It’s December 3rd and I’m already a day behind on my beers! And I expect to be even further behind soon. The good thing about that is that I’ll have plenty of interesting beers waiting for me to taste.

Today’s – technically yesterday’s – beer is HOLS by Camden Town Brewery. Styling itself as s tropical lager it didn’t exactly seem seasonal, unless perhaps you’re in Australia.

Rating: 2/5 stars.

Colour: Golden yellow with a hint of green.

Smell: To me this literally smells like tropical fruit juice. I cannot really smell beer from it at all.

Taste: Sweet but with a very marked hoppy bitterness. Pineapple and I would say papaya, though others overwhelmingly say passion fruit – and I must admit I am not sure what passion fruit tastes like, so they could very well be right.

Suggested pairings: Beery Christmas suggests pairing with cheese, and you don’t really have to ask me twice to have some cheese… As I didn’t have any honey chevre on hand I went with the white Old Amsterdam (one of my all time favourites) and a piece of Cambozola. And while I’m inclined to think that pretty much everything goes with cheese, I’d probably rather have a light summer salad or some plain salted crisps with this one.

Suggested serving temperature: 5-6 degrees Celsius

Personal comments: Well it won’t come as a surprise that this was not a favourite of mine. I honestly found the bitterness overwhelming at the same time as the sweetness was kind of cloying. And then I didn’t feel that there was much else to it. I’m not big on tropical fruit drinks, though the fruits themselves if served fresh are usually delicious. I feel there’s often too much (artificial) sweetness to tropical fruit flavouring. Just not my thing, I guess. But it was interesting to try something I would not usually come across or choose of my own accord – that’s the charm of this advent calendar after all!

About this beer type: As opposed to ale (if you Google lager or ale you overwhelmingly find comparisons between the two), lager is brewed cold with a bottom-fermenting yeast. As the name would suggest (lager literally means storage/store room in Norwegian and German) it is stored – at cold temperatures.