Zorbas Beer
Athenian Brewery

 

Sep. 2016: 330 ml can, in Rhodos. ABV is 5%. Clear pale golden colour, large white head. Moderate sweetish aroma, hints of grass. Slightly sweet flavour, fairly bland, with far too little hops, but not offensive - just boring.

 

 

Served on-draught into a .5L krug at the bar in my hotel in Kardamena, Kos. Reviewed live. Expectations are average. Cost was 3.50 euro - quite expensive by Greek standards. This was the first pour of a fresh keg, so some foam clearance was necessary on the bartender's part.

No bubble show forms as it's poured.

HEAD: The first few pours resulted in almost entirely foam, but after some corrections from the bartender, it settled to a respectable one finger wide head which retains well - for about 5 minutes. Leaves a nice even coating of lacing on the sides of the glass as it recedes.

BODY: Clear pale yellow-copper. Translucent and transparent. Average vibrance. No yeast particulate o hop sediment is visible. It's quite a clean body.

Overall, it looks appealing for the style, but far from unique or special. Pretty typical stuff.

AROMA: Pils malts, helles malts, clean crisp barley, some faint sweetness, and a faint hint of balancing hop bitterness. It's a clean aroma; no yeasty notes or off-notes are detectable - including overt alcohol.

It's a pleasant aroma of average strength, and unlike most Greek macrobrews I've had, it doesn't come off too sweet.

TASTE/TEXTURE: Pils malts, helles malts, crisp clean barley, and some slightly overdone sweetness. It could really use some hop bitterness to balance the sweetness, but it's not cloying or anything.

Crisp, overcarbonated, smooth, and wet. Refreshing. Could be softer. I also wonder about the quality and hardness of the water used; the presence this beer has on the palate is strange, and it almost seems a it minerally.

I do like it, but it does suffer from dire simplicity (even within this particular style) and lacks much of interest. There's nothing here you can't find in another better (and cheaper) brew.

Luckily, it's not oily, gushed, hot, astringent, boozy, harsh, scratchy, or rough. And there aren't any problematic off-notes per se, nor any overt alcohol in the taste.

OVERALL: Extortionate price point aside, it's a likable brew with no remarkable characteristics. It's what we all expect when we order a macrobrew, and I'm satisfied just that it isn't watery. It actually tastes like a beer, and it's easy to drink. Not worth seeking out, but it'll do the job on a hot day.

C-

 

At least 4 greek beers from 2 greek breweries are now being sold (apparently exclusively) at Bodega Mi Amiga in panama city - given the scarcity of other unusual countries' beers here, I conclude that someone is bringing in greek beers specifically for motives which are not primarily financial. My previous encounter with one of these was bad, to say the least, but here is Zorbas Beer, so what do I get?

A nice golden beer with flufly white head which smells like malty adjuncts. Ingredients do claim no adjuncts used, just barley malt. It does smell just a hint sweet.

Taste is better than expected, a bit bland and vaguely malty but nothing offensive or harmful. Nothing I detect that resembles hops, but they presumably are there somewhere.

A great improvement over Mythos. Try when bored to death and in need of variety or when in greece, i suppose.