I’m not a regular beer drinker, but it’s nice to have a refreshing beverage once-in-a-while. Ice-cold Beer goes especially well with crispy fried chicken, spicy Thai food or anything that’s greasy and/or spicy.
Over the years, my brew of choice has swung from the light and citrusy Hoegaarden from Belgium, to the dark and broody Guinness from Ireland (but only if it’s on tap). And back again to easy-drinking lagers like Kingfisher from India and Estrella Damm from Spain.
Recently, we came across several YouTube reviews of Taiwan Beer and were fascinated by the sheer variety they produced, especially their many flavours of fruit beer. We figured that they would taste quite good, given the high quality of fruit grown on the island.
Lychee Fruit Beer
After hunting around at our nearby NTUC Fairprice supermarket, we found it stocked with several choices, including the Lychee Fruit Beer in a pretty pink can.
I was worried that it would taste artificially sweet, and only bought one can home to sample. It was left to chill out in the fridge for a couple of days.
On a particularly hot and sunny day, I opened the can and poured it out into a glass for a taste test.
The first thing I noticed was that it looked like normal beer. Which is not surprising at all, but I had half-expected it to have a pinkish hue, to match the colour scheme of the pretty can.
After taking a whiff, the lychee scent was unmistakable.
Once you bring the beer anywhere near your nose, you’ll definitely know what it’s made of. Even though it didn’t look pink, it definitely smelled pink. In a good way.
It had us at our first sip.
There was no artificialness at all in its flavour. Just a pleasant touch of sweet lychee, followed by the light wash of malt and… something else.
We couldn’t quite figure it out, but there was a certain softness and hint of umami not found in normal lagers.
I picked up the can and looked at the ingredient list. In addition to barley malt, hops and >9% lychee juice, it also contained Ponlai rice (蓬萊米). Mystery solved.
We thoroughly enjoyed our glass of Lychee “Sweet Touch” fruit beer. The only problem was that we had only bought one can, which was clearly not enough for the two of us.
The issue was easily solved as The Wife quickly found it online and placed an order for a six-pack.
Since buying just one six-pack wasn’t sufficient to qualify for free shipping, we made the only logical decision, and simply ordered more beer.
This, unfortunately, didn’t help with our substantial alcohol inventory.
Gold Medal
The 18 cans of beer arrived a few days later and the next one we tried was the Gold Medal lager.
This was a straight-up beer, without the addition of any fruit juice, and is probably the most common variety sold by Taiwan Beer.
Rice was also included in the ingredients list, and although it didn’t specifically state the rice varietal, it’s safe to assume that the locally-grown Ponlai rice was also used.
The back of the can said that the beer “is characterized with refreshing, clean, and smooth taste”, and it definitely fit the description.
According to Taiwan Beer’s Wikipedia page, it “best complements Taiwanese and Japanese cuisine, especially seafood dishes such as sushi and sashimi.“
Compared with Kingfisher and Estrella Damm, the addition of rice in the brewing process clearly made the final taste more mellow.
Kingfisher is probably brewed to go with spicy Indian food, and Estrella Damm is likely formulated to match full-flavoured Spanish cuisine.
Given a choice between the three, we’d opt for the Taiwan Beer Gold Medal anytime. That is, if we’re not having Indian or Spanish food.
Honey Lager
The third can we opened from our online purchase was the Honey Lager, flavoured with longan honey. Again, Ponlai rice was a major ingredient.
We’ve tried longan honey from bee farms in Taiwan before, and the honey lager had exactly the same robust taste.
I have to say that I wasn’t a fan after the first can, but the taste slowly grew on me. By the time we were on our third (on separate days), I started to enjoy the “wild” honey notes.
Among the three different beers, our first choice was the Lychee Beer, by a long stretch. We’d gladly drink it any day as an aperitif, during meals and also as a digestif.
In second place would be the Gold Label, followed by the Honey Beer.
There are many other flavours in the Taiwan Beer fruit series, but the two that we’re especially keen to try are the Pineapple and Mango Beers.
Both of the locally-grown fruits are particularly famous in Taiwan and are popular exports to neighbouring countries, especially Japan. And we all know how seriously the Japanese take their fruits.
Unfortunately, the online store that we bought our beer from didn’t have stocks for either flavour, and repeated offline visits to our NTUC Fairprice have come up empty.
Hopefully they’ll appear soon, and when they do, we’ll definitely be buying some to try.
In the meantime, we’ll just have to slowly run down our remaining stash of the Lychee, Gold Medal and Honey beers.
[Update 2023-09-06: We finally got our hands on a six pack of the Pineapple and Mango!]
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