Baltika 3 Klassicheskoe (Classic)

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

500ml bottle. pale gold color. almost non-existant head. tiny malt aroma. light carbonation. crisp and refreshing. would be good after a long hot dirt bike ride in the Mojave Desert. being from Russia I expected it to be as nasty as Russian cigarettes(which are dreadfully horrible), which it is not.

Gold color. An ordinary pale lager. Corn and sweet malt. Its redeeming quality is that it is not offensive.

Bottle. A hint of hops, sweet malt and a corn sweetness on the nose. Pours pale yellow with a thin rocky white head. Flavor consists of sweet corn with a metallic finish. Not a lot going on here. Medium bodied. Inoffensive, but not complex.

Bottle from State Line. Gold pour with frothy white head. Aroma is lemongrassy hops, pale malt, some honey and slight metallic and thiol notes. Light palate, with some grainy pale malt, citric hops, and mild honey notes, along with that slight thiol note. Not one I’d buy again.

Bottle: Pours a light gold color with s yellowish green tinge. The nose is toasty with a light biscuityness and some light corn, sweet odd malt note. The flavor has a decent body, toasty, bright corn and light skunk. Funky, but plenty of flavors to do something with, not good ones, but they’re there.

From the bottle, pours golden yellow with a tall fizzy white head. Dry grainy malt nose, strawn and light honey flavors. Hops were faint, but more present then most pale lagers. Overall a decent pale lager, good for its simplicity.

This is one of three Baltikas I sampled recently--the others being a 4 and a 9 (can’t find the notes I took on those, darn it). This was the one I liked least, but it ain’t bad at all. The brown bottle and the fairly simple blue-and-gold label are attractive. Poured with a thin, fizzy head that didn’t stay too long--not much lacing, but many small bubbles in the pale yellow body. The aroma was rather nice, above average for a pale lager, with a fruity, apple-like scent beneath the usual lager sourness. It tasted rather wheaty (though not as much so as the Baltika 9), with a sourish hop bite beneath. The palate was clear but not too watery. This isn’t terrific, but it’s still considerably better than most pale lagers. The price is good too; I paid $2 for a pint-plus bottle. I’d get it again, and I’d suggest it to anyone looking for something decent in the lager line.

Nose of grass, vanilla and hops. Lots of carboantion. Pours a straw yellow colour beer. Taste is fresh and crisp but quite forgettable.