Haagen Premium Light
Asahi Beverages (NZ) Ltd

Bottle: light green 330mL bottle with a standard macro beer label.

Appearance: a mid-golden colour with a fair old amount of carbonation. A small head drops almost as soon as it rises, leaving a thin film and ring.

Aroma: mainly cheap grain with some pretty awful caramel-ish flavour behind. Diacetyl perhaps? Not much in the way of hops either. Poor quality.

Taste: pretty much follows the nose - nasty grains and nasty off-caramel diacetyl. There is actually a little grass hop bitterness in there, but it doesn't mask the unpleasantness.

Aftertaste: fortunately disappears pretty quickly. Really not a good beer.

Mouth feel: mouth feel is pretty standard for a lager / light lager - nothing bad to say about this aspect at least. Light in body with higher carbonation.

Overall: one of the worst beers I have ever had. I will never, ever have this again. Drink soft drink, or water. Or just about any other light lager.

Appearance - 2.5
Poured a finger of white head that quickly reduced to a thin, patchy layer over a clear body of pale gold.

Smell - 1.5
Sweet diacetyl butterscotch with a little grain in the background.

Taste - 1.5
Dominated by diacetyl butterscotch, which is an obvious flaw. However, sad as it may be, I believe that the diacetyl actually makes Haagen Light a tastier beer than most low alcohol lagers. It certainly wouldn't do well in competition, but I actually prefer this to some non-flawed adjunct lagers. A little hop bitterness is there, but whatever flavour there would have been is drowned in the butterscotch.

Mouthfeel - 3.0
Light to moderate carbonation is quite fine, if leaving the beer a little watery.

Drinkability - 2.0
One tires of the diacetyl taste rather quickly.

OVERALL - 1.9
I wonder whether this is a beer that makes in onto shelves in its current tainted form. In some ways it is less mundane than your average low alcohol lager, but it is still a flawed beer and must be scored as such.

Appearance: Perfect golden colour with slow rising carbonisation. Really quite good head retention. And some lacing

Smell: moderate to low level of smell. Moderate caramel malt smell. And some floral/grassy/citrus hops, but hardly any.

Taste/ Mouthfeel: the flavours are a bit of a mix. No real construction of flavours. There is some malt and hop balance but the beer is very high in carbonisation which probably dissipates the flavours a bit. Some malt sweetness still remains and a little dry/hop bitterness is there at the end. The mouthfeel is a bit watery and over carbonated though.

Drinkability/Overall: Easy enough to drink better than a lot of light made in Australia and I would pick it most days over most. It could be worse.

Like the regualr lager, but watered down, sweetish and thin, but like its full-strength version, manages to have a bit of flavour, even if its isn't good flavour, sweetish and bland is all i can say.