Carlsberg UK
UK, 5.5% ABV
 
Probably the first of the ‘designer’ lagers, served in a small bottle that replaced Milk Stout and Barley Wine on the shelves and in the chiller cabinets of most boozers, the key to Holsten’s initial success was its above-average strength, which prevented pint drinkers from calling you a puff for supping it. Then someone had the brilliant idea that Holsten could be marketed as a low calorie drink because all of the sugar had been turned to alcohol during the brewing process. However, drinking ten bottles of the stuff left you needing a 2000-calorie dose of kebab, so the Holsten Pils Diet died a swift death. But Holsten’s sales still soared, largely due to a popular and imaginative advertising campaign featuring Jeff Goldblum playing his effortlessly smug, slightly spaced-out self. A sponsorship deal with Tottenham Hotspur followed and Holsten became a popular take home drink for armchair football supporters. Finally, we probably have Holsten Pils to thank for the disappearance of cholera and the black death. In the early days of bottled beer, it was often stored in cellars or pub yards where rats could piss on it with gay abandon. Since it was the habit of Holsten drinkers to eschew glasses, it meant every drink from the offending bottle was like a small inoculation against any condition that rats might pass on. Of course pubs take much more care with storage nowadays. Here’s hoping, anyway. MW