Authors Note: So I have modified this post because I’ve come to realize that part of what I said was stupid, even though the original attempt was to be funny. Obviously it didn’t work. I’ll attempt to be smarter in the future when making comments. That being said, anyone who hints at me being a racist based on the original post needs to have their head examined or actually come and meet me so they can see how wrong they are. Don’t accuse or hint at me of being something as ugly as that without some proof, because that just makes you look like an a**hole. EDIT: Its back in it original glory, or close to it.
Brewery: Beijing Yanjing Brewery Co., Beijing, China
Brewery Description: “The crystallization of modern brewing technology and Yanjing’s advanced experience, 11º Premium Yanjing Beer is brewed with excellent yeast, top grade malt, top class Chinese rice, the best hop and pure natural fountain.” NOTE: This stuff is billed as the Official State Beer of China
Brew Style: Pale Lager, 5.5% ABV
Recommended Glassware: Dimpled mug, English pint, Shaker, Stein, Lager
The Ugly Truth: When I have money I’m going to hire someone, someone who can sound nasty on the phone like Charlton Heston and have them call all these countries and tell them if they don’t stop, we will bomb the f*ck out of them until their mothers weep. China is now at the top of this new list.”First, I want everyone to read that brewery description and tell me what might be wrong, I’ll wait.
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Did you see it? “top class Chinese rice”. You do not brew beer with rice. (Okay, I realize you can and a number of breweries do, I just really don’t like beers that have a lot of rice in them since I feel it adds flavors that I don’t like and diminishes the overall experience). Breweries that use a large amount of rice in their process should have their breweries stormed by some form of special forces and have their vats destroyed with C4. And “advanced experience”? You’ve got to be kidding me. You were established in 1980, and unless you kidnapped some Germans or Belgians you don’t have advanced experience. So this “beer” poured with a huge white head and a straw yellow gold. I’ve had a little bit of a cold, so I couldn’t really find an aroma to speak of. The taste was enough to make you shudder. I swear to you, it tasted like Bud Light mixed with White Zinfidel wine. In a word, unspeakable. The taste was incredibly sweet, and the aftertaste was drier than the Sahara. It just sucked. I’ll give them an extra point for effort, but no one should try this beer out unless you are looking for something between a beer and wine.
Verdict: You gotta fight the Commies where you can, and I’m doing it here. This “beer” gets 2 out 10 bottlecaps.
Breaking News: Big Remy is potentially being recruited to write for the free newspaper juggernaut, Barstool Sports as a beer reviewer and resident beer man. This however will not effect my loyalty to Boston Geek.
Dude you didn’t even need the spoiler space, any beer drinker worth their salt knows that rice automatically pussifies beer. Did you read that description AFTER buying the six pack? Can you piss in the empty bottle (not like anyone would know the difference) and try and return the pack for a full refund?
Fortunately, a lot of the beers I do now only come in 500mL bottles so I didn’t have to buy a whole six pack. The spoiler space was for dramatic effect.
Prejudice is so useless.
When you guys think of rice in brewing, you are thinking of Budweiser, Coors… shitty American beers that probably use inferior rice.
Bear in mind that sake is made with rice, and its flavor can (and does) range from monstrously hideous to sublime. I could see where a starchy short-grain could make for an excellent beer, if done right. I mean, rice and wheat are similar enough that with the right malts, yeasts, and hops… you’d probably enjoy it.
Also bear in mind that it is, at its heart, a cultural thing. Rice is more of a staple in China than wheat. They might think wheat beers to be nasty.
Oh yeah, and mead, good mead, is very sweet.
nothing wrong with a little sweetness.
So you like beers brewed with rice then? Remind me never to drink with you again.
I didn’t say there was anything wrong with sweetness, I don’t want it in my damn beer. And this was beyond sweet, into the sickly sweet category. It didn’t even taste like beer anymore.
Yes, sake is made with rice, cause its freakin’ rice wine. Its not beer. Beer goes beyond a cultural thing, beer is a state of being that shouldn’t be fucked with by throwing handfuls of rice into the vats of my soul.
Reinheitsgebot, you commie bitches.
That is all.
Didn’t say I liked beers brewed with rice. I just don’t hold wheat beers to be the ‘beer standard’. I like good beer. Beer I can taste without having a metallic odor or aftertaste, beer I can drink without feeling like my time would have been better spent drinking seltzer water.
It’s a little elitist to say that the entirety of fermented wheat/hops/barley drinks are only good or valid if they come from Western Europe or are made to exacting European specifications. In my mind, it boils down to personal preference. Russian beers are made with kvass (a type of rye) and african beers are made with millet or other grasses.
If I were to find a beer brewed with rice where the rice was used as more than just a filler, I might like it. Who knows. Haven’t really tasted one yet that could be called anything more than passable, though. Sapporo isn’t horrible, tastes better than most of the domestic mass-produced lines. It has rice AND corn. I wouldn’t call it great or anything, maybe 5 bottlecaps, but at least I wouldn’t immediately eject from my house anyone who brought it over.
Also, according to the San Francisco Brewer’s Guild, Sake is beer, not wine.
http://www.sfbrewersguild.org/beer.html
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EDIT: Also see:
http://www.sake-world.com/html/types-of-sake.html
http://www.riceandzen.com/enlightenment.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake
So, sake is beer. And damn good, too.
Trust me, I love Russian beers. All I’m saying is that in my experience, it has been almost universal that any beer I’ve had where rice was a major component has tasted like ass. And for about 80% of those beers, I didn’t know there was rice in it until after I had already tried it and then went and looked it up. I never look up a beer before I review it for the blog.
I’m not being elitist and never have been. I’d had some beers with some very unconventional things in them before that have tasted great that come from some strange places. I just can’t abide a large amount of rice in my beer.
As for sake being beer, I can find an equal number of sites claiming that its wine or that is something else entirely and not beer. It is technically classified as beer, solely because rice is grain. However it shares none of the other defining characteristics of beer, so as far as I’m concerned its not beer. Vast majority of the time, it is referred to as rice wine, not rice beer.
I looked at those, I’m not convinced and you should know better than to throw a Wiki entry at me. That gets dismissed out of hand.
Here are some that claim it is wine, and not beer or at minimum that while it may be brewed as beer to call it so is completely inaccurate.
http://www.asianartmall.com/moresake.htm
http://www.esake.com/Workshop/WS1/ws1.html Important part here: “Grain-brew though it may be, sake should be approached and assessed as a wine.”
Saying sake is beer simply because its brewed from a grain is a massive injustice to both and I’m sure the Japanese would agree with me.
Hai, Remy-san. Arigato.
Dammit, that was supposed to be posted from “Nip Bastard”…ruined the whole effect it being posted by me…
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So you admit Sake is ‘technically’ a beer, but then say it isn’t a beer because it isn’t like Western beers?
I understand that you love your beer, Rem, but mine wasn’t a philosophical argument. It’s a beer because of the way it is made and the ingredients in it. Budweiser, Sake, and Guinness are all ‘technically’ beer. Once we establish that, we can discuss the personal preferences and merits if what each culture has done with this type of drink.
The difference being, that Budweiser SUCKS. There’s plenty of good beer with weird adjuncts in it (including an interesting firecracker beer that uses Red Hots) but whenever rice is used, it’s used to soften the taste and mouth feel of the beer. If you like beers that have good amounts of flavor to them, then almost anything with rice in it isn’t going to appeal to you. Like Budweiser. Which sucks. And it has rice in it’s brewing process.
Bud sucks. In case I hadn’t mentioned that.
Shows me my words that I said sake was beer. I don’t see them. The closest I come is when I said “It is technically classified as beer, solely because rice is grain.”. I then immediately followed that with: “However it shares none of the other defining characteristics of beer, so as far as I’m concerned its not beer.”. So I’m not sure where you are getting where I admit that it is technically beer. I don’t agree with that statement and I think anyone who makes the claim is sake is beer is wrong. It is brewed with rice, and only rice, and therefore should not be classified as a beer. You can make vodka from rye or wheat and those are grains but I don’t think anyone would call them beer. If it is called beer because of the way it is made, then half of the hard alcohol in the world is misclassified. It has nothing to do with philosophy, it has to do with the fact that the classification system that is being used is grossly inaccurate and should be changed to properly describe what sake actually is, not beer.
Send letters and threaten to storm certain countries that should brew beer?
Sounds like threaten and storm countries that try to develop missle technology and develop domestic defense capabilities….ummm…sounds familar.
Anyhow,let be be pragmatic about beer and beer purity.Rice is used as an adjunct across the world for various reasons (reduce costs of beer/scale of production,leaves a clean light finish for example) and US brewers use a hell of lot of it.
Also,many European brewers use rice or maize as well for the same reasons.
As far the Chinese brewing industry…don’t expose yourself as an uneducated pundit…Chinese breweries more often than not cooperate with US brewers and European brewers,man,I say many,Chinese breweries are owned outright by American firms. Anh.-Busch owns Tsingtao for example…research who owns what and you may be very surprised.
Now given that the majority of Chinese breweries are US owned or European owned where does that leave your “Shock and Awe” campaign? Look out cause troops,your own troops are heading YOUR way.
Please don’t use Chinese breweries as a thin veil for your obvious prejudice and possible racsism.
Exercise due diligence in your research of who owns what in China,and of the remarkable brewing achievments made there. (All of China’s top brewers are ISO 9000 certified,an international standard developed by Americans,there are ales,and wheat beers,stouts and pilsners all developed by Chinese companies as well)
Good Day Sir.
Man, I am just getting slammed lately. I swear I’m going to have to start putting a “for entertainment purposes only, comments made do not reflect the real views of the author” disclaimer on all my posts.
Just because I slam a Chinese beer doesn’t make me a racist. I’ve had a number of other Chinese beers that I have loved and frankly I find it ignorant of you to think that based on one review I have “obvious prejudice and possible racism”. That’s just pathetic on your part and you need to grow up. I don’t mind being called to task for my admittedly outlandish comments at time, but you start accusing me of things like that and you had best be able to provide some solid arguments to back it up. So unless you can, I suggest you refrain from making such accusations against me.
Also, if you can’t read between the lines and see that the vast majority of these reviews are done in a tongue and cheek style, where I don’t take myself very seriously since I KNOW that I don’t know everything about beer and do this for kicks because a friend asked me, then you have a comprehension problem that you need to go take care of. I’ve never claimed to be a beer expert. I am an ordinary man who enjoys beer and was asked to do reviews for a friend’s website. You don’t like my reviews? Go check other websites, leave comments correcting me but to call me a possible racist? Shock and awe indeed. Shock at the incredible level of incorrectness in that statement and Awe that someone could even take that impression away from that post.
As for the thinly veiled comparison of me to George W. Bush, I won’t even address that because it is so laughable as already lower your credibility. I’m all for invading our own country and destroying all the Budweiser breweries. Apart from my young and stupid college years, I wouldn’t touch a Bud with a 10ft pole.
While rice may help as an adjunct and help leave a clean finish, too much rice also leaves what I think is a horrible sweet taste. I’ve had beers brewed with rice that have been good, but I greatly prefers beers that have no rice in them.
Just because a Chinese brewery has affiliations or is owned by an American or European brewery, that does not make it above criticism. If you’ve actually read any of my other reviews, I take shots at anyone and everyone, I don’t care who you are. And I am all for having people fire right back at me if they can back up their statements. I have no problem having my mistakes corrected, since in the long run it makes me better at what I do. I am fully behind people disagreeing with me and I enjoy reading comments of people who have tried the beer and feel differently than I, gives me a good perspective on things.
Accusing me of racism for that short post about a beer that I didn’t like? That’s just sad and just displays your ignorance. I’m done with you unless you can come up with something better than what you wrote above and don’t need to resort to taking unfounded cheap shots.
Good day to you Sir, good day to you indeed.
Remy, Remy, Remy…you never feed the trolls. Especially ones employed by China’s Ministry of Truth.
Trolls are one thing, having some idiot call me a racist is another
That just makes him an _effective_ troll.
I have had my differences with Remy. I think he’s temperamental, violent, loud, and occasionally smelly.
I also think he’s biased in his beer selections to a degree I find irritating sometimes.
However, Remy is not a racist, nor did he advocate invasion of countries. He’s just a beer shock-jock.
Now, I know where he’s coming from. In “david’s” post above, he said:
The first part is accurate. But let’s simplify what you actually mean here. IT MAKES BEER CHEAP. Great. Rice is used as a filler.
The second part is, by and large, insanity. It isn’t used for taste, in 99.9% of cases. It’s used to give something approaching a poor facsimile of real beer taste. You want a clean finish, try a nice German lager, or a really good pilsner. Pilsners opened my eyes to how good beer can be.
Rice is used as a filler so beer can be produced cheaply and quickly. It reminds me of the NASA axiom, “Cheap, fast, good. Pick two.”
Using sugar and certain heating/cooling techniques can take any grape and make a close approximation of a table wine, but I wouldn’t call it a decent wine. Good to get wasted on, not good to enjoy. Same thing with beer.
From this standpoint, anyone who makes a cheap product that results in an uneducated public should have their factories dismantled. More people might enjoy beer or wine if more good beers and wines were produced fairly inexpensively. Which might in turn be possible if more people bought the good stuff instead of the toilet water that comes out of most American and Asian breweries. That isn’t racism, that’s fact.
Maybe Remy would have nicer things to say about Chinese beers if the stuff was brewed right to begin with. Gods know, I have advocated (in this thread, no less) that, in theory, rice doesn’t necessarily or automatically make a bad beer. In theory. But in practice, as I have also indicated, it does. Crap, it does. Rice in beer produces a taste not unlike what I imagine a penny fountain’s water would taste like, with all the body and finish of turpentine mixed with dog urine and carbon dioxide added for bubbles.
Nothing against Chinese people or any other people. But if you do something wrong, expect to be called out on it.
Minitruth? Will Miniplenty and Minilove follow?
I think the troll is hungry. Feed him more.
eh. Look, there are trolls who do it just to piss people off, and there are people who honestly hold their opinion and feel a need to share it. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I post one comment.
If the angry rhetoric keeps coming, then we know we have an actual troll.
When the argument is poorly constructed, full of holes, and it is obvious the respondent hasn’t even read the _entire_ post that he is responding to chances are high that he/she is a troll, or just not worth the effort needed for a response.
I wonder, though. I have been accused of trolling… what happens when two trolls with opposing views go at it… does it… does it create a moebius strip, or an infinite causality loop and then… does it cause the universe to collapse into a singularity?
Possibly
It does- I saw it happen last nite, be careful