Brewery: Harbin Beer Company (Anheuser-Busch), Harbin, China

Brewery Description: Yeah, the whole site is in Chinese which I sadly do not understand. This was all I could find: “Inspired by the Tradition and Culture of China’s Most Northern Province of Hellongjiang.”

Brew Style: Pale lager, 5.5% ABV

Recommended Glassware: Dimpled mug, English pint, Lager, Shaker, Stein

The Ugly Truth: Before I even begin this review, you need to go click the link to the brewery. I’m serious, I’ll wait. And make sure you have the volume up.

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Tell me that is not the greatest home page for a brewery ever designed in the history of the world. I had to go watch it over and over again, I couldn’t help myself. I was actually somewhat reluctant to review this beer for 2 reasons: 1) It comes from a brewery owned by Anhauser-Busch so it was already biased and 2) if I did give it a bad review, I didn’t want to have to deal with a repeat of certain pathetically misinformed comments made about me the last time I reviewed a beer from China. But since I’m not one to back down from a challenge, especially one that has it roots in what was quite possibly one of the most personally insulting exchanges with an internet troll of little human value who didn’t have the courage to return and back up his claims, I decided to go ahead and do it.

And thank god I did. After drinking this I was forced to wonder why if this taste as good as it did that Budweiser sucks as much as it does. I mean, this beer was light years ahead of Bud and they are both owned by A-B. A-B needs to abandon their shit recipe they use in the States and start using this for Bud and it would actually be drinkable again. I mean, it wasn’t the best lager I’ve ever had but it was actually pretty darn good. The color was between straw yellow and golden, leaning towards golden. It had a substantial foamy white head on it that went down fairly quick and left some rings on the glass. The aroma was pretty good, had that lager smell but was lacking in any hints of sweetness. The taste was really interesting actually. It didn’t have a strong taste to it, but somehow managed to not taste like water like so many lagers do when they don’t have a strong taste. The flavor was pretty subtle with a light body. It was subtle to the point that it was hard to actually identify the taste, but you definitely knew you were drinking a lager. One other great part about it was that it completely lacked that nasty sweetness that comes with brewing beer with rice in like Bud does. If this has rice in it as an adjunct, you would never know it from the taste. The finish I thought was kind of dry, with this almost light fruity - hint of apple thing going on.

All in all, it wasn’t the greatest lager I’ve ever had, but it was really refreshing and had a solid taste to it. My hat goes off to the People’s Republic of China on this one and to Anhauser-Busch, you have actually produced a drinkable beer for the first time in a number of years.

Verdict: A very respectable 7 out of 10 bottlecaps.