The can has the same Luck God Yebisu over the words "Premium Yebisu" as the regular version, exept under that it has the name "Joel Robuchon" and the can has a red hatch work pattern around it. It has 100% on it, witch in Japan means that it is made from 100% malt and is not cut with another cereal, such as rice or wheat. This is important as Japan's malted alcoholic beverages are taxed based on their malt content, it must have 67% or more malt content to be considered and taxed as beer, under that and it is considered happoshu. It is 5% ABV, let's pop it open.
Nose from the can is one of sour malt. The beer has a thick frothy white head and considerably more life within the glass than the previous Yebisu, but has the same clear golden color. Nose from the glass is like white bread with just a touch of light malt. It's decently malty, with a notable hoppy aftertaste. It's a light body with considerable acidity, actually gives it a rather unpleasant mouthfeel. As I sip this, the hopps have become more pronounced, giving it a nice bitterness. The overriding flavor is light malt though, and a slight bit of sweetness comes through before being subdued by the hopps. It's actually a nice beer to sip, it goes consistantly from light malt to sweetness a little hoppiness.
I purchased a 42 lb box of jazz records and have had a great time cleaning and listening to those. I'm currently listening to "AL HIRT SWINGIN' DIXIE at Dans's Peir 600 in New Orleans Vol.2 A study in stereophonic high fidelity sound" released November 1957, meaning it came out the first year mass produced stereophonic disks were released to the public. It's got a few clicks and pops in it, but otherwise it sounds pretty good for a recording over half a century old. I can't believe it really does have dynamic sound! I can hear an clarinet in my left ear, a contrebasse to my right, and the horn section is coming out of my center speaker. And the build quality of the disk itself is fantastic. I've allways loved how those late 50's-early 60's disks were nice and thick, those things can take some punishment and keep going just fine, and in most cases they have. Newer records (the kind made for audiophiles) are generally built like that, allot of times even thicker. If you have a decent size collection of classic vinyl, you can see how over time the disks got thinner and thinner until the 80's when they were downright flimsy. Shame really, they were doing some incredible things with the ultra high fidelity records back in the 70's with DBX encoding, were talking absolutely absurd "it sounds like the musicians are actually in the room" sound quality. DBX was so good that you're run of the mill MP3 encoded digital files do not have the bit rate to match it. I would get one, but even 35 years after this piece of technology's demise, everything about DBX is expensive and the library of recordings available is extremely limited.
Final thoughts. I actually liked this beer, and I usually don't like light bodied beers. It's a good one to just sip and would certainly go well with a meal. Far and away better than the regular Premium Yebisu. It's not so good as to go to any great lengths to get it. But if you're ever hob nobbin' around Japan and stop in a convenience store, go ahead and get one, their good. I give this beer my blurry seal of approval.
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