The Bottom Shelf

East Asian Beer Tasting

Last week Wolfe, Greg, Mike, Roger, and I performed a taste test of several east Asian beers. And no, the test was not performed blind. We cheated, so what? The beers we sampled were Asahi (Japan), Sapporo (Japan), Singha (Thailand), Tiger (Singapore), Kirin Ichiban (Japan), Tsingtao (China), and San Miguel (Phillipines).

I wrote down my own tasting notes, so the opinions below are mine alone. I’ll try to identify where we reached consensus as a group. The first beer we tried was Asahi. It was a very pale yellow in color with a thin, lifeless head. It tasted somewhat ricey to me, kind of like a traditional domestic macro lager. It went down smoothly but was noticeably watery. It was a fairly nondescript beer.

The next beer was Sapporo. This one made more use of aromatic hops than the Asahi and had a darker yellow coloring. The finish was bitter and seemed to have more character than Asahi, though this character wasn’t entirely pleasant. I preferred Asahi to Sapporo.

The Singha had a more malty taste and was smoother than the first two beers. To be fair, the Singha was warmer when we had it, which means the more subtle tastes and aromas had a better chance of being noticed. I wasn’t overwhelmed, but I thought the Singha outperformed Asahi and Sapporo.

Tiger had a similar coloring to Sapporo and also made use of the floral hops. Roger was a big fan of the Tiger. While I enjoyed it, I found it to be in the middle of the pack with the other beers. The Singha had a more pleasant malty taste, but Tiger was better balanced than the too bitter Sapporo and the too weak Asahi.

Kirin Ichiban was up next, and it was the consensus favorite of the evening. Roger had it neck and neck with Tiger, and the rest of us found it to be at the top of our lists. The coloring was a darker yellow, closer to Sapporo than it was to Asahi. Kirin lacked the too strong bitter finish of Sapporo, but it wasn’t too light or delicate. The aroma was nearly neutral. I think the Kirin would perform admirably as a general quaffing beer or with an exotic meal. Pairing it with a dinner lacking a lot of flavor probably wouldn’t work best, though, since the Kirin isn’t going to add much in the way of interesting tastes or textures. It would do a good job of cutting through a more complex meal, helping the palate reset itself for each new bite.

The Tsingtao came in a green bottle and smelled as though it was skunked. It tasted alright though and had a pleasant floral aroma, once you moved past the possible skunkage. It was hard to appreciate this one after the initial smell, but it was certainly drinkable.

The San Miguel finished up the evening. There was a little bit of a spicy finish to it, almost like a cinnamon or a nutmeg. I think the San Miguel was the most interesting of the beers we tasted, but I enjoyed the Kirin Ichiban more. If you are pairing the beer with a meal that has a lot of flavor, go with the Ichiban. If you’re pairing the beer with a blander meal, go with the San Miguel. If you’re drinking the beer by itself, go with either of these two: the Kirin if you prefer the domestic macro lager style and the San Miguel if you prefer something a little more complex than that.