by Matt Kelly

Created on: July 28, 2010

I remember the first time I ever had a sip of my dads beer at the age of about 12, he gave me a tiny sip of his fosters, my face must have been a real picture, I was far from impressed. As I entered my mid teens I inevitably got into drinking but still hadn't found a taste for beer. I would be drinking bacardi breezers and such for the next two years before finally developing first a taste and then a powerful lust for beer.

At 18 I'm afraid my criteria for a good beer was how drunk it would get you, so stella artois was high on my list, other than it's highish alcohol content I eventually found that stella didn't have much else going for it. It's got a strong but not entirely pleasant taste, it tastes almost chemically, and it leaves you with a shocking hangover (worse than with the same amount of most other lagers.)

Fast forward to today and thankfully I've grown out of choosing beer purely for it's potential drunk making abilities and now seek out beers primarily on the merits of it's flavour.  I've drunk beers all over the world, what follows is a list of my all time favourites with a score rating and a little detail on their flavours...

-Carling-

While I wouldn't class carling as strictly an absolute favourite beer it is the one I buy most regularly, it's the workhorse of the beer world. It's cheap, it's widely available and it's quite pleasant for what it is, a cheap domestic lager. If money wasn't an issue I wouldn't go for it at all, but money is an issue so alas it will have to do.  Nicely carbonated, with no hint of tinniness (a taste I sometimes get with lagers of this sort). It's perfectly drinkable and you can get 8 500ml cans for £7 so perfect if you're on a bit of a budget. Alcohol content is a drinkable 4.1%.

I can't really give it higher than a 5/10 in the wider context of this review.

-Carlsberg Export-

Sold in a silver can this export version of carling is 5% as opposed to the regular 3.8% of the green canned variety. It packs a bigger punch than the Carling and has a slightly drier quality, but again I class it as an everyday lager (figuratively speaking, not literally to be drunk everyday), hard to get wildly excited about but not a bad drop nonetheless. It comes in more expensive than the carling at around £7.50 for 8 440ml cans. The extra money is worth it in my eyes, thankfully the extra alcohol punch is accompanied with an extra jolt of flavour and so justifying the rise in percentage points.

Another good all rounder

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