Supermarket beer: it's much better than you think

Sometime last week the Thinking Drinkers were talking to Aubrey and Cressida about how they’d campaigned against a Tesco in the village. ‘They’re evil,’ said Cressida. ‘We’d never put one of their chickens in our Aga. Ugh.’

Of course, we say ‘talking to’, but we mean overhearing. No, that wasn’t a conversation for us, we think supermarkets are pretty useful. Rather than simply selling some of the foods, they have nearly all of the foods. Like biscuits and that. We switched from McVitie’s to the supermarket brand of chocolate digestives years ago. Seriously, it’s a big saving for very little difference, particularly when you’ve stuck them in your tea.

We also buy supermarket own brand bleach – which, if anything, seems more toxic. Certain supermarket items we don’t tend to skimp on, like bog roll, because regardless of what ends up on it, the cheaper gear is a real gamble and can chafe. And up until recently, beer.

Historically, buying beer in the supermarket was case of choosing own brand or a discounted mainstream larger brand. More recently we’ve seen ‘craft’ varieties creeping onto shelves and while it’s a slow burn, and we’d still prefer to speak to the independent specialist, it certainly makes dragging a screaming child around a supermarket more bearable.

But this isn’t another feature about ‘craft beer’, indeed this is a feature about the own-brand stuff. We enjoy craft beers, we’ve even written books about them and we’ve seen the recent revolution in UK beer coming for over a decade. But we wouldn’t be human if we didn’t find the palate occasionally annihilated by some of the bigger of the beverages. The 12%abv hoppy jobs can kick up a right fuss in our gobs and as much as we celebrate the beer renaissance, we won’t hide the fact that, sometimes, we just want a cold, wet beer with a bowl of Twiglets in front of Celebrity Pointless. And cheap supermarket branded beer can achieve this.

To clarify though, in this feature we are specifically celebrating the European gear that comes in the 25cl bottles. There are a few reasons for this requirement, one of which is admittedly nostalgia. Taking your nose to the top of a metallic-smelling bottle drags us back to family camping holidays in France when we’d nick our dad’s biere d’Alsace, perfectly chilled in the fridge while the jambon and Boursin attracted flies and went to waste. Dads knew what was what with this style of beer and sported brands like Munsterbräu back then, a beverage that paired perfectly with the leathery steak they decimated on the barbeque.

Secondly, if you drink directly from the bottle you can’t actually smell anything – aside from that metallic whiff driven by a bottle top occasionally overstaying its welcome. Lack of aroma is a bonus because the effect we’re after is wet, crisp, cold beer with very little flavour, and since your nose delivers as much as 90% of what you taste, it’s not necessarily required. That’s not to say these beers are completely aroma- or flavour-less, and if you want to further investigate we’d recommend pouring one into a glass.

Finally the size of the bottle and its corresponding volume is perfect for a quick pre-dinner drink. It’s a neat snug fit in the hand enabling dexterous multitasking akin to magic-circle legerdemain - such as flicking through Viz and picking up salty snacks while drinking. Size also matters because the nifty little serve is actually as much as you need. A 25cl bottle is incredibly satisfying if you’re chasing a quick a beer before dinner.

We’re steering away from technical commentary here, this is not a piece about brewing, we’re simply identifying the products we’ve trialled in this field. We will say that French brewer Saint-Omer provides much of this fodder in UK supermarkets, contract brewing under various brand names and subsequently holding a lot of the 25cl cards. Aldi, Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s have stocked a variant from the brewer, so bear in mind that, should you start experimenting, you could be sampling beers from the same place. Not that this is an issue, what we write here is an effort to celebrate an underrated style, it’s easy for the beer snob to dismiss it because it’s light, crisp and lacking bold flavours, but having tasted as many as we could, we’ve found more than a few we enjoy so here are our recommendations.

Premium French Imported Lager

The Co-Operative Food, £4.99 for 10x25cl, 4.6%

The front of the packaging ticks all the boxes, with its safe 4.6% abv and the words ‘imported’, ‘lager’ and ‘premium’. You’ll have to get past the word ‘French’ of course, and swallow the incongruous ‘premium’, but otherwise these are the signposts for this particular beer drinking journey and the Co-Op brand runs the right course. A slight disappointment to see maize and ammonia caramel on the list of ingredients, but this is quickly extinguished when the beer, once chilled aggressively, is tasted, since neither ingredients seem to impact the experience. Clean, crisp, almost no real bitterness, this simply refreshes after a salty snack and is almost entirely forgettable. No mucking about then, it sets the bar high for this style.

Cervois Premium Continental Lager

Sainsbury, £4 for 8 x 25cl, 4.8%

The higher abv supports a more malty body than some of the competitors and a subtle hoppy bitterness combines to make this a surprisingly flavoursome experience. Relatively speaking of course. At 4.8% it’s pushing the abv stakes, but at 25cl you can still enjoy one and digest teatime game shows without the room spinning. And it is of course called ‘Premium’ and unlike ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’, descriptive tags abused by food products, ‘premium’ remains an unadulterated guarantee that what you’re buying is exceptional. Or maybe not. Especially when you then note it’s £4 for 2 litres of the stuff.

Spanish Cerveza

Waitrose, £4 for 6x25cl, 5%

Always one to up the ante, Waitrose presents the 25cl Spanish lager in a sexy bottle even Aubrey and Cressida might showcase with guests. By changing the shape, the bottle feels a little more substantial than competitors, but the nifty neck remains equally manageable for snack-eating/mag-reading multi-tasking. At 5% it’s a touch stronger than some, but it does remind you it’s ‘brewed with water from the snowfalls of the Pyrenees’, which is pretty exciting stuff for a cheap beer. All the packaging bluster is backed up with more flavour in the liquid - enhanced malt, slight spice and sweet fruit to the hop profile and a not-unpleasant length on the after taste. It is undoubtedly the most characterful experience of the trial, the question is: do we really want character here? Our answer is ‘no’. If yours is ‘yes’ then that’s OK, too, and perhaps this is the beer you should plump for.

Biere d’Or

Tesco, £3.50 for 10x25cl, 4%

Top points for low price and despite the addition of maize to bulk out the barley, there’s a crisp dry finish to this beer without any of the anticipated cloying sweetness. At 4% abv it’s lacking a little of the meat the Sainsbury’s Cervois delivers, but if you don’t think Tesco is the devil incarnate and actually do a weekly shop here, this is a very acceptable option. They also stock a Biere d’Or Lite, but if we’re going to draw the line somewhere, then this would appear to be the place to do it. Judging by the nature of this beer this line will be very feint and almost impossible to appreciate since this is a beverage so ‘lite’ it floats past the taste buds. Don’t be tempted by the beautifully low abv because it’s a watery character. That said, we trialled it on a group over before dinner and they actually drank the entire case without complaint.

The Thinking Drinkers will be performing their show The Thinking Drinker’s Guide to the Legends of Liquor at the Soho Theatre on December 16 and 23, with a UK tour in January. For all dates, click here

This is an extract from Thinking Drinkers: The Enlightened Imbiber's Guide To Alcohol by Ben McFarland & Tom Sandham (Jacqui Small, £20), available to order from Telegraph Books at £15 + £1.95 p&p. Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk