Amstel Light

March 6th, 2012 by Jason in Walt Disney World Beer Reviews

I know it’s been a while since I’ve had a light lager style beer, but while working on a project for this site I noticed this beer hadn’t been reviewed so I took one for the team and picked up a couple of bottles while I was at Trader Joe’s last night. OK my side tangent of the night starts now, if you like craft beers and have a Trader Joe’s near by check them out. I’ve been pretty lucky with the beer selection and one other thing that impresses me is that with most craft beer you can tell if it has been mishandled during its voyage to your refrigerator. All that I’ve bought have been well taken care of.

Amstel Light

Back to the Amstel Light, here are the notes that I wrote down while tasting this beer. As with most light lagers this beer too did not have a strong or overly dominant aroma or flavor. This makes for a great refreshing beer to drink when you are looking for something to quench your thirst on a hot sunny day.

Aroma: There was a light, sweet grainy presence not like that of a malt sweetness, but from adjuncts such as rice or corn. The sweetness does give way to a almost hidden spice or pepper aroma that changes as the beer warms up to a floral character.

Appearance: This beer was amazingly CLEAR! I could read kidanikatie’s tweets through this beer as it was more clear than the city water I get from my faucets. The color of this beer is a pale golden yellow. I could easily refer to it by mentioning certain bodily fluids, but hopefully I won’t need to in order to give you an idea of this color. I’d rather give the RGB numbers than start talking about body fluids.

Flavor: You’ll find this to be a crisp dry clean finishing flavor based on the grainy sweetness that you’ll detect in very low amounts. As the flavor sits in your mouth you should pick up the slight bitterness with floral notes from the hops. The one thing that you will also find in this beer, that is common among this style is an acidic note coming from the high level of carbonation present in light lagers. More about that in a moment.

Mouthfeel: There is a light thin body on this beer that finishes clean and dry. The carbonation level helps clean this beer off the palate. Personally I think the carbonic acid does over power the beer a little but at the same time I’m still willing to drink more once the palate is clean.

Overall: Good beer to drink while at the resorts on a sunny day to keep you from being thirsty. I can’t believe I’m actually suggesting this, but I could see this being a beer that you would drink with the Cobb salad at the Brown Derby, but who really drinks a beer with a salad? If you’re at Il Mulino at the Swan I would pair this with either the Salmone or possibly the Costoletta Di Vitello.