Vladimirskoye Tsentralnoye
Vladimirskaya Pivovarnya

I found this bottle in a kiosk inside the Moscow metro station nearest to my home. Usually such kiosks have nothing but the big Russian macros, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find a label I didn't recognize. Standard brown half liter bottle with a pretty nice looking multi-colored label featuring three kegs, some large hop leaves and the brewery's coat of arms. Sugar is an ingredient. Bottled on 9/23/03, I opened mine on 10/29/03.

Pours a slightly orangish gold under a big bubbly head that showed some signs of body and contour before quickly fading to film. It's trying to leave some lace, but just doesn't quite cut it. There's a mild aroma of sweet - or sweetened - malt. The mouth is not overly prickly, but a bit heavy with sweetness and alcohol. The taste is alcoholic with a good portion of harsh metallic hops. There is little malt to counterbalance the harshness of the attack, but some of the sugars come through to lighten things up a bit. The finish features this sweetness, which leaves a not utterly unpleasant blend of harsh and sweet in the aftertaste. This is no great beer, but it's also not drain-worthy. Faint praise, perhaps, but so it goes.