Lahden Erikoisolut (label: 1995)

The Beer

This beer is totally unbeliveable. In Finland the goal of breweries is
efficiency, not beer. The contents of this bottle was a perfect exmple
of the results of this priorization of goals!

New brewing processes that enable entire brewing to happen in matter of
days really takes it toll on Beer.

Tasting it

As is well known, people usually buy brand, not product. If you like the
image of some beer, you buy it and say that it is good. It would be healthy for
ones humility to blind-taste beers regularity, especially the beers you
like. The results of the tasting are always surprising. It is somewhat
amusing to see the results of those people who say they like this beer, they
are always as shocked: "Does it really taste this bad??".

This Bottle

This actual bottle was hard to get. Not because acquiring it would have been
hard, no. It is sold in many shops actually, believe it or not. It was noted that
there is new label on this beer and thus it was understood that wed eventually
have to buy one for our collection. The problem was, that what ever the beer
is like, it should NOT be poured away, that is not a way to treat beer,
is it! Of course drinking it was out of question. Actually no-one voluteered.

So, one brave(?) member of KBS (EPS, actually) took as his duty to buy one
bottle of this, uh., product. To consume it, a hideous plot was constructed
unbeknown to unsuspecting KBSer, miikap, who just one day dropped by on
KBS, and was challenged with a test: what this beer tastes like? Can you guess
what it is?

He tasted it, and after a while stated that this must be alcoholfree beer!
"Huh? How come?", "Well this actually tastes like one Czech alcoholfree beer.
It must be alcoholfree because the chemicals that are used in the process of
taking the alcohol out can be tasted in this beer!"

Fair judgement, but after providing him this little snippet of information
that this is indeed at strength of Class III beer, he was baffled. He couldnt
think of anything. To help him, we also told him that this is actually
Finnish beer. "WHAT!??? Cant be. NO beer in Finland tastes as bad as this!".
Poor man. He couldnt suspect the worst. *sight* how trusting even the most
cynical can be sometimes.

After he had tasted the entire bottle trying to figure out what on earth
was this hideous liquid, there was no need to conceal the truth anymore,
our masterplan had already succeeded in emptying the bottle in decent manner.
With a little hint of wondering which might be the worst beer of Finland,
MiikaP finally reached the goal: "Lahden Erikoisolut of course, but.....
It cant be THIS bad!!!"

Showing him the bottle setteled that problem with one stroke. He sobbed that
he had actually seen that beer at the shop but had hoped that someone else
would buy and drink it, and still, while knowing this he hadnt
suspected anything. You cant trust even beer bottle collectors these days!
O tempora O mores!

As sadder, but wiser man, he sighted