Mark Cooke’s G-Mixer

Welcome fellow beer fans! In the the north corner, wearing the gold trunks, we have Suntory The Preimium Malts! And in the south corner, wearing the green trunks, we have Yebisu The Hop! It’s a classic battle of Malts vs. Hops! Who will win? Who will take the crown?

Ok. If you have read the last few entries you’d know that I have a certain love for The Malts. I made the mistake of drinking The Malts first. I already know that I like it. I guess I overestimated my tolerance because I was pretty buzzed by the time I finished it. Hehe. These 500 ml cans of beer are about 17 oz in American terms. 17 oz of beer and already buzzed… I suck.

Side note! In Japanese you pronounce “drunk” and “good” the same way, as far as I can tell. How awesome is that? 酔い (drunk) and 良い (good) … both are read as “yoi”. Awesome! Of course being drunk is good. Edit: after the booze wore off I remembered “good” is read as “ii” in the present tense, so they’re not quite the same. In other tenses it might be the same though.

So, The Malts. In marketing speak I would describe it as: smooth, extremely flavorful for a lager, slightly bitter aftertaste that tingles the taste buds (instead of assaulting them). A quality beer if you like a strong taste. 8/10

On to The Hop. Hrm… how to describe it… Honestly, I’m surprised. A lot of Japanese lager sucks big time (hello Kirin!) but this tastes pretty good. There is no aftertaste what so ever. It’s initial flavor comes on strong but then quickly dissipates. Not bad! I’d drink it again. 7/10

I’ll have to give The Hop another try from a completely sober state to review it properly.

Time to go get some food. At this point… probably some junk food near by. Peace!

P.S. – The subtitle on The Hop is awesome. “The exquisitely refined aroma of this beer is from select fine aroma hops AND aroma hops…” Double aroma hops. What more could a man want.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 3:15 am and is filed under food, japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.