Harnas is brewed by Okocim Brewery, the same people who brew Okocim. You can refer to the first Okocim post for a brief history of the brewery.
This Polish beer was not the best I’ve ever had. It poured a pale golden color and as you can see there was basically no head or lacing. It smelled like Okocim as well, like faint hops and maybe some grain. To me it tasted like Okocim, but worse. It started off tasting like grains and a small hint of hops. It finished sweet, which was not a good thing. It’s 6% alc/vol but you don’t taste it, just the poor quality beer.
All in all, I give this beer a 5/10! It tasted watered down and basically like an American beer macrobeer. Not one of the best beer ratings here. I would suggest getting some other Polish beer if you are looking in that direction. This is good if you can find it for cheap, which isn’t hard here in Chicago; I got a 4 pack of pints for $4.
EB is another Polish beer produced by Elbrewery. Elbrewery is the largest in Poland and is owned by Grupa Żywiec. They make many other beers including some beers I have reviewed (Leżajsk beer, Tatra beer and Żywiec beer). They have the biggest market share in Poland and have some of the best beers.
EB beer was pretty good. Apparently it is marketed to younger beer drinkers in Poland. It poured a nice golden color, a bit on the darker side for a light Polish beer. The smell was of grains and malt, similar to most Polish beers. The taste was the same, very good when cold. Very refreshing. At 5.2% alc/vol, it wasn’t too heavy and didn’t taste like alcohol.
As you can see, the head was pretty prolific. I have read other beer reviews that stated this beer didn’t have head, this is untrue. Maybe those who had EB with no head got old bottles or stale beer(?). If anyone knows why a beer wouldn’t have head, please leave an explanation in the comments section. Back to the beer, the head stuck around for a minute and dissipated but never disappeared. It had a nice mixture of large and small bubbles; good carbonation, not overbearing. It sat well in my stomach when I was done drinking it.
All in all, I give this beer a 6/10. Not the best out of the Polish beer ratings and it wasn’t the best Polish beer I’ve ever had but it also wasn’t the worst. In Chicago, you can find it pretty much anywhere where there are a lot of imported beers sold; find a good liquor store. As I mentioned, it was pretty refreshing when cold. I assume if it were lukewarm or not cold it would be a bit hard to drink, grain isn’t the best taste. I suggest you try it if you are looking for a relatively new Polish beer to drink.
Leżajsk is another Polish beer. I couldn’t find much information about this beer other than it is named after a small town in southeastern Poland. The brewery is located in the town and it is a very small operation. They don’t even have a website, but they do have a Facebook. I bought a four pack of 500ml bottles at a Polish deli on the Northwest Side, Gene’s Deli and Shop (Belmont/Long), they have a lot of imported beers.. If you haven’t been to or heard of this deli, I suggest you go; you won’t be disappointed, they have every possible Polish food product you could want (especially sausage)! Go with a Polish speaker otherwise you won’t be able to communicate very well.
Back to the beer, it was pretty average. Nothing special, but I will say that it was quite refreshing because it was the first hot day here in Chicago in a while. As you can see, it poured a somewhat hazy gold-colored lager. The smell was like most Polish beers, some grains and malt were present. It tasted the same, surprisingly very light. At 5.5% alc/vol, it didn’t taste bad because of alcohol content. I mentioned I bought it at a Polish deli, I also bought some Kielbasa Wiejska. It went great with the sausage.
You can see it poured a pretty nice head, very white and a good mixture of small and large bubbles. It lasted a few minutes and dissipated to a very thin layer on top of the beer, which didn’t stick around. Like I mentioned earlier, this beer was lighter than it appears, this allowed me to drink a couple 500ml bottles.
All in all I give this beer a 7/10! It was definitely not the best beer I’ve ever had but if you are looking for something not out of the ordinary, try Leżajsk. It was rather light and had a pleasant taste that sat well in my stomach. Not a bad beer rating but you could choose to drink something a little more flavorful. I also suggest you drink it while eating some Polish food, specifically Kielbasa Wiejska.
Tatra is a Polish beer, and a great one at that! I don’t know that much about this beer other than the fact that it is made by Żywiec Brewery. I had never heard or seen it before so I had to buy it. They pride themselves upon being a mountain beer. It is named after the mountains in Southern Poland. They have a website, which has a really cool embedded flash, with little information about the beer and it is all in Polish.
The other bottles I have seen were all in Polish, they must be marketing to Americans because this bottle was all written in English. The beer itself was great. I was surprised with how much flavor it actually had. I was expecting it to taste like Żywiec Lager but it didn’t. The label on the beer is right, it’s beer with character. It poured a great golden color that was a bit darker than most Polish beers. The smell was of hops and malt, pretty strong. The taste was the same and again it was pretty strong. It is 6% alc/vol but you don’t notice any alcohol until you are finished with the beer. I think it tasted great, not like other Polish beers; was more distinct, definitely can taste the hops but it wasn’t bitter because of the malt.
Tatra had some thick and full head. I read some other reviews and they said that the head dissipated quickly. I had a 500ml bottle and this head stayed as it looks in the above picture the whole time I drank it. As you can see, it is a mixture of large and small bubbles. It left great lacing along the side of the glass as well.
All in all, I give this beer an 8/10! It is one of the better beer ratings; I really liked it and I am definitely going to get some more of it this upcoming weekend. I had it on Polish Constitution Day (May 3rd) in celebration! We also had a barbecue, it went great with ribs! Like I mentioned earlier, I had never heard of or seen it before here in Chicago so I don’t know where else you could find it, besides Poland that is. I would suggest that if you see it pick it up, probably sold in places with a lot of imported beer.
This isn’t a beer review. I was watching videos the other day and came across some Polish beer commercials. They are similar to American beer commercials but, obviously, they are in Polish and have different cultural context; this makes some of them funny. Check them out!
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