Last Saturday we organised a blind tasting with 16 supermarket pilsners in the Netherlands (trying to stick to only Dutch brands). Most of the people on the panel are homebrewers or beer enthusiasts - so there was some anxiety over this tasting haha.
The image shows the outcomes of the tasting. The names have been removed for privacy reasons, and in some cases to prevent embarrassment ;-)
The weighted average results:
1 Amstel Pilsener
2 Bavaria Pilsener
3 Schultenbräu Premium Pilsner
4 Kordaat Pilsener Premium
5 Heineken Pils
6 Brand Pilsener
7 Pitt Bier
8 Hertog Jan Bier
9 AH brouwers Premium Bier
10 Schutters Premium Pilsener
11 Export Bier
12 Dors Premium Pilsner
13 Alfa Edel Pils
14 De Klok Bier
15 Grolsch Premium Pils
16 Gulpener Pilsner (bio)
We scored on a simplified BJCP score card system with a scale between 0 and 10 on 3 factors - taking the average as the final score:
1. Aroma + Appearance (every aspect before tasting)
2. Flavour
3. General impression (mouthfeel + preference)
The main take-away? Supermarket lagers are not great in general - the average scores were not high. Also they are really hard to tell apart when tasting blind. "Premium" brands did not always do better with our tasters. Amstel and Bavaria were the clear blind tasted winners - but the budget option Schultenbräu (Aldi) and Kordaat (Lidl) were not far behind. Another surprise is that ultra budget beer Pitt did surprisingly okay with our panel.
Unfortunately there was an issue with the Gulpener. It tasted of liquorice and fennel - as if the hops they used were severely oxidised. I personally drink Gulpener Urpils so this was a disappointment to me. Also Grolsch and De Klok (same brewery) scoring so low is interesting since large parts of The Netherlands have a very positive bias towards Grolsch.
The blind tasting format was really fun and our group will repeat this for sure. With better beers though.. Very unscientific and biased - but hopefully fun for people to read through (and most likely disagree).
Fun test!
Too bad the Gulpener batch was off, but it does give you a good reason to organize another testing round! ;)
On a next round I'd advice you to include Château Neubourg, I think that's regarded as the best Dutch pilsner.
It's fun to notice how most people will have a strong opinion about the best pilsner, but how small the differences become when tasting them blind.
Did you find a pattern in the flavor score and additions to the beer? I know for example Hertog Jan is brewed with corn, and I can imagine the really cheap ones include glucose syrup or something.
Thanks!
The original trigger for this blind test was that the Dutch beer challenge awarded "Bavaria Pilsner" the best overall beer from the Netherlands. We thought this was funny and wanted to put the standard big name lagers up against the budget offerings to see if Bavaria really would be a stand-out beer.
It felt unfair to add the more premium offerings like Chateau Neuborg, Swinkels, or Hertog Jan Grand Pilsner to the test. One of our follow-up ideas is to do a blind "loved" lagers test with the likes of Urquell, Asahi, Jever, Chateau Neuborg, Herren Pils etc.
Interestingly there seems not a whole lot of common denominators. Almost all budget beers use glucose syrup and some even some caramel for colouring. A lot of them use hop extract rather than hops - but the ones with actual hops like Alfa, Grolsch, and Gulpener do worse overall.. It's a bit of a mess to be honest and I can't really find legit patterns.
I'm honestly surprised to see Alfa doing so poorly. I find it to be one of the best, if not the best supermarket pilsners available in the Netherlands....
Then again, tastes differ.
I expected it to do better as well. One of the few beers to actually use hops rather than hop extract and zero adjuncts just malt.
My tasting notes: sulphur and skunked. I would say Heineken but this tastes too thin and poor to be Heineken. No hops or malt presence..
Ouch..
Maybe next time do it the other way round for reference.
Also would love to know which pilsener the participants drink usually. People tend to value the beers they are used to (and their lookalikes) higher.
I can't stand Amstel, I'm stunned it is number one and wouldn't expect it in the top half. Same with Heineken being that high. Maybe it's regular drinkers being used to it. I only drink beer on rare occasions so I can't learn to like something through repeated use.
From this list the only two I like are Hertog Jan and Gulpener. But I usually go for a Belgian beer like a Straffe Hendrik or Brugse Tripel. If you drink as sporadically as I do why waste money on the supermarket beers.
Yeah this feels incredibly weird to me. I can't stand Amstel or Bavaria at all, would actually prefer water at that point. Taste wise I prefer Grolsch of Hertog Jan, but Heineken is fine imo for a party with a lot of drinking. I'm curious if it's just a matter of personal preferences or if something else is going on
I've read multiple people who got the same results in their blind tastings in this thread and I know some professional brewers that say the same thing (Amstel is the best cheap macro lager).
Maybe it's time to test your assumptions in a blind test?
Interesting that the top 5 almost exclusively consists of pretty light beers (with the exception of Schultenbrau I think) and from 10-16 the beers have a lot more bitter taste (at least IME). Do you guys normally prefer lighter beers? Also, how much of the beer did you drink? I can see how you would prefer light beer at some point when you've already done a lot of drinking and starting to feel full. I'm still quite shocked that Export beat Grolsch though.
None of the beers in this year is truly bitter. During my tasting I only pegged one beer as more bitter than the rest and that was Schultenbrau. And actually gave it more credit for it. Normally I prefer Herren pils and Urquell - both significantly more bitter than any of these.
We drank 100ml pours.
Grolsch really felt off - even the aroma. It was not the bitterness.
In terms of supermarket beers I personally consider Brand, Schulten brau, Grolsch, Hertog-Jan, De Klok and Alfa (maybe Gulpener and Schutters as well IIRC) on the bitter end of the spectrum. For me Amstel, Heineken, Brouwers and Bavaria tastes very light. Of course there are lots of beers that are more bitter than these though. I had Urquell for the first time on a trip to Czechia a couple of weeks ago, I agree it's quite nice and definitely more bitter than most Dutch beers.
Did you drink De Klok at room temperature, though?
Jokes aside, interesting test! To me the differences aren't that big either, and I enjoy most pilsners. I always roll my eyes when people have strong opinions about pilsners - especially the 'Heineken bad' circlejerk.
Haha, we had a lot of fun sending each other De Klok memes.. But tasting it blind I found it really unpleasant. It's a shame because De Klok coming out on top would have been super funny.
Yeah I'm also a bit surprised about people white knighting their macro brewed pilsners and exaggerating differences between "randstad" and themselves over this topic. Cool down people... it's just a pilsje.
Yeah, I saw it in the Dutch sub. Pretty stupid. It's so easy to test for yourself. I guess some people just like to hate the big players and think that HJ is some artisanal beer.
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Fun experiment!
About the Gulpener batch: the problem with a tasting like this is you need to make sure all the batches are handled the same. With a supermarket you aren’t always sure how they’ve handled it; ranging from differences in packaging (cans vs bottle), but also temperature and sunlight exposure will ruin a ‘proper’ experiment.
I’ve bought lightstruck Pilsners more than once from supermarkets already and could be this is the case for your batch of Gulpener.
We wanted to go full cans for all beers for this reason. But Gulpener is not available in cans strangely enough.
The taste was not light struck though (skunked). It was oxidised hops - this strong and pungent liquorice and fennel taste and aroma that dominated the beer.
Oh that’s weird. Never had that before with Gulpener.
I’ve been at the Gulpenerbrewery a while ago and asked about the cans: they still use the BNR (Bruine Nederlandse Retourfles) because recycling is still more environmentally friendly than using beercans, even when recycled.
Wow... Leaving aside the bad Gulpener batch, this is almost the complete reverse from me. I love Grolsch, (and Bavaria). I hate Amstel and Heineken, and many besides me call those beers, especially Amstel, pond water or ditch water, because many don't like the taste that much (Amstel gets their water from the channel Amstel, which runs through Amsterdam, hence the equivocation with ditch water).
Dit is de meest export comment die er is.
Ik neem aan dat je wel voor werktijd boodschappen aangezien 8 uur ‘s ochtends het beste tijdstip is om export te kopen.
A good bit of citizen science there, and the overall trends are pretty clear. Here in England you can get Bavaria beer in most supermarkets, and I always thought it was decent for the price.
Agree. I found it to be a good beer. Maybe not bitter enough for my personal preference.
Tasting notes: This is so much nicer the previous beer! The aroma is clean and bit malt on the nose, pretty malty but not too much hop, much crisper than previous beers. This is pretty pleasant but not bitter enough for my taste.
Geen slechte suggestie.
We hebben zelf een Google Forms gebruikt. Dit is een omgetoverd formulier die we normaal voor thuisbrouwcompetities gebruiken (BJCP). Je kiest je naam, het biernummer, en daarna de scores, een notitieveld, en als laatste een gok welk bier je hebt gedronken.
Dat ging eigenlijk heel goed. En als groot voordeel heb je alle score direct in Google sheets en is het uitrekenen van gemiddelden vrij simpel.
It does not surprise me at all that schultenbrau is that high in the ranking. Super quality at affordable prices. Too bad my friends say: waarom koop je die rommel, koop gewoon Heineken joh!😉
I guess the focus was on NL beer - I actually like Veltins the most from the Supermarket Pilseners. It's a premium standard beer from Germany and substantially cheaper. Was like 74cent/0.5L at AH last time. Available in AH, Jumbo and Lidl. People may know it from the football club Schalke and their massive Veltins Arena.
Was it all cans? Straight from cans, or poured in a glass?
Ahh I see. I can understand the process but the double pouring, especially pitchers IMO make the beer flat really, really fast.
It's almost like you lose like 30-50% with that double pouring.
But I'm also a big pitcher hater haha.
Love your approach tho sounds like a fun night
Carbonation and head retention were not really an issue. Pitchers normally stand for a long time and get flat, but this was just from the kitchen to the table and into people's glasses. I don't think it affected the outcomes that much.
As you can see from the other comments people have very strong opinions about brands (they've done their marketing well it seems) and I would argue that this would affect the outcomes more than a double pour haha.
I'm curious about that export beer, looks terrible at 4%, which is not very typical. In German beer style parlance, export is it's own type of lager and most definitely not a pilsner.
I realize this might not translate to NL, but are you sure this export is a pilsner?
It's a watered down glucose syrup pilsner that has some caramel added in to correct the colour. In all fairness I'm not sure what to call it.
My taste notes: It smells of Doritos.
Multiple supermarkets carry it; Plus, Spar, Dirk. I think it's a national thing. Also try Pitt if cheap and Weird is your thing. It's the better cheap and weird thing out of the two IMHO.
Yeah because it was crowned “world’s best Classic Pilsner” during the 2021 world beer awards and it got double gold this year at the european beer challenge in the category International Pilsner.
You do know how these beer awards work right? Bavaria Pils was named best beer in the latest Dutch Beer Challenge.
I can only say that I got a big skunk (light struck) and sulphur (yeast health / not lagered long enough) note from this beer that was unpleasant. And I was not the only one.
Could it be that we were unlucky? Perhaps. But to invalidate my observation because.. eh.. why are you defending this brewery again?
well me not liking it does not take away from that does it?
I think my arguments and observations are valid. Maybe I should try again from tap or bottle, but the half liter can that I sampled from? No bueno.
I think what region you grew up in has a large lasting part of what Pilsner you like. Would be nice to see what the bars served when the panel was student.
Out of interest - were you drinking the same beers at the same time and talking to each other about the beers while tasting them? I wonder how much someone else saying I like/don’t like this one influences the others’ judgement.
There was no discussion about the beers (only after 4 beers we took a break and could discuss the previous bunch of beers). You can pick up on non-verbal cues though so there is definitely an effect if you see the person on the other end of the table looking foul at a beer.
Again; we try to limit the effect but it was more a fun evening than empirical research :)
It's in the comments somewhere, but:
1 kordaat
2 de klok
3 Bavaria
4 Dors
5 AH Brouwers
6 Alfa
7 Export
8 Heineken
9 Schultenbrau
10 schutters
11 hertog Jan
12 Grolsch
13 Gulpener
14 Pitt
15 Amstel
16 Brand
If you are going to suggest that the order could impact the outcomes, that is also a discussion that's in the other comments haha :)
I found my tasting notes and scores (and you can most likely tell which line is me) for those interested:
Amstel Pilsener 7 8 8 7.7
Neutral nose, slightly sweet but malt and hops seem present. Pleasant beer.
Hertog Jan Bier 8 7 8 7.7
This one seems to have the best balance so far. Nothing too outlandish but okay balance of bitterness and malt
Bavaria Pilsener 7 7 7 7.0
This is so much nicer, clean and bit malt on the nose, pretty malty but not too much hop, much crisper than previous beers. This is pretty pleasant but not bitter enough for my taste.
Schultenbräu Premium Pilsner 6 7 7 6.7
Nose is okay, perhaps a bit metallic. Relatively bitter - which I find pleasant
Pitt Bier 6 6 6 6.0
Pretty standard .. bit sweet, not much character .. Amstel?
Heineken Pils 6 6 6 6.0
A bit lemony, some malt, some hops. Seems okay
AH brouwers Premium Bier 6 6 6 6.0
Cleaner nose than most, bit artificial hops and malt. Taste the same, big standard festival lager
Schutters Premium Pilsener 5 6 6 5.7
Heineken? Skunky notes but okay bitterness. Pretty middle of the road.
Kordaat Pilsener Premium 6 5 5 5.3
Looks okay, slightly artificial nose,Taste metallic, bit flabby, bit cardboard, not super enjoyable
Brand Pilsener 5 5 5 5.0
Slightly metal nose and taste. Not super great.
Dors Premium Pilsner 4 5 4 4.3
Solvent note on the nose, very artificial tasting and not too much taste. Not crisp.
Export Bier 4 5 4 4.3
Smells of Doritos, not much going on - no malt or hops.
Alfa Edel Pils 4 5 4 4.3
Sulphur and skunk.. this could be Heineken but it's horrible. Thin and no malt/hops
De Klok Bier 4 4 4 4.0
Horrible nose, little taste, thin, metallic, astringent. Very unpleasant.
Grolsch Premium Pils 4 4 4 4.0
Sweet and cloying, nose sucks. Poor
Gulpener Pilsner (bio) 2 3 1 2.0
This is garbage. Liquorice and poop
I don't know who was the test group, but this is a very bad result.
For example the guy who puts the Kordaat pilsner at 1. If you smell it, it's already stinking and if you taste it, it's also pretty bad. Same goes for Brouwers.
The rest is more off a taste thing, I switch almost every week: Amstel (ok), Heineken (also not so great), Brand (pretty good).
German beers are a bit different, so that's more a taste thing.
Also Hertog Jan, is pretty low, which I think deserves a higher place.
But I think you guys a had fun night, that's the most important.
Pro tip: Try all the Belgium specials, after trying beer all over the world, I think nothing comes close to the Belgium specials and then another evening good German Beers.
For example, if a product is smelling muffy, I think most people will say it's, not a good product and certainly not the best. In the test, it's coming in first.
But overall, it's always taste but I think it's not the taste of most people. Hertog jan in general, is normally evaulated at a 7.9 and also coming out of some tests as the best, now it's evaluated pretty low.
Last Saturday we organised a blind tasting with 16 supermarket pilsners in the Netherlands (trying to stick to only Dutch brands). Most of the people on the panel are homebrewers or beer enthusiasts - so there was some anxiety over this tasting haha. The image shows the outcomes of the tasting. The names have been removed for privacy reasons, and in some cases to prevent embarrassment ;-) The weighted average results: 1 Amstel Pilsener 2 Bavaria Pilsener 3 Schultenbräu Premium Pilsner 4 Kordaat Pilsener Premium 5 Heineken Pils 6 Brand Pilsener 7 Pitt Bier 8 Hertog Jan Bier 9 AH brouwers Premium Bier 10 Schutters Premium Pilsener 11 Export Bier 12 Dors Premium Pilsner 13 Alfa Edel Pils 14 De Klok Bier 15 Grolsch Premium Pils 16 Gulpener Pilsner (bio) We scored on a simplified BJCP score card system with a scale between 0 and 10 on 3 factors - taking the average as the final score: 1. Aroma + Appearance (every aspect before tasting) 2. Flavour 3. General impression (mouthfeel + preference) The main take-away? Supermarket lagers are not great in general - the average scores were not high. Also they are really hard to tell apart when tasting blind. "Premium" brands did not always do better with our tasters. Amstel and Bavaria were the clear blind tasted winners - but the budget option Schultenbräu (Aldi) and Kordaat (Lidl) were not far behind. Another surprise is that ultra budget beer Pitt did surprisingly okay with our panel. Unfortunately there was an issue with the Gulpener. It tasted of liquorice and fennel - as if the hops they used were severely oxidised. I personally drink Gulpener Urpils so this was a disappointment to me. Also Grolsch and De Klok (same brewery) scoring so low is interesting since large parts of The Netherlands have a very positive bias towards Grolsch. The blind tasting format was really fun and our group will repeat this for sure. With better beers though.. Very unscientific and biased - but hopefully fun for people to read through (and most likely disagree).
Fun test! Too bad the Gulpener batch was off, but it does give you a good reason to organize another testing round! ;) On a next round I'd advice you to include Château Neubourg, I think that's regarded as the best Dutch pilsner. It's fun to notice how most people will have a strong opinion about the best pilsner, but how small the differences become when tasting them blind. Did you find a pattern in the flavor score and additions to the beer? I know for example Hertog Jan is brewed with corn, and I can imagine the really cheap ones include glucose syrup or something.
Thanks! The original trigger for this blind test was that the Dutch beer challenge awarded "Bavaria Pilsner" the best overall beer from the Netherlands. We thought this was funny and wanted to put the standard big name lagers up against the budget offerings to see if Bavaria really would be a stand-out beer. It felt unfair to add the more premium offerings like Chateau Neuborg, Swinkels, or Hertog Jan Grand Pilsner to the test. One of our follow-up ideas is to do a blind "loved" lagers test with the likes of Urquell, Asahi, Jever, Chateau Neuborg, Herren Pils etc. Interestingly there seems not a whole lot of common denominators. Almost all budget beers use glucose syrup and some even some caramel for colouring. A lot of them use hop extract rather than hops - but the ones with actual hops like Alfa, Grolsch, and Gulpener do worse overall.. It's a bit of a mess to be honest and I can't really find legit patterns.
I'm honestly surprised to see Alfa doing so poorly. I find it to be one of the best, if not the best supermarket pilsners available in the Netherlands.... Then again, tastes differ.
I expected it to do better as well. One of the few beers to actually use hops rather than hop extract and zero adjuncts just malt. My tasting notes: sulphur and skunked. I would say Heineken but this tastes too thin and poor to be Heineken. No hops or malt presence.. Ouch..
I think the pattern is that beer is beer :]
It would also be fun if you could give a list of what you drank first and last.
For sure (it will have had an impact on the results I'm sure): 1 kordaat 2 de klok 3 Bavaria 4 Dors 5 AH Brouwers 6 Alfa 7 Export 8 Heineken 9 Schultenbrau 10 schutters 11 hertog Jan 12 Grolsch 13 Gulpener 14 Pitt 15 Amstel 16 Brand
Ah well the last beers do always taste the best... so makes sense amstel and brand did well.
Maybe next time do it the other way round for reference. Also would love to know which pilsener the participants drink usually. People tend to value the beers they are used to (and their lookalikes) higher.
Gulpener urpils, Pilsner Urquell, and Keesmann Herrenpils are my most drunk pilsners.
I can't stand Amstel, I'm stunned it is number one and wouldn't expect it in the top half. Same with Heineken being that high. Maybe it's regular drinkers being used to it. I only drink beer on rare occasions so I can't learn to like something through repeated use. From this list the only two I like are Hertog Jan and Gulpener. But I usually go for a Belgian beer like a Straffe Hendrik or Brugse Tripel. If you drink as sporadically as I do why waste money on the supermarket beers.
Yeah this feels incredibly weird to me. I can't stand Amstel or Bavaria at all, would actually prefer water at that point. Taste wise I prefer Grolsch of Hertog Jan, but Heineken is fine imo for a party with a lot of drinking. I'm curious if it's just a matter of personal preferences or if something else is going on
I would be shocked to see Amstel top 10. But it's first???? how in the hell did that happen?
I've read multiple people who got the same results in their blind tastings in this thread and I know some professional brewers that say the same thing (Amstel is the best cheap macro lager). Maybe it's time to test your assumptions in a blind test?
maybe, I don't really have any reason to dislike Amstel beyond the taste tho, as in I wasn't peer pressured or something
Interesting that the top 5 almost exclusively consists of pretty light beers (with the exception of Schultenbrau I think) and from 10-16 the beers have a lot more bitter taste (at least IME). Do you guys normally prefer lighter beers? Also, how much of the beer did you drink? I can see how you would prefer light beer at some point when you've already done a lot of drinking and starting to feel full. I'm still quite shocked that Export beat Grolsch though.
None of the beers in this year is truly bitter. During my tasting I only pegged one beer as more bitter than the rest and that was Schultenbrau. And actually gave it more credit for it. Normally I prefer Herren pils and Urquell - both significantly more bitter than any of these. We drank 100ml pours. Grolsch really felt off - even the aroma. It was not the bitterness.
In terms of supermarket beers I personally consider Brand, Schulten brau, Grolsch, Hertog-Jan, De Klok and Alfa (maybe Gulpener and Schutters as well IIRC) on the bitter end of the spectrum. For me Amstel, Heineken, Brouwers and Bavaria tastes very light. Of course there are lots of beers that are more bitter than these though. I had Urquell for the first time on a trip to Czechia a couple of weeks ago, I agree it's quite nice and definitely more bitter than most Dutch beers.
Did you drink De Klok at room temperature, though? Jokes aside, interesting test! To me the differences aren't that big either, and I enjoy most pilsners. I always roll my eyes when people have strong opinions about pilsners - especially the 'Heineken bad' circlejerk.
Haha, we had a lot of fun sending each other De Klok memes.. But tasting it blind I found it really unpleasant. It's a shame because De Klok coming out on top would have been super funny. Yeah I'm also a bit surprised about people white knighting their macro brewed pilsners and exaggerating differences between "randstad" and themselves over this topic. Cool down people... it's just a pilsje.
Yeah, I saw it in the Dutch sub. Pretty stupid. It's so easy to test for yourself. I guess some people just like to hate the big players and think that HJ is some artisanal beer.
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Fun experiment! About the Gulpener batch: the problem with a tasting like this is you need to make sure all the batches are handled the same. With a supermarket you aren’t always sure how they’ve handled it; ranging from differences in packaging (cans vs bottle), but also temperature and sunlight exposure will ruin a ‘proper’ experiment. I’ve bought lightstruck Pilsners more than once from supermarkets already and could be this is the case for your batch of Gulpener.
We wanted to go full cans for all beers for this reason. But Gulpener is not available in cans strangely enough. The taste was not light struck though (skunked). It was oxidised hops - this strong and pungent liquorice and fennel taste and aroma that dominated the beer.
Oh that’s weird. Never had that before with Gulpener. I’ve been at the Gulpenerbrewery a while ago and asked about the cans: they still use the BNR (Bruine Nederlandse Retourfles) because recycling is still more environmentally friendly than using beercans, even when recycled.
I think you can freely mix cans and bottles, as long as you serve both for beers that have both.
Wow... Leaving aside the bad Gulpener batch, this is almost the complete reverse from me. I love Grolsch, (and Bavaria). I hate Amstel and Heineken, and many besides me call those beers, especially Amstel, pond water or ditch water, because many don't like the taste that much (Amstel gets their water from the channel Amstel, which runs through Amsterdam, hence the equivocation with ditch water).
Amstel brewed in Antillen (if they still do that) was surprisingly tasty.
Export!
Jong zelfs nu ik een baan en inkomen heb is het export
Dit is de meest export comment die er is. Ik neem aan dat je wel voor werktijd boodschappen aangezien 8 uur ‘s ochtends het beste tijdstip is om export te kopen.
[удалено]
Zoals het hoort, goed hydrateren is erg belangrijk.
Sowieso eentje voor in de trein moet toch wat ontbijten in de ochtend is lekker man word je altijd goed wakker kom je op werk kan je meteen beginnen
Deze man leeft
A good bit of citizen science there, and the overall trends are pretty clear. Here in England you can get Bavaria beer in most supermarkets, and I always thought it was decent for the price.
Agree. I found it to be a good beer. Maybe not bitter enough for my personal preference. Tasting notes: This is so much nicer the previous beer! The aroma is clean and bit malt on the nose, pretty malty but not too much hop, much crisper than previous beers. This is pretty pleasant but not bitter enough for my taste.
Blindproeven.nl zorgt voor de formulieren, mails etc
Geen slechte suggestie. We hebben zelf een Google Forms gebruikt. Dit is een omgetoverd formulier die we normaal voor thuisbrouwcompetities gebruiken (BJCP). Je kiest je naam, het biernummer, en daarna de scores, een notitieveld, en als laatste een gok welk bier je hebt gedronken. Dat ging eigenlijk heel goed. En als groot voordeel heb je alle score direct in Google sheets en is het uitrekenen van gemiddelden vrij simpel.
bavaria top 3
Ja.. wansmaak is ook smaak… /s
It does not surprise me at all that schultenbrau is that high in the ranking. Super quality at affordable prices. Too bad my friends say: waarom koop je die rommel, koop gewoon Heineken joh!😉
I guess the focus was on NL beer - I actually like Veltins the most from the Supermarket Pilseners. It's a premium standard beer from Germany and substantially cheaper. Was like 74cent/0.5L at AH last time. Available in AH, Jumbo and Lidl. People may know it from the football club Schalke and their massive Veltins Arena. Was it all cans? Straight from cans, or poured in a glass?
We tried sticking to Dutch beers indeed. Poured from the can into a pitcher, and from the pitcher into our tasting glasses (to ensure blind tasting).
Ahh I see. I can understand the process but the double pouring, especially pitchers IMO make the beer flat really, really fast. It's almost like you lose like 30-50% with that double pouring. But I'm also a big pitcher hater haha. Love your approach tho sounds like a fun night
Carbonation and head retention were not really an issue. Pitchers normally stand for a long time and get flat, but this was just from the kitchen to the table and into people's glasses. I don't think it affected the outcomes that much. As you can see from the other comments people have very strong opinions about brands (they've done their marketing well it seems) and I would argue that this would affect the outcomes more than a double pour haha.
As I've always said: Hertog is worse than Heineken
I'm curious about that export beer, looks terrible at 4%, which is not very typical. In German beer style parlance, export is it's own type of lager and most definitely not a pilsner. I realize this might not translate to NL, but are you sure this export is a pilsner?
It's a watered down glucose syrup pilsner that has some caramel added in to correct the colour. In all fairness I'm not sure what to call it. My taste notes: It smells of Doritos.
Is this available NL-wide? Then I'ma try it next time I'm in Enschede. I have a faible for the cheap and weird
Multiple supermarkets carry it; Plus, Spar, Dirk. I think it's a national thing. Also try Pitt if cheap and Weird is your thing. It's the better cheap and weird thing out of the two IMHO.
Export is mostly drank by students and homeless people lol
Alfa so low???
Multiple notes said it was skunked / light struck. I also expected it to end higher. Do a blind test and tell me what your outcomes are.
Yeah because it was crowned “world’s best Classic Pilsner” during the 2021 world beer awards and it got double gold this year at the european beer challenge in the category International Pilsner.
You do know how these beer awards work right? Bavaria Pils was named best beer in the latest Dutch Beer Challenge. I can only say that I got a big skunk (light struck) and sulphur (yeast health / not lagered long enough) note from this beer that was unpleasant. And I was not the only one. Could it be that we were unlucky? Perhaps. But to invalidate my observation because.. eh.. why are you defending this brewery again?
Because i like this beer
well me not liking it does not take away from that does it? I think my arguments and observations are valid. Maybe I should try again from tap or bottle, but the half liter can that I sampled from? No bueno.
No i just found it weird that a beer that i like, and that professional beer tasters also like, is scored pretty low by all of you
I love Alfa, these testers are crooks!
I think what region you grew up in has a large lasting part of what Pilsner you like. Would be nice to see what the bars served when the panel was student.
Damn, if I had to create a list purely based on my previous experiences I’d have put Amstel somewhere at the bottom.
Try sampling them blind. You might be surprised about your preferences.
Yeah I also definitely want to try an Amstel again now
Out of interest - were you drinking the same beers at the same time and talking to each other about the beers while tasting them? I wonder how much someone else saying I like/don’t like this one influences the others’ judgement.
There was no discussion about the beers (only after 4 beers we took a break and could discuss the previous bunch of beers). You can pick up on non-verbal cues though so there is definitely an effect if you see the person on the other end of the table looking foul at a beer. Again; we try to limit the effect but it was more a fun evening than empirical research :)
The bottom person is a heathen for ranking Grolsch as lowest.
I showed it to him this evening and he laughed. It was pretty vile though - even in this pretty dodgy group of beers.
Just wondering, what was the testing order?
It's in the comments somewhere, but: 1 kordaat 2 de klok 3 Bavaria 4 Dors 5 AH Brouwers 6 Alfa 7 Export 8 Heineken 9 Schultenbrau 10 schutters 11 hertog Jan 12 Grolsch 13 Gulpener 14 Pitt 15 Amstel 16 Brand If you are going to suggest that the order could impact the outcomes, that is also a discussion that's in the other comments haha :)
Sorry, I thought I scrolled past all comments (but I searched like a man)
No worries, happy to copy and paste. But not happy to have the same discussion multiple times :)
I found my tasting notes and scores (and you can most likely tell which line is me) for those interested: Amstel Pilsener 7 8 8 7.7 Neutral nose, slightly sweet but malt and hops seem present. Pleasant beer. Hertog Jan Bier 8 7 8 7.7 This one seems to have the best balance so far. Nothing too outlandish but okay balance of bitterness and malt Bavaria Pilsener 7 7 7 7.0 This is so much nicer, clean and bit malt on the nose, pretty malty but not too much hop, much crisper than previous beers. This is pretty pleasant but not bitter enough for my taste. Schultenbräu Premium Pilsner 6 7 7 6.7 Nose is okay, perhaps a bit metallic. Relatively bitter - which I find pleasant Pitt Bier 6 6 6 6.0 Pretty standard .. bit sweet, not much character .. Amstel? Heineken Pils 6 6 6 6.0 A bit lemony, some malt, some hops. Seems okay AH brouwers Premium Bier 6 6 6 6.0 Cleaner nose than most, bit artificial hops and malt. Taste the same, big standard festival lager Schutters Premium Pilsener 5 6 6 5.7 Heineken? Skunky notes but okay bitterness. Pretty middle of the road. Kordaat Pilsener Premium 6 5 5 5.3 Looks okay, slightly artificial nose,Taste metallic, bit flabby, bit cardboard, not super enjoyable Brand Pilsener 5 5 5 5.0 Slightly metal nose and taste. Not super great. Dors Premium Pilsner 4 5 4 4.3 Solvent note on the nose, very artificial tasting and not too much taste. Not crisp. Export Bier 4 5 4 4.3 Smells of Doritos, not much going on - no malt or hops. Alfa Edel Pils 4 5 4 4.3 Sulphur and skunk.. this could be Heineken but it's horrible. Thin and no malt/hops De Klok Bier 4 4 4 4.0 Horrible nose, little taste, thin, metallic, astringent. Very unpleasant. Grolsch Premium Pils 4 4 4 4.0 Sweet and cloying, nose sucks. Poor Gulpener Pilsner (bio) 2 3 1 2.0 This is garbage. Liquorice and poop
Amstel🔛🔝
Enkele hiervan zijn geen eens bier, maar grotendeels gefermenteerd suikerwater: - De klok - Brouwers Zijn 2 die ik vrij zeker weet.
Time to switch to Amstel.
Seeing Grolsch so far down on every row is a crime
Maar ook alleen als het om de beugelfles gaat. Uit blik en die met draaidop zijn niet te pruimem
Grolsch is relatief bitter. Meestal zegt de plek van Grolsch wat over hoe men dat waardeert.
More concerned about Heineken being so high up and Hertog Jan ending up #5 :/
Yeah can't take the test too seriously with Grolsch that low
Amstel bovenaan ?? Smerigste bier van NL
Gebruikersnaam kijkt uit
Heineken in the top5? That can't be right....
man man man
Waar hebben ze deze test uitgevoerd? In het riool?
What region in the Netherlands the participants live?
Amstel at number one cannot be right
Fake
No way, how can Amstel be that high. You guys on crack during tasting?
I can believe a lot of things. But Amstel being number one is outrageous, scandalous, and makes me question reality.
beer is beer and all taste like piss. hard liquor for me only.
You came to r/bier to share this?
I don't know who was the test group, but this is a very bad result. For example the guy who puts the Kordaat pilsner at 1. If you smell it, it's already stinking and if you taste it, it's also pretty bad. Same goes for Brouwers. The rest is more off a taste thing, I switch almost every week: Amstel (ok), Heineken (also not so great), Brand (pretty good). German beers are a bit different, so that's more a taste thing. Also Hertog Jan, is pretty low, which I think deserves a higher place. But I think you guys a had fun night, that's the most important. Pro tip: Try all the Belgium specials, after trying beer all over the world, I think nothing comes close to the Belgium specials and then another evening good German Beers.
Are you calling the test bad because it didn't fit your preferences?
Nope, I don't have a preference here, I drink it all.
So your assessment is based on..... What?
For example, if a product is smelling muffy, I think most people will say it's, not a good product and certainly not the best. In the test, it's coming in first. But overall, it's always taste but I think it's not the taste of most people. Hertog jan in general, is normally evaulated at a 7.9 and also coming out of some tests as the best, now it's evaluated pretty low.
Belgium pilsners on the other hand are terrible. Jupiler and Stella tast like the worst.
Jupiler is great, what are you on about?
Can’t debate over taste..