Tuborg Skøll Ice Apple
Brasseries Kronenbourg

Brasseries Kronenbourg
50 cl can, coded "11/18 8066V18"
1.95€ @ Carrefour City Batignolles, Paris, FR

Notes via stream of consciousness: I have no one to blame if this goes wrong as I wasn't even sure if it was beer when I first saw it. The shiny blue and silver can had me thinking it was a vodka drink or something like Red Bull but there it was, front and center, the word "BEER" followed by "flavoured with VODKA/APPLE". I couldn't pass this up. How could it be "flavoured" with vodka as vodka basically doesn't have any flavor...? Isn't that the idea behind vodka? Anyway, I also thought it would be clear, or maybe colored blue, but it actually looks exactly like a beer with a clear golden body beneath a short head of bright white foam. Hmmmm. The aroma of course smells like apple, green apple, and although it's not strong no maltiness gets past it. On to the flavor... well, I'm relieved, it's not bad at all. The green apple is the main note, with support from some sweet malt, although there's very little grain flavor to it. I'm assuming there's a lot of adjunct to it, and maybe even grain neutral spirit but let's check the label to be sure: water, barley malt, glucose aroma of vodka and apple (of which 42% is vodka),apple juice from concentrate (0.1%), citric acid, wheat, caramel color, hop extract. OK, so that solves it, there is adjunct, and flavoring, which is mainly apple but contains some "vodka", and there is a kind of burn to it, kind of like mint, that I'm assuming is supposed to be the vodka, replicating it's heat. i didn't find any hop flavor, and the bitterness is minimal - the "heat" is what helps to clear it up in the end. It's actually interesting whereas I thought it was going to be terrible. It's still not really a beer in my opinion, and much more of a malternative, but it's a lot better than some of the price-point Euro lagers I've been trying over the past few days in Paris as I haven't been able to get out to a proper beer store yet. If all you wanted to do was have an inexpensive beer to walk around with or get drunk on it would do the trick; on the other hand it costs about twice as much of some of the others with a little less alcohol to boot! To wrap it up then, it's got a better appearance than some of the cheap Euro lagers with good head retention and lacing; and it's pleasant in the mouth with a medium body and soft, delicately bristling carbonation. I cannot recommend it as a beer, but I will say it's probably worth trying just to see what it's all about.
Review# 6,095