Champale Golden

Bottled@Monks Café, Wallingatan, Stockholm. (as Lion Brewery G. Heileman Champale Extra Dry, 5.4%). Rather pale yellowish golden colour, not much head. Aroma is whitewine, dry semidry apples and that’s about it. Flavour is white wine, some rather dry wooden and applelike notes. Strange brew.

Savannah, Ga. - Habersham Beverage Warehouse - 12 oz bottle. Light pale golden pour, no head. Steely aroma with some sweetness akin to bubble gum. Flavor is very artificial with heavy corn syrup accents and not much else - maybe a bit of monkey bar metal. Thinnish mouthfeel - too carbonated. Surprised to see this still around - remember this from my beer can collecting days of the ’70s as a kid.

Clear to golden color with no head. Smells exactly like you would think champagne and a pale lager. The flavor is champagne and corn. Some citrus flavors showing through. Carbonated mouthfeel. Weird but not horrible.

Pale yellow body with a very thin white head. The aroma has some light notes of cheap rotgut white wine. There is also some sweet apple character. The taste has some sweet vanilla with definite canned pears. There is some high carbonation, but I guess that is to be expected. Not too bad. Defnitely for the wine cooler crowd.

12 ounce bottle, called "Champale Extra Dry." It seems strange pouring this into a glass - seems like it should be downed in one gulp, strait from the bottle. I must admit to having had a weakness for this stuff at one time. It looks like ginger ale, and the cellophane label was wrinkled. I think this is my first 1 rating for appearance - most beers look pretty good to me, but not this stuff. Weak, malty aroma like a cheap pilsner. Tastes like a very cheap lite pilsner, but with the addition of a little lemony sourness. The texture is like ginger ale that is going flat. Champale was never very good, but it once had a tart, cheap champagne character that made it fun to have from time to time. Now it doesn’t even have that. Awful.

I don’t think that this is a malt liquor. Actually, I am not sure if this is even a beer. All that I know is that it has 5.4 percent alcohol and is sold in a dive cold beer store somewhere in North Philly. Well it smells like a cider and kind of tastes like one too. This has zero beer taste at all and as far as I am concerned, this is far easier to drink that some more vile pale lagers and malt liquors. But it is just bizarre.

Hmm... just looking at the Miller listing and ran across the Champale. Surprised that I hadn’t rated it, I recalled that it wasn’t in the DB, never added it, so now dug out my notes from Malt Liquor Light-Up Night 2005. Notes say made by Heileman, the same great folks who bring you Old Style :). Pale scotch-like appearance with a small head. Appely sweet aroma and crappy oversweet candy. Seems more like a cider in taste. Aroma reminds me of Freeze Pops after they melt and get all sugary. Wack.

Pale straw color with a ultra white, plastic looking, dissipating head. Odd aroma of sake, apple cider, pear, resin and old orange peels. Quite sweet from the start. Seems to get a touch more acidic the closer it gets to the finish. A Jolly Rancher sort of taste. This really is not good. Contract brewed by City Brewery - LaCrosse?