I got this at World Liquor in Hiroshima. It is Ochacovo (written ОЧАКОВО) Original, by Ochacovo out of Moscow. I've never had Russian beer as most of the time I've been writing this blog the United States and Russia have not been on the best of terms. Fortunately for me Japan is on better terms with them so I was able to acquire this beverage. It's difficult to find information about the brewery but from what I can gather they started in 1993 making non-alcoholic beer using a no-alcohol brewing method (sort of like making tea with beer ingredients instead of making regular beer and then boiling the alcohol out of it) and then branched out into traditional beer and other drinks. They have several breweries throughout Russia with a capacity of 260 million liters (that's 68,684,733.61 gallons, ) and they are quite proud to say that they made all of their equipment themselves. Tonight's beer was their first alcoholic product and they go to great lengths to state that it is traditionally brewed and not non-alcoholic beer with liquor put in it (such as the Japanese near beer Hoppy, which I will review at a later date).
I received this beer in a half liter blue and rose gold can featuring a burly bearded man in front of a map of Russia and flanked on both sides by wheat and hops. On the map of Russia it shows the various resources the country has, such as oil, diamonds,grains, wildlife, grapes, and high quality gold. I'm afraid I can't read much of the can as it's all in Cyrillic, but I have google translate so we will give it a shot. It says Ochacovo Original, cooked on the classical technology. Unfortunately the epitaph is covered up by a Japanese market sticker so I can't read it. It is .5 liters and 4.6% ABV. I will be using my large beer mug for this one. Let's crack this cold one open with the boys.
Nose from the can is malty with a sweet apple quality to it. Pours golden with a quickly dissipating small bubble white head. Agitation is decent, but not enough to maintain any sort of head. Nose from the mug is the same as the can. On first sip, it is sweet and malty with a major apple juice characteristic, maybe a little bready. I cannot understate how much this tastes like apple juice with malt added to it. It has a wet finish but a dry aftertaste. body is light with light acidity. It's bready character develops more as you drink it and overtakes the apple. It's very easy drinking, session-able as they say.
Listening to Dead Indian's album "Resist". I didn't like them at first, but their Nirvana-esque' grunge rock and great lyrics won me over. Their lyrics are like a punch to the face and their music is like the adrenaline high you get when your fight or flight mechanism flips to fight and you have that hyper-aware and aggressive/calm moment of clarity. Great band, glad to have them on vinyl.
In other news, I finally received the bass guitar kit I ordered back in February. I put it together on Saturday and I think it turned out OK. Didn't bother painting it, I think I'm going to draw all over it and then spray clear coat over that, really give it that homemade feel. I think I'm going to like playing this more than the guitar. It's easier to get my long fat fingers around and it's super easy to pick. I kind of got used to playing a hollow body electric so I was a little dismayed when I plucked the strings and they did not create a great deal of noise, granted they are inherently low pitched. I still need to plug it up to my amp, so we can really see what my handiwork sounds like.
Final thoughts. It's a cheap lager, it has all of the qualities you expect in cheap lagers. I suppose the most glowing review I can give of it is that it's not pissy, which makes it inherently better than bud light.
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