New Sapporo

I had given up on new Japanese beers recently.  There are such a never ending stream of new models that mostly look OK, smell OK, but taste like something very unnatural.  Most of them are second grade (in a legal sense) beers and the terrible taste is all to do with the factories cunningly trying to make beer without the legit ingredients to save on tax.

The New Sapporo is all together different.  It is still low grade (and so cheap to buy) but at least it tastes tolerably like a sensible beer.  It is creatively called “Barley and Hops” which I guess is supposed to reinforce the idea that it is actually somewhat beer like rather than “Style free”, “Zero”, “Magnum” or any of the other ridiculous recent beer names.

Any way, if you like beer and are tight fisted you could do much worse than Sapporo Barley and Hops.  At close to half the shelf price of Kirin Ichiban or Asahi Super Dry it makes economical sense if there is ever such a consideration with beer.