners

I rated these beers a scale of 1 being the lowest grade and 10 being the highest:

1-2: Blah

3-4: Ho-hum

5-6: Good

7-8: Superior

9-10: Excellent

Based on this scale, here is how I ranked these pilsners:

1) Pilsner Urquell (8/10)

2) Oskar Blues Mama's Little Yella Pils (8/10)

3) Victory Brewing Prima Pils (7.5/10)

4) Czechvar Pilsner (6.5/10)

5) Kalovacko Pilsner (6/10)

6) Heater Allen Pils (6/10)

7) Bitburger Pils (3.5/10)

8) Pabst Blue Ribbon Pilsner (2/10)

9) LaBatt Blue Canadian Pilsner (2/10)

10) Budweiser American Lager (1/10)

My Tasting Notes

Below are my tasting notes and ratings compared to those of the group at the January 22, 2011, tasting. The pilsners are listed in the order of my ranking, with the January 22 ranking in parentheses.

"SRM Color" denotes my color determination based on the Standard Reference Method scale.

The diagrams are flavor wheels from the 33 Beers tasting journal. I'm not sure what kind of useful information these flavor wheels can impart, if any, but I did fill one of these wheels out for each beer.

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1 (4). Urquell Pilsner, Plzeň, Czech

My Rating: 8/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: 1.116 (4.83/10)

Served from 12-ounce green glass bottles

SRM Color: 5

ABV: 4.4

My Comments: Aroma: sweet, barley-malt & fresh, subtle hop nose; Taste: malt front with medium body, transitions to crisp bitterness that lingers, bitterness comes through after transition from medium malt sweetness and fresh hops/wet straw floral flavor with slight grapefruit hint; carbonation feels like small bubbles on the tongue.

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2 (2). Oskar Blues Mama's Little Yella Pils, Longmont, Colorado

My Rating: 8/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: 1.343 (5.62/10)

Served from 12-ounce lined aluminum cans

SRM Color: 3

ABV: 5.3

My Comments: Aroma: floral hop nose with balanced sweetness, somewhat grassy; taste: malty sweetness strong at first, fades clean with little bitterness; hop flavor and bitterness in middle after first rush of malt sweetness; minimal carbonation; medium-lite body; very slight smokey flavor with the maltiness; slightly astringent.

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3 (3). Victory Brewing Prima Pils, Downingtown, Pennsylvania

My Rating: 7.5/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: 1.290 (5.46/10)

Served from 12-ounce brown glass bottles

SRM Color: 3

ABV: 5.3

My Comments: Aroma: deep malt sweetness followed by mild hop floral nose, almost rosey; Taste: strong hop floral character throughout with strong lavender/rose character, fades to floral with slight bitterness; mild carbonation; medium body. Really good beer but the highly floral hop character might turn some people off; best among the ten beers in delivering a full, fresh, hop character.

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4 (5). Czechvar Pilsner, Plzeň, Czech

My Rating: 6.5/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: 1.039 (4.25/10)

Served from 12-ounce green glass bottles

SRM Color: 4

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: sweet, full malt predominates, with floral hop hints; Taste: smooth sweetness, malty, with bitterness coming in the middle to the finish and a slightly nutty character; body is medium-lite, mild carbonation. This beer has a range of nuance and flavor, quite good.

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5. (1) Karlovacko Pilsner, Karlovac, Croatia

My Rating: 6/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: 1.564 (6.46/10)

Served from green 22oz bottles

SRM Color: 4

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: floral hop nose, slightly herbaceous; taste: slight rosey-floral hop character at front, mild sweetness to balance hops, fade to mild bitterness with buttery finish; medium malty body; medium carbonation. Surprisingly good, with the buttery mouth feel and full malt flavor a great balance to the hops.

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6 (7). Heater Allen Pils, McMinnville, Oregon

My Rating: 6/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: .858 (3.63/10)

Served from 22-ounce brown glass bottles

SRM Color: 4

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: mild hop bitterness with hint of malt sweetness, a bit of raw corn; Taste: starts with fresh hop flavor, then mild sweetness, followed by rush of medium bitterness/dryness, followed by fade to mild floral; mild carbonation; light body/mouth feel. Tastes more like the Old World pilsners and North American macros, and less like the other microbrews, but with more hop character than the other macrobrews, and less body and malt character than Urquell, Czechvar, and Karlovacko.

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7 (9). Bitburger Pils, Bitburg, Germany

My Rating: 3.5/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: .572 (2.50/10)

Served from 16-ounce lined aluminum cans

SRM Color: 3

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: slight metallic hoppiness, no malt; Taste: cardboard-like bitterness with fade to slightly skunky, and very little malt or other sweetness to balance hops, slight rose flavor in finish, a bit astringent; minimal carbonation; very little body -- water bitterness does linger long. Not spectacular but serviceable, body is too thin but at least, compared to North American pilsners, this beer has more hop character & nuances.

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8 (8). Pabst Blue Ribbon, Woodridge, Illinois

My Rating: 2/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: .733 (3.13/10)

Served from 12-ounce brown glass bottles

SRM Color: 3

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: slight straw/grassy hop aroma with slight bitter ness and minimal malt sweetness on the nose; Taste: minimal hop bitter flavor at front, fades to bitter watery character with slight malt in the middle; thin body; medium carbonation. Bland overall but better than Budweiser because PBR lacks the shallow sweetness and has more hop character.

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9 (6). LaBatt Blue, Toronto, Ontario

My Rating: 2/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: .927 (4.04/10)

Served from 12-ounce brown glass bottles

SRM Color: 3

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: slight hint of hops and sweetness; Taste: light bitterness, minimal sweetness, watery mouth feel, hint of wet earth in aroma and flavor, slightly bitter fade; minimal carbonation. I prefer this beer to Budweiser because LaBatt Blue isn't quite as bland and doesn't have Bud's shallow sweetness.

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10 (10). Budweiser American Lager, St. Louis, Missouri

My Rating: 1/10

Jan. 22 Group Rating: .571 (2.54/10)

Served from 12-ounce brown glass bottles

SRM Color: 2

ABV: 5.0

My Comments: Aroma: sweet straw with hints of metallic and wet cardboard; Taste: slight bitter front and fade to watery-sweet with final fade to mostly-watery with slight bitterness, some metallic-hay and green apple character to the flavor, and final fade is of a shallow sweetness like processed sugar; high carbonation; had the body/mouth feel of water. Terrible in every way.

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