SABMiller
Poland, 5.6%
 
Regarded by many as the most – and some might say only – palatable Polish beer, Tyskie (that’s Tisk-yeh) is closer to a Czech pilsner than any of its compatriot rivals, with a golden colour and a thick white head, and because of its infinitely smaller gut-rot potential, it’s consequently its home country’s best selling brand. Still brewed in the southern Polish town of Tychy – close to Katowice and birthplace of no less than Liverpool FC’s clanger-prone former ‘keeper Jerzy Dudek – this beer is part of a long and self-contained tradition dating back to 1629. Thanks to the influx of Polish nationals, however, it has quietly and subtly worked its multiple award-winning way into the pubs, hypermarkets and grotty corner stores of Britain. Strangely in a market usually hell-bent on world domination, Tyskie’s overlords SABMiller seem perfectly happy to keep it as a parochial concern and currently offer very little in the way of English blurb to entice the casual internet browser or indeed make life simple for clever dick contributors to impertinent beer guides. Maybe they’re trying to retain an air of mystery and east European otherness: who can tell? But by using a very helpful online Polish-to-English translator, it seems that the best way to appreciate Tyskie is as follows: ‘Cover with beer hand – szklankę and aggressively zamieszaj. Discover next szklankę, but then, sweat it involve air fastly nose right now pestilence. Then, you will feel bouquet of fruit smell like bananowy, truskawkowy or jabłkowy.’ Couldn’t have put it better myself. MJ