I’m going to give you full disclosure right here: I’m not generally a beer drinker. I usually opt for a nice mixed drink or wine before I choose a beer. However, when I went into Trader Joe’s the other day and found out Syracuse stores don’t carry wine, the Trader Jose’s Dark Premium Beer caught my eye and I decided to give it a try.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The beer pours a medium-dark color with a sparkling clear body. The head, or the froth on top of the beer, is a very light caramel color and not too thick, a quality I personally appreciate in beer. After about a minute the head died down to a thin layer, so my nose wasn’t buried in foam as I tried to take a sip.

Trader Jose’s Dark Beer is brewed with roasted malt, which is an important factor in both the taste and the aroma.

The initial smell of the beer has an uncanny resemblance to Guinness, which isn’t surprising as both exude strong malt smells. Once I got past the initial malty aroma, I enjoyed the sweet smell of caramel and cocoa mixed with hints of fruit.

With the first sip of the chestnut colored liquid, I picked up on a sweet chocolate and caramel flavor — pretty much the taste I expected from the smell.

After the initial sweet flavor passed, however, I was hit with the strong bitter taste one usually expects from a dark beer, since this the alcohol content falls at 5.3 percent. What I especially like about this beer is that the chocolate-caramel flavor did not disappear with the bitterness, leaving me with a sweet aftertaste that was very similar to the initial flavor.

This beer is a pilsner, a type of lager that originated in the Czech Republic. But to make things confusing, Trader Jose’s Dark Beer is brewed at the Cerveceria Mexicana, a brewery in Mexico, and imported into the United States to be sold in Trader Joe’s stores.

I personally enjoyed this beer from the bottle and found that it paired very nicely with cut tortilla chips and guacamole.

So while I wouldn’t say there is anything necessarily special about this beer, at only $7 for a six-pack, I would definitely buy it again.

Published on September 14, 2016 at 8:51 pm