Tsingtao: China's Best Selling Export
Written: Mar 31 '06 (Updated Apr 17 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy drinking flavor; Easy to find for an import
Cons: Adjunct- laden taste; Bottled in green
The Bottom Line: This is a good import from China. It's nothing special, but it is widely acceptable.
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| Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Tsingtao Brewing Co Pale Lager |
When I eat Chinese food, I tend to go for the carry out variety for several reasons. Probably the greatest reason is because Chinese restaurants are often buffet- style and I don’t like this type of restaurant because I tend to overeat. But another reason I like to get carry out is because I can take the food home and enjoy it with several bottles of accommodating beer without paying restaurant beer prices. The beer I usually choose on occasions like this is Tsingtao, China’s best- selling export beer.
Basic Characteristics of This Beer:
Tsingtao is very light golden in color with a white head of foam that fizzes away into almost nothing in a few minutes. The aroma of this beer is a little bit skunky, but also contains some sweet, toasted pale malt and hop notes that make it agreeable and a little bit enticing. The body of the beer is completely clear.
What you taste first with Tsingtao beer is the sweet, grainy flavor from the malts. This taste is a little bit bisquity and a little bit like rice, with other flavors that seems like a touch of honey has been added. This is followed by the crisp taste of hops- Saaz I believe- that make for a small amount of bitterness that doesn’t last very long.
Tsingtao beer has an alcohol level of 4.8 percent by volume. There are 157 calories in a 12 oz. serving. It is made using Australian and Canadian barley, but I could not find any specifics.
Food Compatibility:
Tsingtao beer is tailor- made for Chinese food and it does taste very good with rice and various meat and spice mixtures poured on top. I also like it with seafood dishes and I think it taste pretty nice paired with biscuits and other foods that emphasize the taste of grains.
Final Thoughts:
Tsingtao is a popular import beer from China and it ranks as the best selling beer in its native land. The Tsingtao Brewery was founded in 1903 by German settlers who brought some of their lager- making expertise to the Chinese homeland. The beer was introduced in the United States in 1972.
Tsingtao is a smooth, easy- drinking lager that most beer drinkers have sampled at least once. It is common to find this beer at most Chinese restaurants and its popularity extends to many beer specialty stores and even to grocery stores. The main reason for the popularity is that this beer, like many best- sellers in the United States- has a very safe, agreeable, likeable character that isn’t harsh, goes down smoothly, and leaves little or no aftertaste. In other words, it’s a little on the bland side. However, it is a little better than other mass- produced American lager and it would easily beat most of them in a blind taste test.
Finding out information on this beer is difficult so I can only make a few guesses when it comes to the ingredients. The hops remind me of Saaz hops from Czechoslovakia and it’s a safe bet that the malt is made from standard two- row barley. The brewery uses natural spring water and there is also a taste that reminds me of rice- an ingredient used in most all Anheuser- Busch products. But it could be that Tsingtao just uses a bunch of different adjuncts and that the taste of these additives reminds me of the rice flavor you get in many A-B brews. The company doesn’t list its ingredients anyplace that I could find them, so I’m not completely sure.
With its smooth and easy to drink character, this lager is the type that most will agree is acceptable, but most will also agree isn’t really anything special. There isn’t anything that really stands out as great with this lager, but it is fairly pleasant overall. The fact that it is brewed using green bottles makes it a little bit skunky in aroma in taste, although not as much as other green bottle beer. It doesn’t ruin the taste, but it certainly doesn’t add to it, either.
Overall, Tsingtao is a beer that I will continue to buy for consumption with my Chinese food but it really is an average brew overall. I like Tsingtao better than most other mass- produced lagers but I can’t rank it much better than three stars. It’s good, but it is lacking in sufficient character to rank it higher and it has a taste that reminds me of rice and other adjuncts.
Recommended:
Yes
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