#23: Croatia

Being pretty close to squat in the middle of Europe, I figure Croatia would produce and consume a fair bit of beer, at least for a country of a bit over 4 million people. I've occassionally been able to stumble across this beer, Karlovacko (which I suspect is pronounced "Karlo-Vachko", though admittedly I'm making that up), and figure my chances of ever finding a Croatian craft beer are slim to none, so I might as well do this.

Not really much to say here; it's a very bog-standard European yellow lager. Decent quality, fairly boring. Tastes kind of like Heineken and 14 million other similar beers. Goes down pretty well on a hot day, inoffensive but not original taste, blah blah. It apparently won some sort of award at some sort of event, but you know, so did Taiwan Beer, so go figure. I look surprisingly excited in that photo, considering how unexciting the beer was; I offer no explanation thereof.


Name: Karlovacko
Country of production: Republic of Croatia
Style: Pale lager
Taste: Like almost every other European pale lager
Cost: around AU$5 per bottle
Availability in AU: Fairly low
Cred: Medium
My score: 6.5 out of 10 frenzied bouts of inexplicable and ruthless warfare

#22: Namibia

Namibia? For real?? Yes I was quite excited to discover a Namibian beer, "Windhoek", on the menu at a South African restaurant in East Sydney. Namibia is a large country in south-eastern Africa, almost as large as South Africa, yet with only two million people. According to my good friend Wikipedia, they fought a protracted war of independence against South Africa from the 1960s to the 1980s, eventually gaining independence, and presumably, some level of happiness. I only really know of it from when they played in the Rugby World Cup when it was in Australia, and to shore up the non-existent level of support for the team here, the organisers encouraged the locals to turn up and "Go Nuts for Namibia!". Which apparently they did, which is cool.

Anyway I wasn't expecting much from this beer (I figured it'd be similar or worse than the South African mainstay beer, Castle Lager), but was very pleasantly surprised! While on paper the beer style is pretty typical European lager, you can straight away taste the quality in this beer. This is up there with the better German mainstream lagers and pilseners. I had a brief look around the label and noticed to my surprise, it said the makers had brewed it, by choice, according to the famous Reinheitsgebot, or German Beer Purity Law! Very cool. There are probably some descendents of German and Dutch settlers in Namibia, and they've decided to stick to the old ways and make proper beer. Impressive! Anyway, while not really "craft" or unusual, Windhoek is a refreshing tasty beer that I can recommend to anyone fortunate enough to stumble upon it.


Name: Windhoek
Country of production: Republic of Namibia
Style: Lager
Taste: Crisp, slightly hopped Central European style lager
Cost: around AU$7 per bottle (it was at a restaurant)
Availability in AU: Extremely low
Cred: Very high (when did you last have a beer from Namibia?)
My score: 7.5 out of 10 protracted struggles for independence

#21: El Salvador

El Salvador is a very small and densely populated country in Central America (or at least that's what Wikipedia tells me). It's between Guatemala and Honduras and is subject to frequent devastating natural disasters, and that's about all I know about it. Strangely enough, this small country produces a beer that keeps popping up all over the damn place, Cabana. Sadly, I have very few good things to say about it. It has the Central American style of pale and mild lagers, but takes it to quite an extreme level. In fact, this is one of the most tasteless beers I've encountered. Apart from having some alcohol content, it's quite similar to mineral water. While it doesn't have any actual unpleasant tastes, like Hite or Taiwan Beer, I can't really recommend it for anyone other than someone who hates the taste of beer, in which case they should probably drink something else. It would go down easily on a hot summer's day, but so would a Corona or Dos Equis, which taste better than this.


Name: Cabana
Country of production: Republic of El Salvador
Style: Lager
Taste: Almost nothing whatsoever
Cost: around AU$4 per bottle
Availability in AU: Surprisingly high
Cred: Low
My score: 3 out of 10 mudslides