Lighter, simpler and less musky than most similarly styled Czech brews, lean Bulgarian lager relies on gentle barley, maize, and rice backbone to constrain sugary cereal graining contrasting mildly acidic herbal hop bitterness. Diacetyl finish veils gummy malt cloying.

Pungent grain aroma consumes pale-toned pilsner-styled Italian. Sharp hop bittering enhances corn-buttered malts and distant wheat chaff for assertive richness. But metallic shard lowers appeal.

Efficient pale-bodied grassy-hopped lager with light rye-dried wheat-toasted barley-corn entry giving way to zesty lemon prompt stays lightweight but not dull.

In teensy 8.5-ounce bottle, moderate pale yellow ale turns sharp skunked splurge into sugared malt vagary, as meager fruited floral notes and grassy sub-texture retreat by bland metallic finish.

Delicate up-front citric-dried hop fizz fails to embrace murky pale malt skunking, washed-out cereal-grained banality and sour yeast musk of light-bodied Scandinavian less pungent and less efficient than Heineken – not to mention a tad watery and indecisive.

Chameleon-like extra smooth Italian-styled pale lager gives faded chocolate roast mildness and sharp toasted hop chiding an overripe orange-peach tease. Skittish caramelized backdrop, shaky corn-barley base, and butterscotch-toffee sedation need better assertion. Brewery defunct: 2004.

Disguised as a dry lager in America since pilsner designation is deemed light and watery, golden-hued hop-infested medium body is similar to Dutch competitor Heineken with its musty aromatic pungency and prolonged bitter-grained finish. Yet Grolsch has saltier bitterness, sharper Bavarian grain perkiness, and oft-times malt liquor-like strength.

Tinny grain bitterness and intrusive phenolic fizz disrupt slim honeyed lemon sourness, fresh cut maize dryness and husked wheat backbone of bland moderation. But brisk mineral water flow nearly saves it from indistinction.

Matured in open underground vats, unfiltered ‘keller’ beer styling uses only four basic ingredients (water-hops-barley-yeast). But turbid copper German suffers from crumbling spice-hopped butterscotch overlay and musty yeast bed. Clover honeyed caramel malts sour at midst, debunking dried tobacco whim and spiced apple tinge.

Fine smoked beer with perky hop-spiced fizz increasing burnt wood overtones and ashen-grained pale malts. Lighter and less dynamic than the nearly perfect Rogue Smoke Au Rauch, therefore less worthy.

Impossibly transparent paleness, puffy cumulous head, and fey malt pungency further dulled by unripe quince dalliance. Putrid alcohol astringency negatively affects unassuming ethanol aftertaste.

Dry-roasted barleymalts and sour citric nip welcome rising butterscotch proclivity of coppery medium-bodied Vienna-styled lager. But dormant finish undone by lack of hop-grain punctuation.