This has a hint of honey. It's a solid lager, but has nothing really to set it apart from the pack. It's just a good old lager.

Beautiful and dark. Smells good. Tastes good. We've now tasted most of the range from the Bootleg Brewery, and this beer goes to prove that it's easier to brew a good dark beer than a good pale beer. It has a thin, but long-lasting head.

Roasted and malty. Is this Newcastle Brown Ale, or what? Has a rich caramel nose, light body and light copper color.

Wheat beer? Nah. A lager, and not a very good lager. It's on par with Cascade Premium. It lacks flavor and any wheat beer tang whatsoever. A disappointment.

Very nice. An excellent example of the style. Smooth, well balanced and even holds a head (which one doesn't always see on a beer this strong), albeit a bit thin. There's a bit of a chocolate taste in there, too. There's no harshness from the hops, either, which is sometimes a problem with strong beers that require a high bitterness to counteract the malt sweetness.

The words light and fruity spring to mind. It's like Hoegaarden, but tastier, fruitier and sweeter. It has a beautiful, long-lasting head and tastes of tropical fruit. The sediment pours with the beer, and is an amazing sight. (It's the exact opposite of Grisette, which we tatsed on the same day.) It looks like it's suspended in aspic; it just sits there. The color of this beer is light, pale and golden. It's a great summer beer, and would be pretty good in winter, spring and autumn, too.

A great-looking beer. Pale in color and pours with a great head. Has a clean, crisp nose and taste.

Slightly darker than Sapporo, but also has a great head that clings to the glass. It's fruity rather than crisp, and a nice beer.

Straw color and a good head. Nice beer, but an unusual pilsner, perhaps. Bit too fruity to be faithful to the style. Described as “quite bitter” by the brewery, but it's a bit harsh and not particularly bitter. It's promoted as being “heavily hopped” with Czech hops, but there's also a hint of Pride of Ringwood harshness here.

A tough beer for tough blokes. Perhaps good with a pack of Ardath cigarettes. We were divided over the rating for this beer.
Oliver's rating: 3.5 stars. “I like the big taste.”
Geoff's rating: 2.5 stars. “I didn't like the taste. I like a big, tasty beer, I just don't like the taste of this.”
This is one of the rare times that we disagree on a rating for a beer. The rating is therefore averaged.

Skunky. This perhaps wasn't the freshest. We will have to venture to New Zealand to try some fresh from the brewery. The batch code printed on the bottled was 98-015. Surely this couldn't mean January 15, 1998? That's more than four years ago! No wonder it didn't taste like the beer that the label boasts won the “‘World's Best Lager’ at the prestigious Brewex Awards 1994-95”.

A non-descript beer. It doesn't really taste like anything. A bit formaldehyde-ish (although we've never tasted formaldehyde). But we could drink a fair bit of it in 35C Ho Chi Minh City at 90% humidity. But then again, you'd probably drink anything in that situation.

Quite a light-colored dark beer; the color could best be described as bronze. The taste reflects the fact that it's a light-colored dark beer as it does not have a burnt dark-beer taste. In fact, it tastes remarkably similar to the Schofferhofer Hefeweizen. A classic wheat beer. So wheaty. Sensational.

Not quite as malty, dark golden or bitter as Pilsner Urquell, but almost. A good beer; tasty and malty.

Paler than Pilsner Urquell and lighter of body. Oliver: “It's got Czech written all over it.” Geoff's smart-arse reply: “It has. The label's in Czech!” Compared to the benchmark Pilsner Urquell, Zlatopramen is light on the bitterness and malty body, but nicely balanced nevertheless. A good quaffer. The head is a bit thin, but remains and clings to the glass right to the very end.

Geoff: “I call it Black Emmanuel.” Pots picked the alcohol content at 3% to 4% right away. Well done, Geoff!
This is a beautiful beer and so chocolatey. Those Czechs really know how to brew! It reminds us very much of a lager version of Speight's Old Dark Malt Ale.

Getting towards the taste, bitterness and appearance of the benchmark pilsner, Pilsner Urquell. Quite malty and bitter with an old-gold color. An excellent beer.

Geoff: “Crown lager, literally. You can say with confidence that it's better than the Australian Crown Lager.” A solid, malty, working man's beer.

They bottled the dark! Up until a few years back, this was only available on tap, and only, it seems, in South Australia. Geoff suggested it smells like the Lindt 70% cocoa dark chocolate. The chocolate gets lost somewhere between the smell and the sip. Nevertheless a beautiful-drinking, smooth dark ale. The Gold FM (easy listening radio) of dark ales.

The sort of quaffer you could drink all afternoon (but so much better than Australian quaffers). Malty but light. Has a lovely golden-bronze color and the head clings to the glass right to the end.