Michael Coy
VENERABLE British institution, the good old “Currant Bun”, did a survey of Spanish beers currently on sale in UK outlets like Iceland and Tesco.
With its customary fervour for a good pun, it called its analysis, “Top of the Hops”. With its beer critic Hayley Minn on the job, we can be sure that “The Sun” employed the strictest scientific rigour throughout this investigation.
First up is “Madri”, which Hayley marked as 4 out of 5. She went to Morrisons, and bought a pack of four half-pint size bottles (440 mililitres) for £6.
Readers will be encouraged to learn that Hayley “really liked it”. Unfortunately, she discovered its guilty secret – it isn’t Spanish. It’s brewed in the UK.
“I definitely felt cheated,” says Hayley, “but I can’t pretend that I didn’t still feel like I was abroad when drinking it.”
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Next came San Miguel, Malaga’s own, but Hayley wasn’t unduly impressed. The slightly smaller bottles (330 mililitres – £5 for a fourpack, also from Morrisons) scored only 3 out of 5 on the “boozometer”.
“I’ve probably drunk it a million times before,” she tells us, “and I normally enjoy it a lot. But this time, comparing it to the others, it was a different story. It had a much fainter smell than some of the others and the taste was definitely more wishy-washy, too.”
Mahou did even worse, clocking up only 2 out of 5. A pack of four bottles, the same size as “Madri” retailed at the same £6 price.
And this is where Hayley’s unflinching scientific know-how paid off.
She figured out that, at 4.8% alcohol by volume, this was not a drink to be messed with. “Mahou is one the strongest beers of all the Spanish brews I tried. I could tell as soon as I opened the can.”
“It left a very bitter, unpleasant taste in my mouth. The flavour was definitely too strong for me. There is no way I would be able to have a whole pint of this.”
The Miss Marples of the Snug Bar goes on to offer this:
“But I can ¬imagine people liking it. I reckon this could be a fair choice for lager fans.”
Hayley – why not leave the beer-tasting to a lager fan, then?
Then she went to Waitrose, and picked up a fourpack of Estrella Galicia, the same size bottle as the San Miguel. She gave this one maximum points – 5 out of 5.
“As soon as I had my first sip of Estrella Galicia, all the memories of sun, sea and sand from my Spanish holidays came flooding back. It is a very refreshing beer that has a great balance of the bready flavours of malt and hops with the citrus notes.” So there you go.
And she’s done her research.
“This is an authentic Spanish beer, brewed by Hijos de Rivera, an independent, fourth-generation, family-owned brewery founded in 1906 in A Coruna, Galicia, where it still operates today.”
Beer Number Five (we hope she didn’t do this all in one day) was bought in Tesco. She purchased a pack of four bottles of “Rosa Blanca”.
On the face of it, this one looks like a bargain: the cans (not bottles this time) are the large-format 440 mililitres size, at the small-bottle price (£5).
But at a weak 3.4% alcohol by volume, it left Hayley underwhelmed. 2 out of 5.
While she was in Iceland, she picked up four small-format bottles of “Estrella Damm”, which, she tells us, “is a completely different beer” from “Estrella Galicia”.
They can’t pull the wool over our Hayley’s eyes!
She liked its 1876 vintage (“Spain’s oldest pint”), but found its taste too bitter. 3 out of 5.
Last, and certainly not least, she gives “Cruzcampo” 5 out of 5. Iceland offers four larger bottles for £5.75.
She loved the fruity taste which did not drown out the savour of hops. She felt like she was back in Sevilla. All that was missing, she says, was a plate of tapas!
The moral of “Top of the Hops” would seem to be, stick to “Estrella Galicia” and “Cruzcampo”.
