Nils Oscar - God Lager

This is another one that has been kindly donated to the cause by a fellow geek, though this one came from my favourite food nerd Declan Moriarty, a compatriot at work and a whiz in the kitchen. His pallet is considerably more advanced than mine when it comes to food and he found me a bottle of Nils Oscar - God Lager, a beer that Waitrose sells in only a few select stores, that he found to be most enjoyable.

My first impressions of the beer may seem like a criticism, but I assure you they are not; it just seems so... Clean... So pure, not in a sterile way, but in a fresh linen and spring breeze kind of way. It smells how good lager should smell, just a little hoppy on the nose with a woft of cream after a big snoot full. The taste is not spectacular but it does it's job, the real astounding part of this beer is the texture, the way it goes down, the way I could drink it from the fetted sock of a gangrenous tramp and not get any less flavour or fun, how picking the bits of toenail out of my mouth wouldn't dull the sensation. It really is quite extraordinary how the malt in this has translated into a feel not unlike a melted milkshake.

On the bottle it does claim to have the big flavours of real ale, which is where they fall down, because from that one remark I can only assume that they have never tried real ale or they have decided to massively oversell the contents of the bottle. Don't get me wrong though, this is in the style of the Dortmunder/Helles, and thus deals in subtlety of flavour and smoothness of body, which this succeeds in. I could easily see myself in a beer garden in Munich drinking a litre of this with a plate of meat and gravy and potato dumplings in front of me, but in a similar way I could see myself drinking this straight out of the bottle in a fancy bar in Sweden. I'm not all that clued up on Swedish beer to be perfectly honest but if it's all like this then I think we've got a future powerhouse on our hands... That's IF they're all like/better than this... Which seems unlikely. This is bloody lovely though.

Food suggestion: It's a Helles, have it with sausages, gravy, sauerkraut and mash or stuff your greedy chops with bar snacks and down this by the gallon!

Drink this if you like: Drinking like a Viking lord! Drink this if you like drinking out of horns and riding longboats. More practically, if you like drinking lager, ANY LAGER, drink this, it's better.