>>>Even the danish Tuborg, which used to be very popular (and expensive) here in the seventies, is now somewhat bland. Leaves no impression, it's just thin.
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>>Tuborg and Carlsberg offer workable compromize in mediterranean countries.
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>Ah, Carlsberg, the "yet another one lost in translation". It's so ordinary and without any specific taste that it's so easy to forget. I remember it was different from water, but couldn't describe how.
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>>One of the more astonishing expiriences was beer in Sri Lanka (was there when beer was one of the basic food ingredients for me): A wide range of well tasting down to dishwater quality. The well tasting probably a function of good water and less ingredients compared to cocktails of substances not in german "Reinheitsgebot", but was unexpected in the 2 month diving sabattical I gave myself long, long ago.
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>You have just reminded yourself that it's time for another.

not possible for "family reasons" currently. Have compensated in other areas ;-)
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>My surprise beer was Sapporo - which had the exactly same taste as our local beer (and the brewery is older than Guinness by 20 years) had until 1978, when they started, ahem, introducing new kinds of. Imagine sitting in the japanese quarter of SF and being hit with the long lost taste from home.

Yupp, in early 70's it was fun to try Sapporo in japanese restaurants and find it more than adequate - but expensive enough to do it seldom ;-)
Back then jap food was nearly unknown here (2 restaurants in Frankfurt only, no sushi bars, jap quarter only in Düsseldorf) but I was often in a crowd going there...