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Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

Cultura Bottle Shop in Kaliningrad

10 August 2023 ~ Cultura Kaliningrad a World-Wide Beer Bonanza!

The beer reviews that I have written to my blog number in the region of twenty five. That I have managed to fit these in between drinking beer is astonishing, but somehow they have taken shape. In these reviews I have dealt exclusively with beers sold through supermarkets, predominantly in PET bottles in regulated volumes of 1.35 to 1.5 litres, but the fact that I have homed in on this category of beer does not mean that during the course of my beer-drinking lifestyle, I have not permitted myself the pleasure of quaffing offerings of a more specialised nature, beers which by their craft or import status are generally considered more exotic and, as a consequence, more expensive.

Thus, in addition to my reviews of the best and the worst of Kaliningrad’s ‘run of the mill’ bottled beer, I give you fair warning that I am now about to embark on the no less difficult appraisal of craft and speciality imported beers.

As in my last series of highly professional and sensible reviews, it is my intention to stick to beers purchased through supermarkets and/or specialist beer-selling outlets, in other words from what we call in England off-sales rather than licensed premises, such as bars, cafes, restaurants and hotels or, to be more precise, beers sold in bottles as distinct from barrel-stored, tap-dispensed beverages.

Whilst supermarkets and smaller shops in Kaliningrad may stock one or two more exotic brands of beers supplementary to their standard fare, such commodities are typically to be found in greater abundance and choice in specialist retail outlets. A number of such establishments abound in Kaliningrad, but one of the best by virtue of its diverse selection and quality has to be Cultura.

Cultura Kaliningrad

Cultura’s pedigree is accredited by discerning beer-buying and drinking afficionados, whose approving comments feature regularly on various beer-tickers’ websites.

Cultura is situated on one of Kaliningrad’s busy city thoroughfares, Prospekt Mira. As with many other shops in Kaliningrad, it is located on the ground floor of a three or four storey block of flats, whose size and scale dwarfs its presence and understates its potential. Indeed, if it wasn’t for the fact that seasoned beer drinkers are like seasoned hunters — they have a nose for their quarry — the shop and its myriad delights could easily be passed by. True, the Russian word for beer (peeva) is large enough not to be missed, but the back-to-basics look, which may or may not be designer inspirited, is a little too convincing when viewed against the backdrop of the tired old flats in which it is framed. However, first impressions can be deceptive, and don’t we drinkers know it, and any misgivings and apprehensions that may be unjustly inferred are swept away immediately once you have wassailed inside.

In fact, once inside Cultura one’s senses positively reel! The shop has an awful lot of beer, an awesome lot of different beers, and even after closing your eyes, opening them again, rubbing them and pinching yourself, the notion that you might have died and gone to beer-shop heaven is delightfully ineffaceable.

Cultura Kaliningrad

I am not much of a traveller, so Cultura is my compensation. Its beers, sourced from around the world, enable me to globe trot at will. I can be in Germany one minute and Belgium the next. I can even be back in Great Britain, no passport or visa required, all that is needed is cash and in the globalist era of touch-card technology even that is not an impediment ~ or so they would have us believe!

Cultura is like a library, and whilst not all drinkers are readers and not all readers are drinkers, who could resist working their way through the legion of beer-bottle labels that line Cultura’s shelves. Volumes and volumes of labels and each label speaking volumes; talk about spoilt for choice! Where on earth does one start?

A good starting point could be strength, country of origin, dark beer or hoppy light, bottle size and cost. Alternatively, you could invite your curiosity to take you where it will, which is more or less the path that I took. As I travelled around the world in my own inimitable way, marvelling at the exhibits, as unique and individual as anything in an art gallery, price became a factor, albeit a not defining one, in the process of selection.

Mick Hart samples Kaliningrad imported beers

Above: Mick Hart in Cultura: one photo was taken during the Plandemic; the other later. Bet you can’t guess which is which?!

Translating roubles into pounds based on the exchange rate on any given day is never easy; performing the calculation as an aid to purchasing beer is analogous to acrobatics, and whilst it may not, and often does not, provide the safety net you hope it will, price variations in Cultura are sufficiently dramatic to make falling back on this methodology an imperfect reassurance.

On my first visit to Cultura at the height of the Plandemic in November 2021, the exchange rate was such that it allowed me to cut some slack, and I was not particularly concerned about paying 350 to 400 roubles for a litre bottle of beer (then about £4.50) even though in those days the average price for a 1.5 litre bottle available from supermarkets was under £1.50. “Treat yourself!” I thought, and so I did.

Come 2023, however, I was less complacent. This was the time when the rouble was billed as the ‘best performing currency in the world’, thanks to the fiscal measures taken to equalise the impact of western sanctions. The resultant disparity in the price and value of craft and imported beers had me effectively sanction myself. Unlike the big sanctions, however, whose efficacy are questionable, my little, private sanctions were not so ill conceived that they would come back later to bite my arse; they were modest in proportion and tenable in their application, working on the kind of budget that the Bank of England can only dream of. Even so, speciality beers, particularly imported ones, have always come with a higher price tag wherever you might be domiciled, and those in Cultura are no exception. I will leave you to decide whether or not you would be prepared to pay £15 or more for a litre bottle of beer.

“Ay up, mother, I think it’s off to the working man’s club!” (Note: Working Men’s Clubs are no longer permissible in British society: (a) because we no longer have a ‘working class’ and Benefit Class does not sound near as 21^st century as politicians would like, and (b) to have a man’s club or a man’s thing of any kind in the UK is impermissible under the ‘Everyone has to be Queer Act’ [source: Winky’s Guide to British Law by N.O. Balls])

That having been said, and I am sorry that it has been, but things do have a habit of popping out (when you least expect them to) [source When I Was Young by Y. Fronts], the price range in Cultura is flexible enough to ease the stays on your wallet without making you walk lop-sided. And once everything is paid for, it all fits snugly in a nice paper bag.

There are red flags and red lights: one is to a bull which the other is to need, and there are green lights that mean Go. Which is why I went to Cultura. No one should court seduction until it becomes a vice, but every once in a while passion needs an outing. Remember the words that your maiden aunt should have listened to but didn’t: ‘a little of what you fancy does you good!’

Cultura has a lot of that little and plenty more besides. You won’t be sorry you went there!

More beer delights in Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Sir Francis Drake
Four great Kaliningrad bars
Dreadnought

The main thing

Cultura Bottle Shop
Prospekt Mira, 46-48, Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, 236022
Tel: +7 911 860-78-50

Opening times
Fri & Sat 11am to 1pm
Sun to Thurs 11am to 10pm

Website
https://vk.com/culturabottleshop/

Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

Bull-headed whilst drinking Taurus

11 March 2023 ~ Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Article 24: Taurus

Oh, come on! Even those of you who are far too rational to have any truck with mystic nonsense know that Taurus is an astrological sign and, for what it’s worth, the second astrological sign in the modern zodiac. No, not the Ford Zodiac. Who remembers those long bench seats and that tricky column gear stick?!

The zodiac sign for Taurus is the bull. Zodiac people are said to be hard-headed, down-to-earth, tenacious, reliable, loyal, and sensual. I wonder if the latter quality is why so many wear the cuckold’s horns?

Reviewing Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

So, this beer that I am reviewing today, this pilsner, is named after the second sign of the zodiac. It has a bull’s head on the label, so it must be so, but we won’t know if the label stands for zodiac sign or something else until we attempt to drink it. Well, they ~ the brewers and distributors ~ are hardly likely to adorn the bottle with a hefty pile of bull droppings, are they?

Now, I’m not a pilsner man … blah … blah … blah …. Yes, you’ve heard it all before, but that does not mean that I am not afraid to try it. I once tried a liberal girlfriend. At least, I think she was a girl? Maybe, she was a feminist.

There are some out there who say yes, but … and they don’t get any further because they are drinking a good strong ale, but others say a pilsner is a pilsner is a pilsner, and most of them are me. But what the tongue doesn’t taste the tum can’t grieve about, so whilst you can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs (why would she want to?), you can occasionally, on a hot afternoon, get a real-ale drinker to forget his religion and sip an ice-cold lager.

And if that lager is pilsner, make sure that it is ice cold, or it could taste like the bull I am hoping this pilsner will not be.

Mick Hart reviews Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

So, off we go with the top and up to the nostrils: ‘Dull, sour smell’ ~ make a note of that.

I pour it into the glass, and it looks light. I am relieved about that; don’t want to be asking, what did you do with the water that you washed the bull’s hind quarters with?

I sip it; I taste it; I swig it: Dull metallic taste. “Just as I thought, Watson!”

“Well, you silly bugger Holmes, why on earth did you buy it?”

“Why, because I have this ‘Year of the Bull’ tea towel, which I knew would make for a very interesting photograph even if the bull’s head attachment makes it a very inconvenient tea towel.”

“What a load of bullocks!” In the farmer’s field opposite. {Watson is looking out of the window into the farmer’s field opposite.}

The strength of the beer is not OTT. It weighs in at a very respectable 4.6%, which in the hereabouts, Kaliningrad, would be seen as lightweight but in the UK regarded as A-OK. For example, a matador could drink it and still not be incapable of waving his little red handkerchief.

As with many lagers, iced over from the fridge as if imported from a Siberian winter, pilsner is nothing to do with taste but all to do with coldness and getting it down your throat, hence the expression ‘Lager Louts’. Obviously, no regard for taste and quality equals no regard for decorum.

Drinking Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

Some pilsner lagers evade the spell checker and by the time you have finished drinking them, let alone writing about them, they have turned into something else. I am relieved to say, however, that Taurus does qualify as a pilsner, not a pisner. It has all the ~ we won’t say qualities, but we will allow ourselves to use the word usefulness ~ of an alcoholic drink that comes in handy on a hot sweaty day.

And that was the penultimate sentence, which leaves you wondering how exactly, given the Taurus-bull connection, I resisted including a word like bullshit.

😀TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Taurus
Brewer: Kalnapilis Brewery
Where it is brewed: Panevėžys, Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1 litre
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 127 roubles (£1.38) [at time of writing!]
Appearance: Light
Aroma: Dull, sour
Taste: Typical pilsner
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: A load of bull
Would you buy it again? Hmm, debateable …
Marks out of 10: 4.5

*Note that the beers that feature in this review series only include bottled beer types that are routinely sold through supermarket outlets and in no way reflect the variety of beer and/or quality available in Kaliningrad from speciality outlets and/or through bars and restaurants.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 30 March 2022 ~ OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

Article 19: OXATA

I have often seen it, but I’ve never tried it, but when I saw a chap in front of me paying for two bottles of it at the local supermarket checkout, I decided that it was high time that I did. I’m talking about Ohota Krepkoye beer (OXOTA beer), a strong Russian beer from the Heineken Brewery* in St Petersburg with an OG of 8.1% and a label affirming real men, and now me, drink it.

The bottle looks as though its 1.5 litres, but when you check the small print you find that it is 0.15 litres short of the full 1.5. I know a lot of people like that.

The label tells you straight away that this is no namby-pamby, Nancy-boy brew. The bold shadow-highlighted 3-D typeface charges across the bottle against a deep red sash and above it is a man who has an awesome chest with a rifle slung over his shoulder. If you have ever harboured a secret desire to appear really incongruous, try carrying a bottle of this beer whilst attending a gay parade!

Before I had taken my first sip, I knew instinctively that this was the sort of beer that you could very easily get pissed on but not take the piss out of. Excuse my professional beer critic’s language.

The aroma struck me initially as though possessing a spicey, citrus twang, but, before decanting into my trusty Soviet glass, I paused a moment, a little affectedly I thought, took another whiff and changed my mind. It was now, I opined, decidedly sweet and disconcertingly antiseptic.

It poured into the glass with a disappointingly weak head which dissipated rapidly. Once out of the bottle, I was relieved to find that the clinical smell had gone, replaced and overpowered by the sweeter notes.

Not the dark, deep colour I had anticipated but a mid-amber, the beer had, I was surprised to find, not a rich sweet taste but a sweet tart taste laced with a touch of burnt charcoal.

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

The quite glutinous finish gives way to a strong throaty aftertaste, which is not at all unpleasant, and, whilst you secretly wonder how it received a World Beer Award in the ‘Silver’ category, as the medallion on the front of the bottle signifies, there is no doubt in your mind, and also in your mouth, that the brew is persuasively moorish.

Affirmation that this is a real man’s drink is not backward in coming forward. I could feel my liver shrinking and my ego getting bigger with each successive sip.

The heady aftertaste taps into your long-term memory, summoning vague recollections of cautionless drinking sessions undertaken in the first flood of youth. How much of that memory would survive intact should you overdo an OXOTA session really does not bear thinking about.

One thing’s for certain, OXOTA is a good buy if you want to say goodbye and rather quickly to that irritating condition otherwise known as sobriety.

Footnote:🦶 I picked up the rumour from somewhere that the Heineken Brewery is one of those companies that virtue signalled their allegiance to the United States-led globalist war on Russia by buggering off. But take heart, Hart, I said. Buggering-off breweries mean a larger share of the market for those that are smart and don’t budge and a chance to expand and diversify for those that seize the initiative.😁

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: OXOTA (Ohota Krepkoye)
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litre
Strength: 8.1%
Price: It cost me about 137 roubles (1.06 pence)
Appearance: Mid-amber
Aroma: Predominantly sweet
Taste: Tart, not excessively sweet
Fizz amplitude: 3/10
Label/Marketing: A big strapper with a large rifle
Would you buy it again? If the need so takes me
Marks out of 10: 6

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 17: Amstel Bier

Published: 21 November 2021 ~ Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

So, if you don’t like pilsner what are you doing buying it? That’s easy. It was on special offer at my local supermarket, and as I am saving money to buy myself a ticket to Anywhere before the whole world is renamed Vaccination to make sense of the universality of the Vaccination Passport, at 90 roubles, less than a quid, as Abba used to say, ‘how could I resist you!’

Amstel Bier’s marketing strategy relies for its gravitas, if not its gravity, on that ubiquitous word of the beer-drinking world ‘premium’. Next to ‘love’, it is probably the most overused, abstruse, misunderstood and misappropriated word of all time. Although it occupies many a ‘premium’ slot, if not an entire chapter, in the Beer Posers’ Dictionary, it would not, in its day-to-day marketing application, be permitted as much as a footnote in the Dictionary of Truth (which is not published under licence to any of the Davos set).

Gold labels and award-winning medallions are often used in conjunction with the word ‘premium’, and it does not hurt any to lend to the product a date in antiquity, thus enabling it to draw from the not-so mythical notion that everything that was produced in the past that did not need a Vaccination Passport or be stamped with a QR code was quality or, to define ‘premium’, was of ‘superior quality’ ~ as was life itself ~ once. Thus, Amstel’s bottle incorporates the lot: the gold label, the word ‘premium’ and a date when the world was real ~ 1870.

The Carlsberg Company saw the funny side of this marketing coin many years ago. They flipped the irony of it into their award-winning marketing slogan, ‘Carlsberg, probably the best beer in the world,’ proving to the world that at least they could laugh up their sleeve, which is more than can be said for Watney’s, with it’s disingenuous, ‘Roll out Red Barrel, Let’s have a barrel of fun!’ ~ which drinking it was anything but.

When you see a product labelled in this way, especially a beer, the ‘premium’ promise first supposedly sells it to you and then, before you take the top off the bottle, influences your opinion, so that, unless you are really studying it, when swilling it back with your mates, this little gold word keeps ringing around your taste buds, going ‘Premium! [yum, yum] … Premium! [yum, yum]’.

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

With an introduction of this nature, you could easily jump to the wrong conclusion that I am now going to say that Amstel is crap, but that would be too easy.

Let’s take the top off first and check its ‘nose’, as the pretentious like to say.

My first reaction was to reach for my NHS Do-It-Yourself Coronavirus Testing Kit, because I couldn’t smell a thing. No, that’s not altogether true. I could smell something. I think it was a rat. I am not saying that the beer smelt like a rat, because I have never snorted rat. I use the term loosely, as I might, if I was a brewster, use the word ‘premium’. In other words, I could smell nothing, no rat no premium, and certainly nothing that could justify anything approaching the notion of ‘superior quality’.

I sniffed the top of the bottle with the cap off for such an inordinate length of time that Ginger, our cat, thought he must be missing out on something and tried to get in on the act. But after the briefest second, he walked away in disgust without so much as a ‘buy it again’ or just a ‘meeoww’ for that matter.

I didn’t want to end up with the bottle stuck to the end of my nose and be rushed off to hospital in one of those little white Russian ambulances with the siren blaring ‘snout stuck, snout stuck, snout stuck’, so I gave up after five minutes, concluding that I had detected a faint something or other, an intriguing cross, you might say, between musk and tinniness.

When I eventually poured it into my glass, I found myself staring at a pale amber liquid, with very little head, which, as soon as it saw me, made a fast exit. I think this is what is known in beer reviewers’ speak as ‘having two fingers’, or should that be giving two fingers?

Most people who occasionally drink pilsners but usually drink something else, tell me that pilsner appeals to their taste in summer because served cold ~ how else? ~ it is light, crisp and refreshing. From that statement, let us extrapolate the word ‘crisp’. Amstel Bier isn’t. No matter how you drink it ~ swig, gulp or roll it around your mouth ~ crispness doesn’t come into it, so, if that is what you are looking for, you won’t find it in Amstel. Make no mistake about that! (Oooh, he can be so manly when he talks about beer!)

However, Amstel is not without flavour: it is mellow, smooth, rounded and gives the lie to the notion that it is all about tininess and not about taste. Some beers, especially some lagers, go down like a lead weight, but the Amstel finish is not unpleasant. It doesn’t really justify the self-presumptuous handshake of the two chums on the front of the bottle leaning out of their stamps of approval ~ perhaps they have just been vaccinated and are about to open a Facebook account ~ but thin and wishy-washy beers never have an aftertaste (think Watney’s!), and this one certainly has.

In fact, Amstel has a two-phase aftertaste: the first is surprising and seems to hit the spot, but as it Victor Matures it does not so much as sock it to you as socks it to you. In Amstel’s defence, pilsners tend to do this to me generally, so it is by no means unique in this respect either, but in this particular case after five minutes had elapsed, I found myself looking for words to describe the after-aftertaste in my cockney rhyming slang almanac, where all I was able to find was something to do with Scotsmen.

I am not saying that Amstel needs to pull its socks up, as I hear tell that if it is not a popular lager on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Greeks can’t get enough of it. This may have something to do with the fact that the Athenian Brewery in Greece is now owned by Heineken and as Heineken brew Amstel, well, work it out for yourself.

Amstel was originally brewed at the Amstel Brewery in Dutchland. It has a proud heritage, going back to 1870 (you can see the date on the Amstel bottles). However, it was taken over by Heineken International in 1968, who moved production of Amstel to their principal plant at Zoeterwoude in the Netherlands.

I am not sure whether the Chief Brewer, Jock Strap, still works for them or not.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Amstel Bier
Brewer: Heineken
Where it is brewed: Zoeterwoude, Netherlands
Bottle capacity: 1.3 litre
Strength: 4.1%
Price: It cost me about 90 roubles (91 pence)
Appearance: Pale-amber
Aroma: Faint
Taste: It does have some
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: ‘Premium’
Would you buy it again? If the price is right!
Marks out of 10: 4

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 25 September 2021 ~ Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Article 15: Gyvas Kaunas

Well, just look at it! I bought this lager in spite of, rather than because of, the appearance of the bottle. It reminded me of someone or something. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Could it have been that brassy blonde that I had met in an East London nightclub? Was it something I had seen on an Italian reality TV show? Did someone try to sell it to me once? I vaguely remember his voice, “Oh to be sure, to be sure. ‘Tis the real thing, sure enough. On the memory of my sainted mother would I tell you otherwise …” No? Panto, perhaps? Or something in a joke shop window?

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Gambling all on the forgiving notion that tasteless is not always the red flag that we take it for, I paid my 140 roubles, which isn’t cheap considering that this fairground bottle only holds one litre, and left the shop quite smartishly, as if I’d just purchased the drinks equivalent of a mucky book or had been seen with a TV celebrity.

Once safely indoors I stashed the bottle away behind the potatoes and made a mental note to forget that I had bought it, but come the witching hour, seven o’clock (and, listen you lushes, I do mean seven in the evening!), the hankerings overtook me, and before you could say, “Do you really think that this is a good idea?!”, I had whipped it out and took it upstairs.

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

On the coffee table, which also functions as a beer table, the bottle looked distinctly out of place, standing there as it did next to my manly Soviet tankard. I had the uneasy feeling that I was about to open a bottle of fizzy wine and that nothing short of Hinge and Bracket’s tablecloth and Liberace’s candelabra would do the experience justice.

Gee it was Gaudy, with a capital ‘G’.

Never mind. I put on my sunglasses, peeled away at the pink foil wrapper, put the corkscrew back in the drawer and slipped off the top. Now came the moment of truth. I moved slowly towards the neck of the bottle, longingly but apprehensively. The camera, had there been one, began to revolve at 360 degrees, the lighting first went dim and then became suffused. I lowered my nose to the opening. Chanel No 5 or Canal in need of dredging, which one would it be? Eureka, or You Reeka Lot! Downwind of a lav portacabin on a very warm and windy day!

Desist or resist! As I wouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither would I allow my olfactory senses to be the sole arbitrator in the case of Pong vs Palate.

I poured the liquid into my glass, observing it, of course, with no small degree of suspicion, and then I took the plunge.

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Verdict: fruity.

There was the essence of bitter grapes, tinged with grapefruit, a touch of lemon and a fondle of orange and, thanks to a long-life fizz, a loyal taste that did not immediately let you down and simply walk away.

All things considered, it would be unfair of me if I did not admit that the experience had been worth the 140 roubles that I had paid. And, yes, you may be right. My criticism of the packaging could be due to a lifetime of drinking British ales dispensed from stalwart old-world handpumps. So, was I being too hard?

I would not go so far as to say that it was Casablanca ~ the start of a beautiful relationship ~ more like a one-night stand, but I have put the empty bottle aside, as who knows one day it may come in handy should I ever want to remodel my room to resemble Del Boy’s flat.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Gyvas Kaunas
Brewer: Kalnapilis
Where it is brewed: Vilnius, Lithuania
Bottle capacity: 1 litre
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 140 roubles (£1.41)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Don’t ask!
Taste: Fruity mix with bitter twangs
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Why?
Would you buy it again? Read the post
Marks out of 10: 4.5

Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 14: Zatecky Gus Svetly

Published: 6 July 2021 ~ Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

With all this talk about the increasing incidence of coronavirus, deadly Delta variants, mandatory vaccinations and QR codes, what better time could there be for hightailing it into the churdak and hiding out with a bottle or two of peeva. If you cannot use a crisis as an excuse for drinking, what can you use?

I certainly felt the need to protect my mind from the doom, gloom and despondency that once again is doing the rounds and chose as my vaccine on this occasion a beer that is not really called ‘Fatty Guts’, although given the bizarre lengths to which brewers in the UK are willing to go to compete for offensive beer names, had it been the name of a UK beer I would hardly be surprised. I believe it was the Firkin pubs in London that kick started silly beer names back in the 1980s, and I remember only too well that Barker’s Dive Bar in Southwark served a very nice pint of ‘Bollock Twanger’ and another beer whose name was so rude that you whispered when you ordered it.

But Fatty Guts is neither a British beer or a beer brewed anywhere else ~ as far as I am aware!

The real name of the beer that is the subject of this review is part of the Baltika Breweries’ stable. It is brewed in St Petersburg and is called Zatecky Gus. You can see how easily it could be mistaken for something else. We will at last be respectful and refer to it by its full appellation, Zatecky Gus Svetly.

Zatecky Gus Svetly is a pilsner lager and as those of you who have been following my Bottled Beers in Kaliningrad reviews will know, I am no great fan of Pisner, sorry, I meant Pilsner. However, when you say that you are going to review as many bottled beers sold in the city’s supermarkets as you can, then you have to follow through. Actually, when I drink Pilsner the risk of … it doesn’t matter. Now, where was I. Ahh yes, Pilsner.

Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

Zatecky Gus is everywhere, so it was not difficult to pick up a bottle from my local supermarket. It cost me £1.29 for a 1.5 litre bottle, and I was happy with that.

It poured easily into my vintage Soviet beer glass ~ one of those manly types with a handle on the side. It poured pale golden and had a pale golden aroma, slightly hoppy, a bit aromatic. The process of decanting brought forth a light froth, eventually culminating in a medium head, which, although the lager itself has very little body, clings to the glass as you down it.

Some Pilsners are heavy, oily even, their high-calorie composition cunningly disguised by their light appearance and must-be-served-cold character, but Zatecky, I was relieved to find, is not one of these. In fact, it has a refreshing, sparkling nature, a commendable finish and a pleasing after taste.

Regrettably, taste in general is somewhat lacking, which is a mystery as I recall reading somewhere that Zatecky is brewed to a traditional recipe using a high-quality hop that has a dynastic reputation stretching back over 700 years.

I love antiques, but search for this as I might I could not find it, and whilst it would be disingenuous of me to write it off completely, I was left at the end of the bottle with a distinct sense of expecting and wanting more than this lager could deliver.

On a hot summer’s day, I have no doubt that refrigerated Zatecky would be better than an ice cube, but although it goes down like the Titanic, just don’t expect to travel first class.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Zatecky Gus Svetly
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.6%
Price: It cost me about 131 rubles (£1.29)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Yes, just about
Taste: Not much, but it is refreshing
Fizz amplitude: 6/10
Label/Marketing: Traditionalist ~ sort of
Would you buy it again? I have bought about 3 bottles
Marks out of 10: 5.5+

Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 12: Leningradskoe

Published: 29 March 2021 ~ Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

Over the past few weeks, I have been playing it safe. Whenever I have had ‘the ‘ankerings’, as my old East London friend used to call the acute desire for beer, I have gone for something tried, tested and approved, which in my case has been Lidskae and Ostmark. But what’s life without a bit of diversity (not too much, mind; look what it’s done to the UK!)?

Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

You don’t drink the label but, as with all that we consume, appearance and packaging is everything. The same rule applies whether you are shopping in the supermarket for pasta or shopping in your local nightclub. Being a lover of the past, it is not surprising that I usually go for beers the bottles of which are labelled as though they belong in the archives of a library’s historic records section or carry a typeface and/or image that speaks of the quality of things that were and which can never be again.

On this drinking occasion, a few weeks ago, I chose something that on first consideration might seem to go against the selective criteria grain, inasmuch as the branding has a stark, cold, metallic-feel about it, but, if you look again, you will see that the purchase compulsion was inspired in much the same way as it was when I chose Gold Mine beer. In fact, if you compare the labels of the two products the dissimilarities are insignificant. Both incorporate cool blue, white and gold colours and both favour cityscape skylines, silhouettes picked out by a mystical luminosity, somewhere between the aegis of dusk and dawn.

Then I was talking about Gold Mine beer; here I am referring to the beer Leningradskoe. In the case of the latter, the imagery concerns itself with Leniningrad, an open river bridge set against the domes and spires of St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, after it was St Petersburg ~ if you know what I mean?). So, although it is not a million years ago, the historical connection still holds true. I suppose the attraction lies in the disequilibrium, the nearness and distance evoked by the reversing memory of the Soviet Union.

Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

So, purchase compulsion explained, let’s get down to the drinking of it.

The initial aroma is one of strong corn, in other words it is grainy rather than anything else. It arrives in the glass looking like Gold Mine’s long, lost brother ~ bright and golden. The head fizzes, rises to an inch but dissolves rather smartishly, leaving just a trace ~ a little bit like a lifting draw bridge: up one minute and down the next. The beer’s carbonation does not, from its appearance within the glass, have an overwhelming disposition, but there is sufficient of it to ensure that it holds up the relatively low flavour, rather like a pair of 1940s’ braces. In fact, I suspect that it is the carbonation that keeps the body of the beer afloat, the cunning adjunct that delivers the touch-of-bitter taste which sets it apart from bog-standard lager.

The aftertaste is not strong, but it is palatable, becoming more so after the initial twang has died. To my mind, and tastebuds, it is this feature, two pints later, that most distinguishes and recommends it. In the last analysis, it is a kind of half-way house, occupying a surprising place somewhere between keg bitter and lager, and because in its earlier stages it is clear and crisp, although I was drinking it on the outskirts of winter, in the midst of a nice summer’s day, whilst sitting back in the garden watching your wife do the weeding, I anticipate that it would be cool ~ as cool as the label suggests ~ and also rather refreshing.

So, whilst you are buying your wife a trowel in preparation for summer, don’t forget to treat yourself to a bottle of Leningradskoe. You know, if nobody else does, that you deserve it!

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Leningradskoe
Brewer: Baltika Breweries
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.7%
Price: It cost me about 137 rubles (£1.32)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Strong corn
Taste: Hybrid lager & keg bitter with satisfying after taste
Fizz amplitude: 5/10
Label/Marketing: Soviet
Would you buy it again? Would do
Marks out of 10: 6

Oak & Hoop Beer in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 11: Oak & Hoop beer

Published: 31 January 2021

I developed a taste for beer when I was about 14 years old, about the time that they turned a blind eye to my age and began to let me through the doors of the village local. Some might say that is a very tender age to be supping and that I should be ashamed of myself, but, of course, I am not. The one thing I have learnt, or subscribed to, as I approach the senior years of my life is that there is nothing so true as the philosophical adage, ‘live life whilst you are young’. I know this to be the touchstone of our brief earthly existence because now that I am older I cannot drink half as much beer as I could when I should not have been drinking it. Ahh, happy days: vitals in their unsullied prime and Courage Tavern on tap. It was “What your right arm’s for”, or so went the advertising slogan, possibly to remind those pub-going blokes back in the 1970s that it was not just something with a fist on the end that you threw after several pints.

But we must leave reminiscences of real pubs, real men and the days of pre-real ale to focus on the latest addition to my bottled beers of Kaliningrad review, which today features another one of those offerings served up in squat dumpy bottles.

All of the beers in this series of reviews are available through general supermarkets, and this is no exception.

Oak & Hoop Beer in Kaliningrad

Oak & Hoop beer comes from the same brewery, the Trisosensky Plant, from which the beer Soft Barley derives, which was the subject of my previous review, and, as with the previous review, I have only good things to say.

First off, you’ve just got to love the advertising. Not only a small plastic beer barrel, but one adorned with a crafted piece of card attached to the pouring top and draped Mason’s apron style from head to toe. The alluring impression is instantaneously craft beer. A crafted piece of card craftily cut and composed to convince the consumer that what lies within is craft. The image of mallet, barrel and stool, all in wood, naturally, with vintage-leaning display type and mellow beer-brown colours all contribute handsomely to the presentation, promise and promotion of a traditional, quality beverage. Oh, and lookee here, notice the awards attained, signified by the august presence of three gold medallions.

I had to buy it. I had to drink it. I liked it.

NOTE: More information on the brewery in my previous article Soft Barley beer in Kaliningrad

I deduced from the first nasal observation a seductive compilation enticingly in favour of roasted malts and caramel, which corresponded perfectly with my long-standing prejudice for brews whilst though they may not be ales as such yet display certain defining characteristics making them more akin to ale than their pallid pilsner counterparts, for which I make no secret of courting less than great affection.

But we are not here to sniff it. We will leave that pleasure for wine drinkers and let them spit it out.

**Award-winning Oak & Hoop beer in Kaliningrad, Russia**

As first tastes go, there was no doubt in my mind that I had spent my 147 rubles wisely. The caramel and malt bouquet delivered the taste promised by the aroma. Rounded and mellow with just a hint of bitterness, the sweet incipience gives way to a dry, satisfying, lingering taste, the parity of which makes strange bedfellows out of any critical notion that the two could live apart.

This subtle liaison discreetly belies its AVG manliness, which, at 4.9%, packs a not unreasonable clout, but then let’s not be bashful, it’s what your right arms for.

Oak & Hoop Beer in Kaliningrad

If I have learnt anything about beer it is that the first likeable sip does not necessarily equate in taste to love at first sight; you may like, you may love, or imagine you do, but if it be love that willingly takes you happily to the end of the glass, then be sure that it will be lust that brings you back for more.

We are continually reminded, bordello fashion, that pleasures in life have to be paid for, and the pleasure of Oak & Hoop is worth every penny and every ruble, so go for it before you get too old!

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Oak & Hoop
Brewer: Trisosensky brewery
Where it is brewed: Ulyanovsk and Dimitrovgrad, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.9%
Price: It cost me about 137 rubles (£1.32)
Appearance: Pale golden
Aroma: Hops & caramel
Taste: Subtle, attractive blend of sweet & dry with caramel
Fizz amplitude: 5/10
Label/Marketing: Traditional
Would you buy it again? I intend to.
Marks out of 10: 9

NOTE: More information on the brewery in my previous article Soft Barley beer in Kaliningrad

Ostmark Beer in Kaliningrad is Top Quality

Top Marks for Ostmark

Published: 15 October 2020 ~ Ostmark Beer in Kaliningrad is Top Quality

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Article 8: Ostmark Strong

My previous review of bottled beer in Kaliningrad, sampled from the brands that can be purchased every day from most supermarkets, was written on 2 September 2020. I could claim that I have not written anything about beer since 2 September 2020 since that is the last time that I had a bottle, but that would be about as believable, not to say as ridiculous, as declaring that I voted to remain in the European Union.

Mick’s Place (aka, Mick’s Attic Bar) has been functioning as normal, but I have drunk elsewhere ~ on the outside seating areas of various bars and hotels and at friends’ houses ~ calculating that as the dark days of winter approach, with them cometh more grim coronavirus news and consequent restrictions, all of which will mean more Attic Bar and less drinking on location.

So, what have I been drinking at home, and have I enjoyed it?

Out of the beers that I have sampled so far, the Belarus beer Lidskae Aksamitnae is my beer of choice. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it wins hands down. Nevertheless, if you were to ask me, and I am sure you will, have I discovered another beer that in taste and quality equals Lidskae Aksamitnae then I would have to say yes ~ and that beer is Ostmark.

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

Now, as far as I can tell there are several popular variants of Ostmark. The one that is the subject of my reverence, however, is Ostmark Strong, the ABV (Alcohol by Volume) of which comes in at a not insignificant 7.1%.

I do not buy beers for their strength and, as a matter of fact, when I drink real ale in the UK I usually choose something that is within the range of 4–4.2%. I am happy with that. But Ostmark Strong appeals to me because, whilst it may be a strong-by-alcohol-content beer, it is also strong on taste.

The first test for any beer is the olfactory one. Ostmark Strong has a strong aroma. It hits you as soon as you take the top from the bottle. There is nothing limp-wristed about this brew. It is deep, dark and smokey. If it could wear tattoos, it would be the kind that real men wore, not the arty-farty slate-grey type that are everywhere today and to which even women resort to violate their bodies, as if forgetting that they and their tats will not stay young forever. Alas, for the fleeting fads of fashion and the relentless indifference of the march of time …

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

But enough of this idle banter! Into the glass with Ostmark, and what have you got?

You’ve got a dark-coloured beer that settles nicely into the bacal (glass) and whose head does not immediately die, but neither does it sit on top like a foaming ice cream sundae.

The first sip is yummy. It is so yummy that I have to take several more before I can ask myself, flavour? Its caramel and malts, plus a good toasty aftertaste, the type of aftertaste best described as moreish. And this is not an insuperable problem, because once you have finished one glass you can simply pour another.

Ostmark Strong has a good strong label ~ no wishy-washy rainbow colours here! Dark brown, deep red and silver tones complement each other. The design is simple, instantly recognisable and carries with it the hallmark of history.

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

Now, Ostmark made its debut in 1910 and was originally brewed in Königsberg, which was, of course, Kaliningrad’s predecessor, but be that as it may, and for all my love for Königsberg, as I had no knowledge of Ostmark’s pedigree when first I purchased and quaffed it, I refute any implication that my judgement may have been swayed by where it was born and when. But, since its history is no longer the mystery that it was when I started out, it would be remiss of me if I did not mention that Ostmark was first brewed at the Brauerei Ostmark Brewery and that after passing through various hands is now produced by the Heineken Group.

Rumour has it that throughout its change of ownership the brew retained its original recipe, and we who love beer and history have no contention with that. But as to where it is brewed today, I am not at liberty to say, because in October 2016 the trail runs cold. It was then that Heineken announced that come the following year its Kaliningrad brewery would close.

Some folk here in Kaliningrad who I have interviewed swear ~ usually at me ~ that Ostmark is still brewed here, and in the same brewery where it has always been brewed, that is here in the city of Kaliningrad, but some say otherwise, others don’t know and still others don’t seem to care, they just buy it and then they drink it.

As Ostmark is not a phantom, as phantoms as a rule do not come with hangovers, wherever Ostmark is secretly brewed I can recommend it, so much so that as I sit here reviewing it, I can honestly say that I would rather be sitting here drinking it.

A word of warning to the uncautious, however: The enticing taste and session-like character of this very fine quality beer belies its superior strength. “Everything in moderation, including moderation,” said Oscar Wilde. And who can doubt his wisdom? But how much of a good thing is too much? Until you try it, you will never know.

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Ostmark Strong
Brewer: Heineken Group
Where it is brewed: Somewhere
Bottle capacity: 1.35 litres
Strength: 7.1%
Price: It cost me about 136 rubles (£1.36) from our local shop
Appearance: Darky
Aroma: Divinely smoky
Taste: Subtle blend of caramel & malts with an after allegiance
Fizz amplitude: 4/10
Label/Marketing: Just so right
Would you buy it again? As soon as the opportunity arises (update February 2022 ~ bought many times!)
Marks out of 10: 8.5

Ostmark Beer in Kaliningrad

Baltika 3 in Kaliningrad

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

Published: 2 September 2020

Article 7: Baltika 3

It is, alas, customary for reviewers of almost anything these days that when confronted with something that they judge negatively to pan the product/experience with such acidity that you might well suspect that they own a moped and live somewhere like Streatham.

Subscribing to the modern misconception that recourse to expletives is the new humour rather than a substitute for lack thereof, these would-be social-media wits ‘gobshite’ it out as if there was no tomorrow, when the real pity is that that they were with us yesterday and are still with us today.

With this misfortune in mind, I shall, like the true English gentleman that I aspire to be, exercise restraint when I say that so far Baltika 3 is, in my opinion, not the best beer that I have drunk since coming to Kaliningrad.

“You don’t want to drink that,” snorted an acquaintance of ours, whilst driving us to the seaside, “It’s traction oil!!”

I used to work in publishing so, naturally, I never believe anything I read or anything anybody says, so when next I went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of beer, what did I do? Exactly, I bought Baltika.

First off, I did not like the bottle, well, not the bottle exactly, rather the label design. It said ‘Baltika 3’, which we will not carp about because that is what it is, but the shimmering blue and steel silver hues made me wonder if the graphic designers had not filched their ‘modern’ look from a motor vehicle advert.

I thought, “this is going to be very metallic, like that other lager ~ how does the advert go? ‘Possibly the nastiest and most metallic lager in the world’”.

It wasn’t. But guess who it is brewed by?

I took the cap off, mainly because I have not yet found an easier way to get to the contents of a bottle ~ as I have said, the bottle was fine ~ and took a poser’s sniff. Even if I had not smelt it before, and I had, because I used to work with heavy-plant machinery, I would recognise traction oil. It would not be fair to say that it did smell like this, but I struggled to determine what it did smell like.

I poured my premiere sample into an old Soviet bacal ~ a dimpled glass tankard ~ recently acquired, and tentatively, and with great trepidation, took my inaugural sip!

Not wanting to be scathing, the beer I had drunk previously, Lidskae Aksamitnae, had been so delectable that the inferior flavour of Baltika 3 could have suffered a severe case of amplification in consequence.

Being the nice chap that I am, I am willing to give Baltika 3 the benefit of this doubt. But I still cannot believe that Baltika is Russia’s most popular beer, and that this claim is out there. In 2018, Baltika 3 Classic received the silver medal in the Pilsner category of the British International Beer Challenge, so not all of my fellow countrymen agree with me on this one.

All I can say is, and all I am willing to say is, that if Baltika 3 is anything to go by, I dread to think what the higher numbers of Baltika beer are like.

I suppose the only way to find out is to drink them.

Life, as they say, is a lottery!

😁TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS
Name of Beer: Baltika 3
Brewer: Carlsberg Group
Where it is brewed: St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity: 1.5 litres
Strength: 4.8%
Price: It cost me about 160 rubles (£1.62)
Appearance: Pale to light brown
Aroma: Barley malt (I think)
Taste: I am still working on it
Fizz amplitude: 7/10
Label/Marketing: Modernistic
Would you buy it again? I would drink it if it was bought for me

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Cultura Bottle Shop in Kaliningrad

Cultura Kaliningrad

Cultura Kaliningrad

More beer delights in KaliningradThe London PubSir Francis DrakeFour great Kaliningrad barsDreadnought

The main thing

Bull-headed whilst drinking Taurus

Reviewing Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

Drinking Taurus Beer in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

OXOTA Beer in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Article 17: Amstel Bier

Amstel Bier in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Gyvas Kaunas in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Zatecky Gus Svetly in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Article 12: Leningradskoe

Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

Lifting the bridge on Leningradskoe beer

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Oak & Hoop Beer in Kaliningrad

Oak & Hoop Beer in Kaliningrad

Top Marks for Ostmark

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

Ostmark beer in Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)

Article 7: Baltika 3

More beer delights in Kaliningrad
The London Pub
Sir Francis Drake
Four great Kaliningrad bars
Dreadnought

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**

**Mick Hart’s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)**