Grafenwalder Pils
Frankfurter Brauhaus GmbH

330ml can BB date stamp of 9-2-2016 4.9%
Purchased and consumed in Greece

Clear amber body with a partially durable white head. Plenty of visible carbonation bubbles. Limited lacing.

Feel is not bad despite an overly light, watery body.

Mild aroma with some sweet malt and a fairly light, spicy hop load. The flavor follows.

O: a lightly flavored lager with less hops than optimal.

I went to Lidl and today and bought the Germany's cheapest beer, which all come in plastic bottles. Now, I've nothing against plastic for beer, and the advantages are obvious for weight, breakability and production costs, and they're fully reusable with a paid deposit.

First, Lidl has both name brands and their own brand. Grafenwalder is their brand.

The price per 6-pack for Bitburger, Tuborg and Holsten is 1.99€ and 1.79€ for Grafenwalder.

The price per bottle is here to see.... 29¢, and the deposit is almost the same price at 25¢!

Aroma: Decent Pils malt in the nose, actually quite good. From only the aroma, I'm impressed, though there's not much hop aroma.

Flavor: It's flavor doesn't live up to it's promised aroma. The Pils malt sweetness is underperforming here, more it's tartness and an average Pils flavor. There's some hop bitterness but it's modest at most. It's almost too sweet but not malty enough, if that makes sense.

Mouthfeel: Not bad, thickish, a little dry and enough mouthfeel to feel satisfying.

Overall: Not bad, not horrible but not that great. If I want a beer and I'm flat broke, this wouldn't be bad. In fact, it's better than the heavyweight Fernsebiere like Bitburger or Warsteiner. It's maltier, and for the price, not horrible. But it's not worth buying if you want good to great Pils. 2.6 of 5

The more I drink of this beer, the more I feel I'm drink a beer-soda. Not real soda or a soda-mix, but if one imagined beer as soda: spritzy, "refreshing" but just enough beer taste,... just enough... to make you feel you're drinking a beer, but not enough to be a serious beer. So... beer-soda is my new schema for these beers.

This beers are better than BMC beers, but which German beer isn't? For the price, they're frighteningly not bad.

.5L plastic bottle with soda-esque screw-top acquired at a Lidl in Berlin in May 2014. This is brewed exclusively for Lidl stores by Frankfurter Brauhaus GmbH; I think Lidl may have contracted this out to other breweries in the past. Brewed 05/10/14. 0.25 euro pfand. "Hergestelt für Lidl von: Frankfurter Brauhaus GmbH, Lebuser Chaussee 3, D-15234 Frankfurt/Oder." The label has paper regions for a notched best before date, but none are notched. Purchased as part of a 6 pack for something ridiculously cheap like 2 euro total (including the pfand!).

Side-poured cold into a Berliner Kindl Weiss glass. Reviewed live. Expectations are low based solely on the price.

No bubble show forms as it's poured.

HEAD: Quarter-finger in width. Off-white colour. What little I see of the head before it recedes within 10 seconds is a thin, fizzy consistency without any real creaminess, frothiness, or body. Leaves no lacing as it recedes. Retention is awful.

BODY: It's your standard budget pils appearance, but isn't too weak, thin, or watery looking: a clear translucent yellow-copper of average vibrance. It's a clean appearance, with no visible yeast particulate or hop sediment.

It appears adequately carbonated, I guess. Not bad for a plastic bottle screw-top, anyway. It's far from unique or special, but I expected far worse at this price point. To be honest, it's looking pretty average - which is pleasing in this case. I'm optimistic.

AROMA: Muted barley and generic pils malts with a bit of sweetness but not too much. I'm not finding any off-notes - no plastic bleed, no metallic notes, no booze, etc. It's a simple, light, bland, boring aroma for a pilsner, lacking the fresh full barley characteristics of the best beers in the style as well as any crisp clean evocative pilsner malt, but that said I'm just glad it doesn't seem watery or stale. Still, it'd be nice if the aroma was redolent of SOMETHING...

No yeast character, alcohol, or overt hop notes are detectable.

TEXTURE: Overcarbonation results in a lightly biting, sharp texture which really reduces drinkability - especially when combined with an overly thick, hefty, weighty presence on the palate for a pilsner. I was hoping for a crisp, refreshing, light, soft texture, but that is not at all the case here. Sure it's not oily, gushed, hot, boozy, astringent, or harsh - but it's completely flat-out wrong for a pilsner.

If you can get over the biting overcarbonation, you might notice that it's smooth and wet - at least until the back end, where it wrongly takes a turn towards coarseness and dryness, lending it an unbecoming rough feel just as it closes out. In superior beers, slight roughness at the end encourages the next sip, but here it's just impeding. This texture is ill-suited to the style and taste of the beer, but I guess overcarbonation is preferable to flatness?

TASTE: It's very simple and generic, yes, but in its defense it isn't a watery beer - which is a lot more than I can say about most budget pilsners. Additionally, there could be more off-character, but all I really notice is that a bit of plastic has bled into the beer, lending it a strange off-taste which I guess is preferable to metallic notes.

The foundation is as the aroma suggests - generic barley, some muted unevocative pilsner malt, and a brief kiss of some of the most generic hop character you'll ever find in a beer - no floral character, even, just a dab of underwhelming clinical bitterness to "balance" the equally underwhelming malty sweetness. That said, there's no graininess or cereal notes here.

True to style, no yeast character, spices, or alcohol is present. It suffers from an extremely shallow depth of flavour. Duration of flavour is brief. Flavour intensity is actually a bit above average for a pilsner, but given that the flavours aren't pleasant, this isn't a good thing. A simple and boring as it is, there's little balance here. Not at all a cohesive or gestalt build. I can't say I like this beer even as a budget pilsner, but it's not awful.

OVERALL: A poorly brewed pilsner overall, but not undrinkable. Even at its budget price point, I can't justify a second purchase. Maybe if you're in dire need of cooking beer? This brew can be safely skipped, and I'd caution friends from trying it, but you could do worse in this price point. As bad as it is, I think it's fair to say it meets expectations.

D-