Victoria Bitter Midstrength

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

Wow-- good job Carlton! You managed to preserve all the shittiness that the full strength VB delivers, but with less alcohol. Avoid.

Clear but dull pale gold body with a thin head. Aroma of malt that has been left out in the rain (like wet socks). Smooth but bland taste it is watery and thin and like most midstrengths you can take it or leave it.

I thought it would be possible to write the review before I actually tasted it. You know, the usual boring metallic bland tastes connoted by a poor midstrength alcohol content and merely another poor attempt by an out of touch brewer sort of thing. Well, I was right. Except that it is the first beer I’ve had in a week and so apart from being the usual boring metallic bland tastes connoted by a poor midstrength alcohol content and merely another poor attempt by an out of touch brewer it is the usual boring metallic bland tastes connoted by a poor midstrength alcohol content and merely another poor attempt by an out of touch brewer. I repeat.............

Australia’s best-selling beer sets the bar so low that this mid-strength spin-off can barely limbo under it. But it does. It looks marginally better than VB, with a fair sudsy head that lasted well beyond reasonable expectation. Even the aroma is a faint improvement, with some peach essence and bubblegum sugars offering partial compensation for the offensive ammonia notes and absence of a discernible hop. That’s where the bouquets stop and the brickbats begin. It’s as over-carbonated and skinny as you’d expect, with a burp-inducing soda quality. Like VB, it’s sweet and essentially unbeerlike but for some gunmetal POR in the finish. Stale malts and faint apricots. What little flavour you can find here is offensive. There is no pleasure in this beer - it’s just a vehicle for delivering alcohol to your system slightly slower than usual. (330ml bottle from any bottleshop anywhere in Australia until the stupid marketing department-driven product flops)

Aww, heck , we all know marketing sells beer. Apparently the Eastern states don’t like mid-strength and the only Mid’s that sell don’t comply with ’south of the bourders’ as it seems XXXX is crunching over in big numbers in Victoria and the New South of Wales. Could this kerb it, I’m fussed, I rate XXXX as the absolute bottom of beers and a struggle for dominance is in my opinion a sordid, can’t quite breath, can’t quite vomit, comedy of errors, in which I couldn’t the least bit care the victor.
In the glass the wife’s first comment was it looked like Angostura - lemon, lime, bitter mix I’m certain the same brewer/conglomerate owns. Its bright, a seminal sparkling orange gold with so much fizz adhered to the side of the glass I must concur it does look like soft-drink. The head a sad form, the only description I could muster was of a locked up release of phlegmish saliva, all loose white yuk and mess. Onto the beer. A waft from the glass, it is feint, is dank, staling, cardboardy, and ofcourse metallic, tinny.
As acrid and recursive on the palate as the green ’B’ though this does save grace with the inclusion of toasted malt. It has malt flavour, does it save it?
Typically flabby in mouth feel, it has fizz upfront, but how does VB become heavy so easily from tip to mid-palate. Finish is metallic, very tinny and it lingers. Heavy, just after one, how can this rival Carlton Mid and XXXX, and is this just another shallow attempt forfeiting marketing at products each and all own. This beer is sadly Australia, 25 years ago. Acrid and like a rusting Kingswood come the Winter rain. Flabby like liquid Sao biscuits. Quite sad, really, the state of big brewery brewing. (37,5cL bottle, 21/10/07, The Beer Store Morley)

Smelt of the Tourist town, Rotorua, as soon as I opened the bottle. Clear bright gold colour with thin white head that disapated quickly. Bland thin and watery with mild metalic bit at the end.

Hmm. Interesting. Its not too bad. The alchohol is kinda weak. Overall its got a decent flavor and is worth a try.

Mildly better than VB for some reason (not as much metallic aftertaste). Still cheap and nasty though. An pretty poor attempt to counter Tooheys XXXX Gold. Shocka of marketing... puke yellow to go with the puke taste.