Carlton Premium Dry

Brewed by Carlton & United Breweries (CUB)
Style: Pale Lager
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

355ml bottle. Amber honey colour that is clear and mildly carbonated and does not have much of a head, almost flat looking. Hard to detect any aroma, just a hint of malt poking through. Tastes of custard powder and banana and is light and dry in the mouth.

Had this one during my holiday in Australia april/may 2009. Golden, orange colored brew. No aroma. Watery, dry, bitterness, dusty, dull aftertaste.

You have to be fucking kidding me surely? Either I have drank too much piss in my life or this garbage is passed off as some kind of weird brew apparently labeled beer? I would not even try to kill cane toads with this shit as it is would be inhumane.

The essential beer in every macro range these days is the premium dry lager coming in a clear elongated bottle. Carlton’s version tastes like most of the other pale lagers in it’s repertoire, with the differences so subtle that I’m sure I couldn’t pick them in a blind tasting. In fact, I probably couldn’t pick them even in a side by side tasting. I can’t say that this is a particularly dry beer, but it isn’t as sickly sweet and say a VB. Tasted a bit of cleaning product along with a good dose of corn. It really is pretty poor and, from memory, even worse than TED.

I found this beer very boring to drink. The head diminished quickly but never fully disapeared, the carbonation was barely there and it didn’t lace the glass at all... It smelt a bit musky and there was a slight taste of hops. Anyway I’m still learning so don’t take my rating too seriously.

Bottled. Thirst-quenching and drinkable, nondescipt and pretty tasteless, like a dry should be I suppose. About a hair different from Toohey’s Extra Dry. Well, I guess by CUB standards it’s a balltearer.

Hope I have the right beer as there was nothing sweet in the aroma or flavour of this one to give it any life. Tasted from the bottle (355ml, 4.5% ABV) and poured into a tallboy. Clear pale gold, with irregular carbonation holding up a decent fluffy white head, that lasted and left foam lacing down the glass. Appearance was alright, but the beer was not. I had just tasted a Boag’s St. George and this suffered from the same adjunct ridden, yeast infected aroma. Corn, DMS boiled vegie’ water and a sour hop note that turned my stomach. Thankfully it was quite clean in the mouth, but the aroma still lingered. Feather weight in body and biting in carbonation, with an acrid ’Tonic water’ and cardboard feel that left little to impress. Anything detected on the tongue was that light on that it borderlined on tasteless, and the crisp dry finish left me wondering if I was drinking beer at all. The only good point to this beer was that the liquor used was extremely clean. Another embarrassing marketing blunder by yet another macro ’bean counter’.

"Premium ingredients... chill filtering... perfectly balanced... crisper, drier and sharper..." Bloody marketing-speak. Presumably this was dreamed up to counter Toohey’s bizarrely popular Dry. Why bother. Pale gold, skinny vanishing head. Standard CUB nose - POR hops, soapy wet dog. Sweet and malty with a barely-there finish. Lemonade-like spritz. Not especially dry.