Mark James Russell

Books, blog and other blather

Category: Booze

Happy New Beer!

January 2, 2014 / / 0 Comments

From time to time in the past, I used to review the state of Korean beer. Sometimes in depth.

Although I do not drink much beer these days, I have seen some improvements in the beer scene, so I thought I would start out 2014 talking about our hoppy friends. These aren’t terribly new, but they were new to me, so here are my late-to-the-party thoughts.

Hite-Jinro has come out with two Queen’s Ale options, Blonde and Extra Bitter, and I’m shocked to say that both are quite decent.

I had the Blonde with some pizza the other day and was very happy with the taste and aroma. Not overpowering, but it had substance. Then I had the Extra Bitter with some Kkongchi Jjigae my wife cooked, and the stronger taste of this beer worked very well with the thick stew. Neither was a “wow,” but both were more than drinkable.

Hite has also added a variation to its Max line, calling it Max Special Hop Oktoberfest (or something like that. This was less exciting than the Queen’s, although better and more flavorful than the usual Max.

(Now I look forward to someone telling me this is just the same Max and I was taken in by the placebo effect. But hopefully not).

I also see that Wa Bar, the Korean bar franchise, has its own brand of Dunkel beer, made in Germany and sold under the Wa name in Korea. But it is nearly impossible to find the beer mentioned on the Wa Bar website, and the photo I did find does not match what I bought. So if Wa thinks so little of its beer, I’m not about to rock the boat.

Luckily, there are plenty of places to go in Korea these days for microbrews, like the ever-growing Booth franchise and Magpie, and Canada’s Alley Kat Pale Ale is wildly available. If only I still drank beer …

 

 

Morning Links

August 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments
  • Moon So-young takes a great look at new Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seoul, with architect Mihn Hyun-jun (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • Beer popsicles! Beer ice cream. And plenty of craft beers. (Korea JoongAng Daily)
  • A look at one of the Han River rescue teams responsible for a 22km stretch of the river that contains 15 bridges. The team responds to 774 suicide attempts and drownings last year — saving 258 people and stopping another 185. Still, that’s a lot of suicides. (Hankyoreh)
  • Enjoying the hot weather? I hope so because the Korea Meteorological Administration says it is going to stick around until Chuseok — that’s Sept. 19 this year. Which I suppose means we’ll have snow by Oct. 1. (Chosun Ilbo)
  • This is the first Gwangbokjeol (Independence Day) I’ve ever spent in Korea so close to the Japanese Embassy. As of 9am, there were plenty of police everywhere, with all the side alleys and roads around the embassy closed off. Could be exciting.
And in movie news:
  • The summer may be mostly over (especially for Hollywood), but the competition at the Korean box office is ramping up, as two big films were released yesterday for Gwangbokjeol. Kim Sung-soo’s first movie in a decade, The Flu, is the new No. 1, with 306,000 admissions yesterday. Hide and Seek was second with 294,000 admissions. (All stats from KOBIS)
  • Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer fell to third with 200,000. It’s now at 7.1 million admissions and 51 billion won ($45.6 million).
  • The top four films in Korea yesterday were all Korean. Then the next six were all animated films (Japanese and Western). No live-action Hollywood movies in top 10.
  • So far this year, Korean films have had 56.3% of box office. 40.3% for Hollywood. Nearly 1% for Japan.
  • Lee Young-ae goes from JSA to the DMZ (Chosun Ilbo).

When Life Gives You Lemons, Do Not Make Lemon Cass

April 20, 2008 / / 3 Comments

So, CASS has a new beer available — Cass Lemon. While the original Cass is probably my Korean beer of choice, most of Cass’s other brands have not impressed. Cass Light is as bad as Capri. Cass Red tastes like the water in my sink after I’ve washed a lot of dishes.


And now there is Cass Lemon. Tonight I tried my first one. The weather has been warm lately, the kind of weather you might like a Corona with a wedge of lemon or lime in it. Good time for a lemon beer, right?

Wrong. It was bad. Bad bad bad. The first thing that came to mind? That scene in ANCHORMAN, when Paul Rudd tried Panther cologne and one woman compared the smell to Bigfoot (or, more specifically, a part of Bigfoot’s anatomy). That is what Cass Lemon is like.

To be more specific… it is a light Korean beer, with less flavor than usual and an overwhelming fake lemon flavor infused into it. It tastes like they took Cass Light and mixed it with Lemon Pledge.

Bigfoot.

Why cannot one Korean beer company make a good beer? Just for variety… Just to see what would happen.

Shudder.

Like Making Love in a Canoe

June 15, 2007 / / 1 Comment

JoongAng Daily writer Cho Jae-eun gives us an odd, brief history of Korean beer. I am tempted to fisk the article, but I fear I would be here all evening. The article has a little bit of useful information in it, but, sadly, it is obvious the writer does not know much about “real” beer, and so had to recycle a lot of OB and Hite PR material. I do not want to sound all mean and negative… Oh, who am I kidding? I am mean and negative.

Suffice it to say, Korean beer is bad. Really, really bad. I do prefer Cass and Hite and Hite Prime/Max (whatever they are calling it this week) over Budweiser and Miller and mainstream American beers. But that is not saying much. Japanese beer is rarely much different, although there are a couple of brands that are marginally nicer.

As for Canadians who love Labbats or Molsons — you need to be quiet. Contrary to popular opinion in Canuckland, mainstream beer there is nearly as bad as in America.

The other Korean beers — Cafri, OB Blue, Cass Light — are pretty much undrinkable. And Cass Red is just nasty. It tastes like syrup, not beer. It is the Majuang Port Wine of beers. (I mean the Majuang stuff they used to sell at convenience stores for 1,800 won… count yourself lucky if it never passed your lips).

I am slightly ambivalent about Hite Stout. It certainly is no stout. I can remember when it tasted a little bit like a dark mild, but (as they story states) it has been rejigged and watered down for local tastes since then.

Whatever happened to Hite’s ExFeel? That was another terrible beer. The name was supposed to mean “Excellent Feeling,” but instead sounded like a way of referring to an former girlfriend.

Korea’s brew houses are a little better, but not much. Very uneven. They often start out okay, then the brewmaster takes off and quality quickly goes down the toilet (Exhibit A: Platinum… such a sad decline and fall of a once good beer joint). I am told Big Rock in Gangnam is pretty good, but I do not get down to that part of town much.

I wish I had a most useful way of ending this article, but I do not. Oh, yes I do. Watt’s on Tap in Shinchon has a decent pale ale on tap (from Canada). Good weather for sitting on the roof and drinking that.

Anyhow, I hope someone comes up with the bright idea of offering well-made, natural, flavorful beers to the public. Bring in Sleeman’s or some German microbrewery or somesuch. It is just crazy enough an idea that it might work.

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