Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - The Emperor’s New Beer

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Tsingtao, so Michael Jackson says in his 500 Beers, is “relatively mild but has notably more hop aroma and bitterness than most other golden lagers from China”. Faint praise but, nonetheless, Tsingtao makes the list. His Eyewitness Companion to Beer from a few years later describes it as a “hoppy, light-bodied pilsner”.

The Beer Book says Tsingtao is “crisp, slightly malty… nutty sweet” and it’s “aroma grainy, with a hint of sweetness”.

There’s no doubting that it’s an interesting beer in historical and cultural terms but, on our scale for rating commercial lager which runs from unpleasant, through bland, to very tasty, we’d place Tsingtao somewhere near the bottom.

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