Brewery: Baltika Brewery, St. Petersburg, Russia
Brewery Description: A lager beer produced using pale barley malt, rice and exclusive varieties of hops which give this beer variety inimitable aroma, very light and velvety flavor and pleasent bitterness of hops. The addition of rice provides No2 Pale with a surprisingly fresh taste and smoothness, and for these reasons it is easy to drink.
Brew Style: Pale lager, 4.7% ABV
Recommended Glassware: Dimpled mug, Lager, Shaker, Stein, English pint
The Ugly Truth: Just when you think it is over, they drag you back in. So my store got a new Baltika variety, and naturally I had to try it. Oh Lord, how I wish I had not. First off, there is that word again. Inimitable. Stop using it, I do not think it means what you think it means. There is a reason why this beer is matchless. No one else would make something that tastes like this on purpose. Who in the name of God brews beer and puts rice in it? I may be wrong and it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that I’ve had other beers that have done this, but doesn’t that sound like some horrific brewing experiment gone bad? Baltika No2 was just bad. You could smell it from about 2 feet away, and it smelled a bit off. It poured a deep gold color with a substantial off-white head to it. As for the taste… go mix some Bud Light with some Ginger Ale and I think that would be about right. Just horrible. I swear, I deserve a medal some days for the things I do for you people by drinking this stuff. I thought my liver was going to seize. So do yourself a favor, avoid this one.
Verdict: Baltika No2, which receives a 2 out of 10 bottlecaps, is the favorite brew of Koshchei the Deathless, a Russian demigod of death.
IIRC, Budweiser uses rice in their brewing process for their beers. That pretty much says it all, I think. I recently read that the American pee-water brewers account for something like 30% of the entire US rice consumption.
Figures.
Anheuser-Busch has been using rice in the brewing process since the days of Adolphus Busch, under the guise of “making the beer taste smoother” to the American palate (needless to say, I don’t drink Bud. Ever.) A-B today is the nation’s largest single user of rice, consuming 15% of all domestic rice production. All this is sourced from Ken Wells’ fantastic book “Travels with Barley”. Highly recommended.