Disclaimer – I’m a football nut. I’m also English. This is a very potent combination that can lead to silly behaviour, particularly when beer is added to the mix. Please take these World Cup episodes with a HUGE pinch of salt and see them for what they are intended to be – a bit of beery fun!

I really wanted this to work.

I’d taken home a quarter pounder with cheese for dinner and Bruce Springsteen was whipping the crowd into a patriotic frenzy as he blasted out Born in the USA on Spotify.

Conditions were as ideal as they could be considering I’m sitting 400 km south of the Arctic circle in Sweden to try my first ever glass of Spendrups’ new US-inspired Pistonhead Hot Roddin’ Lager

The bottle’s flaming skull motif was fairly eye-catching, as was the incorrect (brewed on…) and clumsy English (no bling??) on the back label. But these, I hoped, were merely scratches in this beer’s hot rod bodywork and that there was still a high performance brew revving up underneath the hood.

However instead of this……

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I got this.

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There’s no easy way to say this. Pistonhead is about as genuinely American as Arnold Schwarzeneggar. Spendrups promised a beer with attitude but delivers a lager that barely gets into first gear.

Appearance-wise Pistonhead is unspectacular – perhaps a shade more amber than most pale lagers with a bleached white head. The first clear sign that it has very little in the tank is the smell of it. American hops are known for their distinctive and explosive aromas of grapefruit, citrus and pine needles. Despite the fact that Pistonhead uses more than one US hop variety I just couldn’t locate them underneath thin smells of vegetables and butterscotch.

Taste-wise things went from bad to worse. Hash, metallic, raw malt flavours that thankfully vanished in one of the shortest aftertastes I’ve experienced in recent years of drinking beers. As for the hops…..they simply failed to turn up.

There seems little point in carrying on. In a previous post I gave kudos to Spendrups for seemingly breaking the brewery mould and daring to launch this beer. I still think they should be applauded for doing so, although I am hugely disappointed they didn’t give it the horsepower needed to make it worthy of the hype.

The back label proclaims Pistonhead comprises “only high quality parts and a lot of torque”.

Unfortunately it should read “a lot of talk” instead.

Pistonhead Hot Roddin’ Lager

A lager from Spendrups Brewery

5% ABV

Systembolaget Article Number: 1432-03