I was pleasantly surprised last Thursday as we went for ‘dinner’ at this Vietnamese place in Sanxia … they had darn good imported beer … BIA, Saigon Special lager beer
33 cl bottle, 4.9 % alcohol, tastes better than all the other bland imported pilses, except from the Belgian ones … 
Oettinger Gold and Oettinger Hefeweizen (from Germany), in RT Mart, Jingping Rd, Zhonghe. NT$37 for a bottle (330ml) or a can (400-odd ml). The Gold is a nice crisp pilsner that was most enjoyable, the hefeweizen (wheat beer) was a little heavy on the sediment for my liking, but still a decent drop.
[quote=“Huang Guang Chen”][quote=“Taffy”][quote=“mr_boogie”]taffy, at least there are 3 people in Taiwan that appreciates Super Bock… (me, wifey and you)…
and, so nice description about me hometown, I was almost cried…[/quote]
I wonder if you can get it in Macau? I can feel a jaunt coming on…[/quote]
They have it at Fernando’s in Coloane (Macau), so it must be available somewhere, and like most beer in Macau, fairly cheap too.
HG[/quote]
Cheers for the tip, HG. I might well wander over there next month.
LABATT BLUE IS AT JASON’S!!!
59ntd a can.
Yeah, I was there today and actually saw 5 different kinds of Oettinger. I grabbed 4 of them.
1.Cloudy wheat beer
2.Pils.
3.Beer/lemonade
4.Gold
5.Something else I don’t remember.
Like you said, all 37nt, stank cheap, barely more than the local swill. 
Yeah, I was there today and actually saw 5 different kinds of Oettinger. I grabbed 4 of them.
1.Cloudy wheat beer
2.Pils.
3.Beer/lemonade
4.Gold
5.Something else I don’t remember.
Like you said, all 37nt, stank cheap, barely more than the local swill. [/quote]
Dammit, they must have been hiding some - I’ll have to have another look. I’ve already got through my little stock of the Gold. 
Anyone who knows me knows that I rarely drink lagers as I much prefer ales.
But, I’ve just learned that one of my favorite breweries is (has been since March 2006) brewing a pilsner. They call it GOLDEN SHOWER.
I might have to give this lager a try, seeing as they are generally quite excellent brewers. And check out that bitterness measurement! 80 IBU! The average big mass produced American beer has a pathetic IBU measurement of less than 10 (although some of the great Stone brews from out near San Diego have IBUs that exceed 100)
Read more here:
[url=http://www.dogfish.com/brewings/Limited_Edition_Beers/Golden_Shower_Imperial_Pilsner/43/index.htm]Golden Shower Imperial Pilsner
Availability: 750 ml and draft - Limited availability - Release Date: March 2006
Golden Shower is brewed with all continental pilsner malt and hopped with the finest noble hops.
This beer is dry-hopped in the conditioning tank for 8 weeks.
Approx 9% ABV - 80 IBU
Dogfish Head Golden Shower
The Imperial Pilsner that stands up against fake-pilsner imperialism!
In the middle of the nineteenth century, in a land that is now the Czech Republic, the Pilsner beer style was born. The soft local water, the bottom-fermenting Bavarian Yeast, the local hops and the lightly toasted barley made it beloved the world over.
Unfortunately, the industrial breweries here in America have spent the better part of a century diluting and bastardizing this beer style to its hardly recognizable current state of existence. Over three quarters of the beer made and consumed in America is sold as Pilsner. But it doesn’t have the alcohol content or the crisp, bracing, hop character of the old world standard. In fact, it doesn"t even have the same ingredients.
The big breweries have done such an amazing job of telling people what they want to drink through billions of dollars in marketing that they’ve convinced the world to drink their beer too cold and too light. They brainwashed most of us into thinking the lighter a beer is the more refreshing and satisfying it will be. The way they make their beer light is by reducing the percentage of the higher-quality, more-expensive base grain - barley, which was the exclusive source of fermentable sugar in the original pilsners. By replacing a large fraction of barley with cheaper sugar sources like rice and corn these brewers could make beer a lot less expensively (which leaves more money left over for advertising). These cheaper ingredients make the beer so light that it couldn’t possibly be offensive to anyone. How can something designed to be completely inoffensive to everyone be worth coveting by anyone? Today the average American is bombarded with over a million advertising appeals every year…
Dogfish Head Golden Shower is the beer itself. A true Pilsner brewed with 100% Pilsner Barley, and impressively hopped using our self-developed continuing-hopping method. At 9% abv it’s also bigger than the American, wanna-be pilsners made by the big boys!
The advertising campaign for Golden Shower…
NO ADVERTISING.
As we launch this beer in April of 2006 we are committed to seeing it succeed. We’ve watched what half-billion dollar marketing campaigns and million-dollar-a-minute ads have done for the Pilsner beer style in this country thus far and we’re not impressed. We might be wrong, but, if spending stupid amounts of advertising dollars has diluted the Pilsner to its current anemic state, then we think our best hope to reconstitute the style is to spend zero dollars advertising our Golden Shower Imperial Pilsner. We won’t buy an ad, make a t-shirt, a neon, a hat, or a key-chain and certainly not a blimp that promotes this beer. We’ve made this press release, and we’ll send out complimentary samples to the press and to beer festivals but that is all we will do to market and promote this beer. We are confident that we have found the magic secret to selling something that you want people to drink…
INSTEAD OF MAKING IT INOFFENSIVE MAKE IT TASTE GOOD!
Nobody should believe that Dogfish Head Golden Shower tastes good… until they try it. Why should they? Not many people are going to try it because, without a traditional marketing campaign, it’s going to be hard to find for a long time. But a small group of people who trust their taste enough to decide what to drink for themselves (instead of listening to the advice of their televisions) are going to find a Golden Shower and try it and we’re pretty sure they are going to like it. And we are hopeful that they will tell other good-beer enthusiasts about it and that they will try it and like it too. And then there will be hundreds (but probably never thousands or millions - because our brewery isn’t that big) of Golden Showers opened and enjoyed every day in defiance of monstrous marketing campaigns and miniature fake pilsners and the world will be a better place for it.
We have every intention of not advertising for and not marketing this beer ON A GLOBAL SCALE!!!
Dogfish Head has shared our recipe for Golden Shower with the 500 year-old Herold Brewery in the Czech Republic - the birthplace of the Pilsner beer style. Using our very aggressive negotiating tactics we’ve worked out a sweet deal. They are not paying us one cent for our recipe, even though it’s a really good recipe (but please don’t take our word for it). The only thing we have asked for from the Herold Brewery is that they too commit to spending no money advertising or promoting their version of Golden Shower.
…We wouldn’t waste our Golden Shower on the kind of beer drinker who decides what to drink based on which brewery spends the most on advertising and the least on ingredients, we brewed it for the rest of us. Cheers![/url]
Anyone try this one yet? flike, have you seen this around?
“Golden shower”. Tee hee. Giggle.
They sell Courage Director’s in Shanghai. It’s £400 a bottle. Magic. Also Hen’s Arse or something. You need to put your first-born son down as a deposit.
[quote=“M0NSTER”]LABATT BLUE IS AT JASON’S!!!
59ntd a can.[/quote]
Awesome news!
My friends back home make fun of me for drinking Blue, but I like it!! 
I believe I may have been one of the first dudes to carry a 24 of Labatt Blue down the street in Taipei.
Whoooo hoooo!!!
Also the most expensive 24 of Canadian beer I’ve ever bought in my entire life!
NT$1176 or CAN$39.86 … Ouch! 
…but :yay:
They currently have it on discount at $49 a can from the regular $59.
They also have Molson Canadian in bottles, but at $89 a bottle, that kind of bites.
Don’t these guys also make car batteries?
Taffy, you can find almost all kinds of Superbock (normal, abadia (abbey type), black (stout, preffer it to guiness, as it doesn’t die so quickly) and non-alcohol). The only ones I didn’t see yet is the Green and the Ice ones. There are 2 supermarkets to watch out, both in Taipa, and both in walkable distance. First, and the most important, is one in the Sun Yat Sen Avenue (the one where Macdonald’s is), a big supermarket there that also carries a lot of inexpensive portuguese stuff (and normally one place I stop every time).
The second one is called Gourmet and is in the new Taipa Gardens (close to where the Grandview is). This one is a favourite for all the non-Chinese people living in Macau, as it features a very select quantity of quality food from Portugal, France and Italy (mostly). Last time I was there I bought there 8 packs of Portuguese coffee at 15 Patacas the 250Gr (and mind you, high quality one), 6 litters of milk (I know it is crazy, but it also sounds crazy to me to pay 100NT for a small bottle of milk that I can call that name), dried codfish, white wine vinegar (I cannot go with the italian or french taste for it), piri-piri (a favourite spicy chili for my wife) and many other things (we flew biz, so we had about 40KGs of food with us…)
[quote=“Mer”]I believe I may have been one of the first dudes to carry a 24 of Labatt Blue down the street in Taipei.
Whoooo hoooo!!!
[/quote]
I should have never posted that pic!
Jason’s is already sold out of Labatt Blue. I went yesterday to get my 2nd 24 and the dude there said it was sold out :grrr: and didn’t know if they were getting more! 
No, I haven’t seen this one but I will definitely keep an eye peeled. Dogfish Head is one of my very favorite brewers, too, especially their IPA’s. I would buy this sight unseen, just based on the brewer’s reputation.
It’s probably similar to another West coast dry-hopped pilsner, (this is fairly a large .pdf file – be warned – but I love the pic) Rogue’s Imperial Pilsner, although the IBU and ABV are slightly lower at 74 and 8.8, resp. The Rogue is one that I can definitely recommend.
Dry-hopping a pilsner is a great idea, profound in fact. Thanks for the heads-up, I can’t wait to try DFH’s version.
No, I haven’t seen this one but I will definitely keep an eye peeled. Dogfish Head is one of my very favorite brewers, too, especially their IPA’s. I would buy this sight unseen, just based on the brewer’s reputation.
It’s probably similar to another West coast dry-hopped pilsner, (this is fairly a large .pdf file – be warned – but I love the pic) Rogue’s Imperial Pilsner, although the IBU and ABV are slightly lower at 74 and 8.8, resp. The Rogue is one that I can definitely recommend.
Dry-hopping a pilsner is a great idea, profound in fact. Thanks for the heads-up, I can’t wait to try DFH’s version. [/quote]
Been meaning to reply to Tigerman’s OP about “Golden Shower.” This is one pilsner that I would definitely want to try. Any chance of it arriving in Taiwan?
Speaking of hops, are there any good IPAs available now in Taipei? Recent visits to the Breeze Center supermarket and Jason’s have been disappointing on this front. There was a time when a bunch of American microbrews were available (one, two years ago), but I haven’t seen too many available recently.
So, any idea of where to find a beer with plenty of hopped-up goodness here in Taipei would be welcome.
A recent trip back to the USA allowed me to enjoy this beer from Three Floyd’s:
Also enjoyed their Alpha King IPA.
I’m looking forward to trying anything from Dogfish Head and from Rogue on my next visit back to the States.
But I"m jonesing for some hops here in Taipei now.
Do you like Bud?
Or should it be butt … Santa’s butt …?
The state of Maine banned it …
I had a surprisingly good beer last night–Köstritzer Schwarzbier, a Schwarzbeir that I had picked up at Breeze.
I hadn’t realized that this was a lager. In fact, it is almost like a porter or a stout, but perhaps just a little less bitter.
It had a nice malty taste (but not overly so), and I kept thinking of coffee and espresso when I was drinking it. Very nice.
I guess I was surprised because I hadn’t thought of a lager being a dark or “black” beer. I am still more partial to ales, but this beer made me open my eyes to lagers. For a contrast and to to experience another kind of lager, I’d like to try the “Golden Showers” lager from Dogfish Head mentioned earlier in this thread.
From the BeerAdvocate Web site:
Description:
Schwarzbier (“shvahrts-beer”), is simply German for black beer. It doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily heavy or light in body, although they tend to lean towards light. Unlike other dark beers, like porters or stouts, they are not overly bitter with burnt and roasted malt characteristics that the others tend to depend on. Instead, hops are used for a good portion of the bitterness. Very refreshing and soul lifting beers, they also make a great alternative for the Winter. Especially when you are looking for a lighter beer, but one with depth of colour and taste.
beeradvocate.com/beer/style/31/
From Wikipedia:
Schwarzbier, or “black beer,” is a German dark lager beer with an opaque, black color and a full, chocolatey flavor.
Schwarzbiers are bottom-fermented beers, though originally top-fermenting yeast was used in brewing them. The alcohol content usually ranges from 4.8%–5%. They get their dark color from the use of particularly dark malts in brewing. The malt in turn gets its color during the roasting procedure. Dark beers are some of the original types of beers brewed, with lighter colors only becoming possible with lighter, short-roasted malts approximately one hundred years ago.
Had one of my first “winter beers” last night. Schneeweisse (“Snow White”) from Erdinger. I picked up my bottle at the Breeze center supermarket.
As the picture shows, it poured with a big, white, foamy head. Overall, however, I was not overwhelmed by this beer. It is a good, solid brew, and I’ll probably pick up a few more bottles for the winter months. I read somewhere that it is supposed to be paired up with the heavier Christmas meals common during the winter.
And if you are interested in winter beers and barely wine, here is a link to a good recent article about this topic. It also talks about laying down some beers for future enjoyment.
chicagotribune.com/features/ … 6413.story
Merry Christmas to all beer lovers in Taiwan!
[quote=“fee”]Had one of my first “winter beers” last night. Schneeweisse (“Snow White”) from Erdinger. I picked up my bottle at the Breeze center supermarket.
[/quote]
Thanks for that update, fee. I like Erdinger’s wheat beers (that’s the only type they brew), especially the unfiltered one (available at Carnegie’s… I usually start with that one there). I’ve never seen the winter offering, and may need to head over to Breeze to pick up a bottle or two for the weekend.
Cheers!
i do not know 1 single soul @ home who is laying down a Tripple or Abay beer for “aging”. As said in the article, we drink those more heavy beers whenever , wherever and do not belive in marketing tricks.
i can not judge for the copy-cat beers mentionned in the article, but laying down a beer for aging does not make sense. The oxygen and further fermentation proces harm the cork giving the content not the original taste anymore. Belgian pie, correct me if i am wrong.