Baltika 2 Svetloe

Brewed by Baltika Brewery (Baltic Beverages Holding - Carlsberg)
Style: Pale Lager
St. Petersburg, Russia

Bottle. Full golden colour, respectable foam head, malty and a bit grainy aroma, sweet malty palate. Full bodied.

(bottle - 500 ml) Clear gold color with a fizzy white head. Aroma is skunky and hoppy with some random sweetness. Flavor isn’t as skunky as I thought it would be. Slightly sweet at the beginning with some hints of corn and dry hops. Slightly bitter middle and a very crisp finish. Quite watery but refreshing.

16.9 ounce green bottle, drink by 12/16/08 (sorry Baltika). Clear light golden, pure white head that doesn’t last. on the scale of no taste to bad taste, I’d say this leans a bit more toward the former, but it’s close. A tad skunky and sour, but generally pretty light. Still, I drank this quite cold while eating a sub, and have to admit I don’t regret it.

Bottle thanks to my neo-geo.com secret santa Kiselgof. Pale yellow body with a finger of quick white head that looks like pancake batter just dropped on the griddle. Big grassy and pale malt aroma. Taste is a bit harsh, bitter, pale malts, grassy hops.

Bottle at my 1000 Rates Celebratory tasting, 8th Jan 09, courtesy of tashi (Dave). Time for the Eastern European horrors part of the evening... Like sticking a rotten log in your mouth and rolling it around and around. Like something fished out from a lake. Smells like moldy two-weeks-unwashed gym kit. Taste as above, but artificially sweetened. Looks like a normal lager. Avoid, like the plague. In fact, catch the plague rather than drink this.

A Mes rate. Oh my god, erm... cheers Dave. Pale yellow with a thin white head. Sadly, it’s dramatically downhill from there. Select rice??? I have to say I am not known to demand premium rice in my beer. Smells of an age old, well worn gym socks. Sadly it tastes exactly the same... but sweetened. My god it’s vile. If I wanted something like this in my mouth I could suck a sumo wrestlers toe. As it is, I’m just not into that sort of thing. Save me. NEXT

Baltika #2 is a clear and sparkling light golden lager with a dense white head that has good retention and leaves some nice lacing. The aroma is lemony and funky. It has a bit of a sweat sock whiff. It’s light, maybe medium-light, bodied and reasonably smooth with a flat, gritty finish. There’s not really much flavor at all. What’s there is grassy-- maybe lemon grass. I really expected this to be bad, but it wasn’t. It’s very much along the lines of an American macro, but with a little more oomph and no glaring signs of adjuncts. It was well worth the 96 cents for the 500ml bottle.

500ml bottle. Poured a somewhat medium yellow with a fleeting white head. Light malt aroma, not much there. Sweet and very non-threatning, kind of weak.