Żywiec
Poland, 5.7% ABV

Do you keep giving this hugely popular Polish beer a wide berth because you don’t know how to ask for it in the boozer? It’s quite simple, using only two syllables. First, Zhiv as in Dr Zhivago. And then yets as in the involuntary throat spasms you make with your throbbing head down a Krakow hotel toilet and vague memories of being eight sheets to the wind the night before. Zhiv-yets. With its strength of 5.7% tasting more like nine or ten, Żywiec is triple-filtered to remove anything as namby-pamby as subtlety, leaving a golden brew that is slightly chemical on the nose, Happy Shopper loaf-like in the body, and with an aftertaste of freshly rusted nuts and bolts. Żywiec’s gimmick is a heat-sensitive logo on the label that only appears if the beer is at the right temperature (+4°C), and disappears again when exposed to body heat. This is handy for checking that you’re experiencing the optimum drinking pleasure, and also for proving to yourself that you’re merely bored rigid in one of the dreary chain pubs that are its primary UK stockist, and not actually stone cold, toes-up dead. So, it’s difficult to order, unpalatably bitter and worryingly addictive. Żywiec does, however, have one bonus feature that excuses it all: thanks to the exclusive use of the purest water from springs at the foot of the Skrzyczne Mountain (Pronunciation? You’re on your own there, kidda.) it’s reputed to be absolutely hangover-proof. I beg to differ. MJ