Zhigulevskoe
Poltavpivo

Golden color with medium white head. Bread, yeast, and malt are in the aroma. Taste is kind of clean, malty, and basic. Another lager that uses the nostalgic brand.

Drain-pour!

This is a tough lager to love.
Looks more like a dishwater blond than a pale and there is no foam. Clearly this had a long shelf life and a rough journey.
Smells lack hops or malt. The Bland continues in the Taste, but mid-palate some fruity melange appears. In my mouth, neither refreshing nor anything other than thin.

This is drain pour. And there is quite a lot of it.

However in my quest to give every brewer some love, I went on Poltapivo's website and found it, interesting. But the language button offered me only Russian or Ukranian, no English; not a particularly sophisticated website to peruse the photos. So, I gave up. But I do give them Overall Hugs for putting beer in plastic containers and shipping it. Not since 1986 when I had Watneys in a faux barrel made from plastic have I had beer in a plastic bottle. If you live long enough, everything comes around again. Fortunately for me, I'm unlikely to live another 35 years to have beer again from a plastic bottle. на здоров'я (That's "to your health" in Ukrainian.)

 

Poured from the bottle into a pokal style glass.

Dark brass body color, with a little bit of hazy appearance. There's some nice linear streams of carbonation, reaching to a very bright white head, minuscule bubbled, and about a finger in height. Soft puck and thin top while it settles. There's a little bit of "grain" like looking flake in this body as well.

Fairly pedestrian lager aroma, but also not much going on. There's a bit of a sense of what seems like dust on this, maybe a touch of adjunct like malt, but nothing too crazy or faulty either.

Interesting palate. Very unexpected with a standard malt backbone, doesn't get horribly wet or syrupy either, just basic to produce the flavors. There's a very surprising fruit quality to this, which almost feels like it's added. I'd be shocked if it's hop driven, but there's a slight apricot to necatrine like peach taste in the mid palate, followed by a light clean finish.

I am confused, is this ale? It's very unique and surprisingly refreshing and just real solid. Surprising "lager".

Dark gold, momentary foam fades to nothing, no lace. Aroma of soggy grains, wet paper, funky yeast. More wet cardboard and paper, dull soggy grains. Bland. Flabby feel, ok carbonation, not the cleanest or freshest. Overall this is a good one to skip, even at the low price of $1.99 for a 1.5L jug.