Krombacher Pils
ABV: 4.8%
Origin: Kreutzal, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany
Website: www.krombacher.de
Date: 23 October 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. Perhaps I underestimated the fame of Krombacher, now one of Germany’s biggest independents, with roots going back to 1618 and brewing pilsner since 1890. I’d certainly be more merciful to this beer today.
From a specialist Pilsener brewery in the Rhineland, this claims to be a “pearl of nature” and it certainly tastes clean, but also rather boring. It has a very good firm head, a smooth malty aroma with a hint of slightly sweet hops (Saaz?), and a clean malt taste with an almost immediate hit of hops, mellowing out with a hint of melony fruit and then drying again in the finish to a firm back-of-the-mouth grapefruity bitterness with a touch of crisp malt.
The logic of supermarket stocking policies is puzzling — it’s a fair enough beer, but neither remarkably good nor famous, so out of all the Rhenish lagers they might have stocked, why have Safeways picked this one?
