Eiken Artois Beer Review
October 23, 2008
In recent years InBev have been trying to diversify their lager sales from purely Stella Artois into ‘The Artois Family’. This is a strategy employed with reasonable success by Kronenbourg (more on this another day) who are now owned by Carlsberg. Initially the ‘Artois Family’ comprised Stella Artois, Peetermans (which is best described as ‘wheat beer lite’) and then Artois Bock, a potent 6.2% dark ”Vienna” style beer.
Artois Bock was sold in small (275ml) bottles and only in half pints on draught. Although I confess I only saw it available on draught once. I put this in the past tense because earlier this year Artois Bock was dropped by InBev from the ‘Artois Family’ to allow Eiken Artois to be born. Eiken Artois is being sold as ‘oak aged’ and being pitched as a premium lager.
Frankly Eiken Artois is disappointing, the result of marketing over flavour, or even heritage – can anyone name another oak aged Lager? Elken Artois comes out as a warm pale brown colour, but with hardly any head, and even the best efforts of the ’sparkler’ etched on the bottom of the Artois ‘chalice’ couldn’t produce anything meriting the name.
And the flavour? Well there’s nothing discernible from the oak. From drinking oak aged wines it might be reasonable to expect a hint of Vanilla, or even some of the mellowness associated with beechwood aged beers, but Eiken Artois delivers none of this. It delivers a thin, not necessarily pleasant taste, slightly metallic, and not particularly refreshing despite its 4.6% ABV.
For inspiration, Artois would have been better looking to other ‘red’ lagers such as George Killian’s ‘Irish’ Red or Staropramen’s ‘Granat’ rather than come up with something this spurious.
This one won’t be reappearing in my beer fridge and frankly, as a brand I suspect it will be pretty short lived. Expect another new arrival in the Artois family before too long.
One star – for being brewed in Leuven and not under licence in Wales!
Rating: 
Posted in 1 Star Reviews, All Brews Reviewed, Belgian Beers, European Beers, Lager, Views from a Brit
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October 24th, 2008 at 2:24 am
“can anyone name another oak aged beer?”
Are you kidding? There must be thousands! Goose Island, Three Floyds, Great Divide, Russian River, Avery, Left Hand, Surly, Lagunitas, and Founders are just some of the brewers with multiple oak-aged releases.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Thanks Andrew, you guys in the US have some great ‘craft’ micro breweries, and clearly they’ve tried the oak ageing with more success than the guys at Artois.
As it is, I can’t think of a British or European Oak Aged beer, but am happy to stand corrected.
October 24th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Andrew makes a great point, but its important to remember that ‘Bob the Brit’ is literally British, and literally lives in England (you can tell by the funny spelling of some words, HA!!!). Bob is a guest-poster who gives us a European’s perspective on beer.
Its likely that the beers Andrew mentioned are not available in the UK – or even heard of over there for that matter.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
I’ve had a fair share of beers with that odd metallic taste. Most of the times it is on draft beers where the bar doesn’t properly clean their lines. But I have had the experience with Newcastle out of a bottle before. I can say it can be enough to turn you off to a beer even if it may be a select time.
October 24th, 2008 at 10:05 pm
Strangely enough, I found that the Boddington’s Pub Ale from the can had a weird metallic taste as well that was a bit of a surprise to me. Metallic-flavored beer – not good.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I first saw this new beer in Tesco’s a few months ago but did not take much notice, I have for a long time avioded Stella as it is nowhere as good imho as the Beer they brew in Belgian, anyway, a couple of weeks ago it crept on to the shelves of “Home and Bargain”, a chain that specializes in end of range and short shelf live products and after reading on the packaging it was brewed Leuven I was expecting a real treat!.
Horror’s!, a flat uninspiring beer with as much appeal as cold weak tea.
How did they ever imagine this to be a replacement for Bock?, they can only do
their reputation harm.