camden hells

The details: Camden Town Brewery Hells Lager, 4.6% ABV, 24 IBU, served in a 330 mL bottle

So you all know I recently took a trip to London. I wrote about it a few weeks ago, and if you want to go back and re-read why I was there, you can check that out here. I will save the retelling of that story for my next trip, but it was a most excellent trip where we sat pitchside, and the Greatest Team in the World was victorious over the Woolwich Wanderers by a scoreline of 1-0. Much celebration, much rejoicing, much beer.

Which gave me the idea for what to review this week. I wanted to review a beer that I had in London, but to be honest I didn't stop to take good notes on all the beers I did try. There was something I noticed, however, and it was staring back at me all lit up like a beacon every time I walked up to a bar.

Take a moment and think about an average bar or restaurant here in the states. This place is anywhere across the country, as non-descript as they come. What are the beers that every one has? I bet the short list will always contain Bud Light and Miller Lite. You might get some Heineken as an 'import' along with beers from wherever the food being served is from (like Corona, or TsingTao, or Chang). If you're lucky you might get one line with something interesting on it, but to this average bar that interesting thing might just be Guinness.

The same thing happens everywhere in the world - average pubs in London have the same types of beer that get the vast majority of taps. They include things like Kronenbourg, Guinness, Heineken, and Camden Hells. I don't think we went to one single pub that didn't have Camden Hells on tap. I wish I could have had it on cask, but I'm certainly not going to complain about it being available everywhere. The description on the bottle says it's their take on combining two German styles - Helles and Pilsner - and that pair, it's pretty damn solid.

For starters, make sure it's cold. It's not that it would taste bad when it's warmed up, but it's such a light lager that it needs to be ice cold to be at its best (just like how American adjunct lagers need to be so cold you can't tell they're tasteless). It's very light in color and body, and doesn't hold a lot of carbonation. Yet it's got surprising flavor for such a light lager; it's crisp and peppery at the top of the bottle, and is smooth and a little sweet at the bottom (because of the temperature difference, obviously). At 4.6% it's not going to go straight to your head, and that's perfect for crushing a sixer of this (which if i'm not careful I could easily do on a nice day out). It's also not filling, which suddenly makes me feel like I'm writing a Miller Lite ad for you all...

In the end, if we had lagers like this everywhere I don't think I would avoid them as much as I do. Camden Hells is never going to be the belle of the ball, but it's still a hell of a date.

The verdict: 3.75 out of 5 (on Untapp'd - follow me @slownumbers to see what I'm drinking)