In search of decent Polish beer

The Polish breweries are now mostly foreign owned. SAB Miller, Carlsberg, Heineken have snapped up the big brands and dominate the market. The few surviving local independent breweries have fallen on hard times.

The beers that are readily available tend to be sweet and heavy like a late-August afternoon; sunny, humid, with more than a hint of thunder, plenty of fruity smells in the air. Gone are the Polish beers that reminded me of British Light Ales and Pale Ales (remember those?) before the UK market went under a tide of taste-free fizzy lagers. (Thank God for real ales, however; but the saving grace of British brewing is to be found in Poland only in the largest urban hypermarkets and specialist shops, with beers from Shepherd Neame, Youngs and Fullers imported by John King).

Żywiec gives me dreadful headaches. Tyskie, which used to be a reliable tipple, is now little different to Lech, which to me tastes like a suspension of dust in sugary water. Warka is dreadfully sweet. Beers I liked have disappeared - Okocim Zagłoba, Heweliusz, Dojlidy Magnat.

So it was with a measure of optimism that I tried Okocim Premier Pils, recommended by my friend Krzysztof. Same old story - too sweet. On Saturday I came across something called Grand Imperial Porter - very dark, good head, strong - but ruined by what tasted like half a sackful of sugar added to it.

I conclude that sweetness is a measure of the Polish beer-drinking demographic - young and very young. The predominance on the market place of young beer drinkers has shaped the taste of the nation's ales.

Wherever Poles take their beer, there's always large plastic bottles of fruit syrops about. If an Englishman asked for a large dash of raspberry syrop in his beer, he'd be considered effeminate, to put it mildly. Here, you'll see many a shaven headed, bull-necked type knocking back the Tyskie, the Zywiec or the Lech discoloured by syropy, sugary goo.

The beer companies have not been slow to spot this, and have launched their own sugary fruit-flavour concoctions - 'beers' like Redd's, FreeQ, Gingers. And mainstream beers have become sweeter. New launches, like the 'English style' beer 'Dog in the Fog', posing as a 'smooth beer' (thinks draughtflow beer like Boddingtons), turn out to be ghastly in taste. Even the much-praised Perla from Lublin, said to have a strongly hoppy flavour, is actually quite lacking in hops. If you like hoppy beers, try the German Jever pils.

And so after 12 years in Poland my quaff of choice is not Polish, but Czech - Pilsner Urquell.