Kalyani Black Label Premium Lager Beer
United Breweries - UB Group

A treat when found in the right restaurant...I love great Indian food...

 

Kalyani Black Label Premium Lager Beer is brewed by the same company that brews the many beers of the Kingfisher line. Like the rest of the Kingfisher brews, this one pours a light, clear, well-carbonated golden body that supports a fizzy head of bright white foam.

The nose is of sweet grain and ethyl alcohol. Though this mild brew was produced only a month ago, it already has the kind of funky, skunky smell that I usually expect from malt liquors that have been sitting on the shelf for a while.

The taste follows the nose. The "skunkiness" is more tolerable than expected, and recedes as the palate grows accustomed to it. Grains, sweet corn, and ethyl alcohol dominate. The beer is far to sweet for the (small) amount of alcohol in the bottle. Here and there the sweetness led me to believe I was picking up some fruity notes, but for the most part the beer just felt and tasted watery. I won't be revisiting this one.

 

Ok now, this beer used to be a very sought after one, say a decade back. To my untrained palate, this was "the" preferred beer out of whatever was available. I am talking about 15 yrs back. Times have changed, and I have been on BA for about a year. I have traveled for beer, and back at home there are a number of international beers available as well. So what chance does KBL stand ? Anyway, I am on a macro spree these days as I'm traveling big time for work. No decent beer available where my work is taking me these days. So I decided to relive Kalyani last evening. Poured the usual straw yellow with huge fizz, alongwith a hugely dissipating head. Smelt the usual wet grain and tinny. I wonder how the India macro lager is so consistent with the colour and smell. So damn predictable, in fact even the most evolved palate will be put to shame in a blind taste test because everything tastes the same (but believe me, there are some noticeable differences in batches - sweetness usually).
The taste was bordering on sweet (I wouldn't use the word "malty") and was a little heavier on the palate than its contemporaries. By no means am I hinting that this was a medium bodied beer - it was still watery, but relatively appeared to have a tad higher density. No hop presence at all, except for the common abrasiveness from the carbonation.
Since I have grown up on KBL, I am trying to be liberal with the rating. There is a nice sweetness to boot, not to savour but to get smashed on. Have a swill if you will. Its that good.

Poured from a bottle into a pint glass.

Appearance: Pours a golden straw yellow, with a small head that fades quickly. A fair amount of carbonation is visible.

Smell: A rather odd smell. Soapy, metallic, a little bit sweet (adjunct sweetness, but still sweet), and ethynol. Pretty bad.

Taste: Wow, this has to be one of the worst five beers I have ever had. There is some light corn sweetness in at the beginning, but the other flavors that come in are almost poison: aluminum, soap, and ethyl alcohol. It almost tastes like this beer was made, but then after brewing they put in all of these additives. Awful.

Mouthfeel: It's light and fizzy, which normally would be a slightly higher ranking, but the additives just bring it down another level.

Drinkability: I could not finish this. I had the 650 ml bottle, and I needed to get rid of the last third.

Poured out of a 500ml bottle into a pint glass.

A-standard golden color, dark for an American Lager.

S-decent hop smell, not all malt nose like alot of Indian beers.

T-Has some decent balance, strong alcohol, certainly sweet but very light hop flavor to let you know that you are drinking beer.

M_light

D-I have had worse in India. Its not remarkable, and I wouldn't go out of my way to buy it here in the States. If you need a beer to drink while eating food, this is a decent choice. It however suffers the same problems as other Indian beers--chemical aftertastes, low hop character, and additives (ethyl alcohol, rice, etc.) but again is top tier in the Indian category.

Kalyani Black Label Premium Lager is a classic Indian beer brewed in Punjab but has now become part of the UB group. It poured with a nice golden yellow color and one finger of rapidly disappearing foam. The smell was of wet dishrag, flowery hops, and some citrus. Strangely it tasted a bit flat despite the hard carbonation, with elements of metal, bad water and a hint of licorice. The aftertaste was sweet and sour with some bread notes. The beer has definately improved in recent years but can hardly compete outside the domestic market. All and all it's a comparatively decent lager considering the generic macrolager mediocracy of the Indian supply.