{"id":2088,"date":"2020-09-02T15:30:17","date_gmt":"2020-09-02T15:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=2088"},"modified":"2020-09-04T18:00:57","modified_gmt":"2020-09-04T18:00:57","slug":"baltika-3-in-kaliningrad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/baltika-3-in-kaliningrad\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltika 3 in Kaliningrad"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Mick Hart\u2019s totally biased review of bottled beers* in Kaliningrad (or how to live without British real ale!)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Published: 2 September 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Article 7: Baltika 3<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous articles in this series:<\/strong>
Bottled Beer in Kaliningrad<\/a>
Variety of Beer in Kaliningrad<\/a>
Cedar Wood Beer in Kaliningrad<\/a>
Gold Mine Beer in Kaliningrad<\/a>
Zhigulevskoye Beer Kaliningrad Russia<\/a>
Lidskae Aksamitnae Beer in Kaliningrad<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t want to drink that,\u201d snorted an acquaintance of ours, whilst driving us to the seaside, \u201cIt\u2019s traction oil!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, I did not like the bottle, well, not the bottle exactly, rather the label design. It said \u2018Baltika 3\u2019, 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 \u2018modern\u2019 look from a motor vehicle advert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought, \u201cthis is going to be very metallic, like that other lager ~ how does the advert go? \u2018Possibly the nastiest and most metallic lager in the world\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t. But guess who it is brewed by?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I poured my premiere sample into an old Soviet bacal<\/em> ~ a dimpled glass tankard ~ recently acquired, and tentatively, and with great trepidation, took my inaugural sip!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose the only way to find out is to drink them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life, as they say, is a lottery!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\ude01TRAINSPOTTING & ANORAKS<\/strong>
Name of Beer:<\/strong> Baltika 3
Brewer: <\/strong>Carlsberg Group
Where it is brewed:<\/strong> St Petersburg, Russia
Bottle capacity:<\/strong> 1.5 litres
Strength:<\/strong> 4.8%
Price:<\/strong> It cost me about 160 rubles (\u00a31.62)
Appearance:<\/strong> Pale to light brown
Aroma:<\/strong> Barley malt (I think)
Taste:<\/strong> I am still working on it
Fizz amplitude:<\/strong> 7\/10
Label\/Marketing:<\/strong> Modernistic
Would you buy it again?<\/strong> I would drink it if it was bought for me<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mick Hart\u2019s 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2092,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[130],"tags":[555,480,499,498,479,521,483,524,545,544,530,482,500,501,497,529],"class_list":["post-2088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-life-in-kaliningrad","tag-baltika-3-in-kaliningrad","tag-beer-drinking-kaliningrad","tag-beer-is-a-popular-drink-in-russia","tag-beer-kaliningrad","tag-bottled-beer-in-kaliningrad","tag-cedar-wood-beer-in-kaliningrad","tag-englishman-beer-kaliningrad","tag-gold-mine-beer-in-kaliningrad","tag-good-beer-kaliningrad","tag-lidskae-aksamitnae-beer-in-kaliningrad","tag-mick-hart-beer","tag-mick-harts-guide-bottled-beers-kaliningrad","tag-supermarket-beer-kaliningrad","tag-supermarket-beer-russia","tag-variety-of-beer-in-kaliningrad","tag-zhigulevskoye-beer-kaliningrad-russia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t