Victoria Bitter

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

Bottled (BB 11/2005)
Paleish yellow, small white head, some lace. Malty, rubbery-skunked aroma. Watery. Malty base with biting rubbery flavor. Bitter aftertaste. A bit strange aroma and flavors in this.

Light golden-amber coloured beer. Short lasting thin white head. Some pale malts and strong hop characters on the nose. Very weak malt flavour and minimal hop flavour. Medium but nearly pungent bitterness with no distinctive finish. Some times feels a bit watery.

(Bottled) Clear, golden color with a small white head. Slightly sweet and cardboardy aroma with a corny, caramely feel. Surprisingly alcoholic, candy-toffeeish flavor with very little hops and an acidic, sourish, lingering finish. Light to medium-bodied, slightly syrupy, quite carbonated palate. A bit unclean, not very balanced and quite alcoholic lager. The bottle and color are nice, though.

(Bottle 37,5 cl) Golden colour, limited head and extremely high carbonation. A touch of malt but mainly this flavour of chicken-fodder that you find so often in beers with corn or rice. Very subdued bitterness. A beer that makes you burb - and nothing else. A truly Australian classic, only God knows why. Comes in the classical oz stubby-bottle. 110205

Not as bad as made out unless sampled from a can in which case it is every bit as bad as all that. Cricket at the MCG drinking anything but VB is surely sacrilege!

Pale lager appearance, thick white head, some lacing. Sweet corn-like aroma. Flavour is bland and fizzy. Not good.

Ozswill Clash of the Heavyweights: VB vs Tooheys New. (Okay, this is a desperate attempt to make macro tasting more interesting - humour me.) Australia’s two best-selling beers sampled side by side in a sensational winner-takes-all swill-off. Appearance: poured simultaneously into identical glasses to ensure a level playing field. Both pale gold with 1cm heads that subside into thin coronas. New shows marginally better head retention but not enough to make a difference to the scoring. Neither looks inspiring. 2/5 for both. Aroma: VB smells more like a shandy than straight beer - sweet lemonade-like odour, with some pale malt, corn and boiled sweets. New smelled initially uric, with some biscuity malt and corn. New gets a marginal nod for having some genuine hop presence, albeit faint. VB 2/10, New 3/10. Palate: Thin-bodied and quenching, which is pretty much to style. They lose points for the abruptness of the finish. 3/5 Flavour: VB is over-sweet, presumably to hide the flavour of corn and cardboardly malt. There is a hint of fruit in there but it’s drowning. The finish is very restrained. New is more austere, with a flash of citric hops and an equally short finish. New at least tastes like beer. VB tastes plain peculiar. New 4/5, VB 2/5. Final score: New 6, VB 4. Thank Christ that’s over. I’m off for an Orval.

Yes indeed, as the name says, some bitterness. Not too much, but it can be noticed. Medium bodied, no other flavors, good or bad. Neutral is probably the word. Just a bit of fresh bitterness in the aftertaste. Not really good, but better as expected and certainly not bad for a standard lager.