A CCAF deep strike raiding team, Special Directives Detachment 108 operates independently on detached missions at the direction of the Strategios.

Regent L (homebrew design)
Vindicator 4L
Thunderbolt 10-SE
Men Shen L (homebrew design)

The paint scheme is meant to evoke beast faces on traditional Chinese bronze armour.

荣耀归于卡佩拉邦联! Glory to the Capellan Confederation!

His little brother drew the card

It doesn't bubble like the Draught but it tastes good.

Nothing fancy but I'm quite happy with them

Which way around would it be better to visit these cities?

It's my first visit to China (well I went once before in 1998 but that was an age ago).
Any other comments on the itinerary are fine too.

A pint of the black stuff at the Singapore Cricket Club

After a rather disappointing microbrewery experience in Phnom Penh, I went to a supermarket to pick up some Cambodian Organic Kampot Pepper for my wife. As always I took a wander over to the chillers to check out the beers on offer. Apart from the microbreweries I had had mostly Angkor or Krud but I was intrigued by a variant of our ABC Extra Stout that I've never seen in SG- ABC Smooth Stout.

Sip out of the chilled can was relatively thin in mouthfeel but without as much of the burnt charcoaly taste as ABC Extra. It doesn't have that astringency either. There's a distinct cocoa taste here which is quite pleasant.

This is not a nitro stout and weighs in at 5.3% abv, comfortably below ABC Extra's 6% (having said this ABC Extra in Cambodia comes in at 8%, and is presumably more like what ours used to be). It's very refreshing and doesn't linger on the tongue. Not as well balanced as Royal Stout but far, far better than Singaporean ABC Extra.

While I think this is all around a decent beer, if Heineken were to release this here I suspect it would be a product in search of a market. The uncles would want something heavier and the non uncles would tend toward nitro stouts of which Connors has a strong presence in this abv range.

Nonetheless if you're ever in Cambodia, want a stout and don't want to deal with 8% monsters, this is a perfectly cromulent option.

I recently bought and quite liked the Guinness Nitrosurge device but not enough to shell out more for the special cans once the two which came in the starter pack were drunk.

I know about the pin trick to depressurize a normal widgeted Guinness Draught can for use with the Nitrosurger but I hit upon a simpler solution. A local beer, Connor's Stout Porter (no affiliation to Conor McGregor) is nitrogenated but not widgeted. Their solution to the problem of a good pour is for you to gently shake the can before opening it which works quite well. However I figured this would work just as well with the Nitrosurger, and it did. The cans are 500ml, less volume than the nitrosurge cans so I couldn't quite fill up the pint glass enough to get the dome, but it's a pretty good pour I think.

Seafood fried rice and a pint

My son once came home with a report card that was aggressively mediocre. He had managed to scrape through all of his subjects. However, to mitigate this, he proudly said 'Well at least most of the class did worse than me'

<insert: HomerStranglingBartWhyYouLittle.gif>

It was that memory that was triggered when I sat down to review Tiger Crystal.

Ok you can see my previous review on Tiger Original for the actual history of Asia Pacific Breweries and my theory as to why they weren't able to make their premier brand a good lager, but today we'll talk about Tiger Crystal specifically.

History

Tiger Crystal was launched in SG in 2010 and marketed itself as being chill filtered for more sophisticated drinkers. It did not land well and while still sold by APB in markets like Vietnam, was withdrawn from Singapore until 2019 when it was relaunched. It managed to stick the landing this time and has been in the local market since.

APBs marketing copy claims that
Tiger Crystal is specially brewed using the unique -1°C crystal cold filtration process that preserves and enhances the most desirable flavours and aroma. The result is a full-flavoured pale gold lager that is smooth, crisp and easy-to-drink.

That awkwardly used determiner is irritating. Is there only one such process? 'An unique -1C...' would be more elegant.

What's a cold filtration process? It's basically filtering the beer at very low temperatures so that excess proteins and such clump together more easily. The result is a very clear and bright beer, but the process is also said to remove some of the potential complex and subtle flavours of beer.

So one suspects the enhancing of 'most desirable flavours and aroma' is just marketing bullshit. However, if you look at the review I linked above you will see just what I think of Tiger's flavours and aroma. Cold filtration just might be the answer!

Review

What Tiger should be, although that's not saying much.

This isn't a traditional kopitiam beer so I didn't put it on the rocks. We're drinking it the way it was meant to be, and I even pulled my grandfather's old Tiger glass from the 1960s out of the cupboard.

Same caramel maltiness but without the skunkiness. Carbonation levels better than original Tiger. A bit of acidity comes through without it being overly sour.

Essentially the cold filtration has achieved the same purpose as having Tiger Original on the rocks.- it's sanded off the rough edges and left the passable aspects of Tiger.

I look almost fondly on this as if Asia Pacific Breweries were a doddery old dog who through transcendent effort managed to pee mostly outside and not on the carpet. That's to say that it manages to just about be a mediocre lager and unlike Tiger Original it isn't a bad beer. That's not necessarily to say that it's a good beer but I would buy Tiger Crystal if it was a choice between this and Tiger and nothing else.

Let me get this out of the way right at the start. It may be somewhat unpatriotic but I really don't like Tiger.

Beer aficionados will say that all macro adjunct lagers are the same, but I beg to disagree. When I was at uni in the UK I enjoyed it on the rare occasions I could find or afford it but I suspect that was down to homesickness.

To me Tiger is, at best, just ok. It's also, IMO, the biggest argument in favour of ice in beer.

History lesson

Tiger beer is quite iconic, having been brewed in Singapore since 1932. Malayan Breweries(later Asia Pacific Breweries) was a joint venture between Heineken and Fraser & Neave but unlike Archipelago Brewing Company with its Dutch/German expertise from Heineken and Becks, I suspect F&N and its British execs had more input here.

It's a British style lager, heavier on the malt than many others- and importantly, the British have never done lager well. I suspect this is the original sin of Tiger.

I feel this pattern has continued- Tiger has put a great deal of effort into following trends but has tended to produce mediocre versions.

The 20-teens with the rise of weissbeer and dunkel saw Tiger launch Tiger White and Tiger Black, ersatz versions of both styles. Ok but nothing particularly great in either case.

Tiger Radler is IMO better because in a shandy, Tiger is successfully overwhelmed by a sugary soft drink, which can only be a net positive.

Tiger is absolutely outstanding when it comes to marketing though, presenting itself in the Western market as a cooler and more sophisticated alternative to the Asian takeout beers like Kingfisher or Singha. Domestically of course they dominated beer advertising- It's Tiger Time ^itsTigerTime was a hip 90s update of their tried and true colonial slogan Time for a Tiger. That incidentally was possibly the only beer slogan to become the title of a book, the first instalment of Anthony Burgess' outstanding Malayan Trilogy.

Review

When I opened the car, the beer seemed rather flat. A sip from the can bore this out- there was a gentle nod to carbonation but not much fizz. This is fine when it comes to an ale or something more heavily flavoured. When you drink a macro lager, though, you want something refreshing, the carbonation is meant to cut through any dehydration and give you a rush of coolness. Tiger is just too mild to carry it off.

The one thing it has going for it is a distinct maltiness, which is not unpleasant but this unfortunately gets a bit too string before it gives way to a sourish aftertaste. You might think the beer is skunked but honestly, this is what I've always experienced with Tiger.

Pouring the can onto the rocks angried up the bubbles, giving a nice, light, foamy head. This smells a lot more pleasant, with that skunkiness giving way to a cleaner acidic scent. It also tastes better, the cloying elements of the maltiness effectively muted by the ice. The aftertaste is sour but pleasantly so.

In the end, this is a lot better on the rocks, but I honestly see no reason why anyone should buy a Tiger when there are better and cheaper kopitiam lagers available.

Time for a Tiger? Never, I say.

Side note: On the Brits and lager. Lager was never the main traditional pub drink of Britain- up to the 1970s pubs were dominated by ales. Milds, maltier, lower alcohol brews and Bitters, hoppier stronger ones, along with regional variants like red and brown ales. While lagers had been gaining popularity, anecdotally I've heard the turning point was the summer heatwave of 1976 which saw sweltering beet-red Englishmen gasping for anything cold, laying the groumdwork for lager's dominance in the 80s and 90s, almost killing off their ale brewing industry in the process outside the major macrobreweries. Arguably British ale only really recovered in the past decade or two.

In my previous two reviews, I looked at Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and ABC Extra Stout and to complete the trifecta, we have a much younger competitor from across the Causeway: Danish Royal Stout.

Interestingly this ended up synchronising nicely with my earlier review on Connor's Stout Porter, perhaps unsurprisingly because Connors is also part of Carlsberg Malaysia's stable.

When launched in 1992, without the colonial roots of ABC or Guinness' line of descent from St James Gate, Carlsberg had to gin up an ersatz background for it, waving vaguely at 19th C Danish history (see below for my comments on stunning research about Carlsberg MY's marketing copy)

But lets leave my literary criticism aside for later- on with the review.

For whatever reason the Danish angle was dropped, leaving the brew as Danish Royal Stout, although the blurb on the can still refers to the made up history. Anyway, what's in a name? A stout by any other name would taste as sweet.

This was honestly really, really good. Maybe even better than the Guinness FES which it shares a 5.5% abv with.

You can taste the shared genetic heritage with Connors- malty flavours with heavy coffee overtones. Danish Royal Stout is an FES version of its lighter, nitro younger brother.

Mouthfeel was lightly syrupy, but not overly so and held up even on the rocks

Nicely bitter too, interestingly seeming a bit hoppier than Guinness FES or ABC. Not astringent.

The pour gave a light, not very creamy head, with small bubbles (looks a lot like coke). It seems well carbonated but even on ice doesn't flatten out, unlike the ABC.

The taste was pleasant and well balanced even halfway through the can. No disproportionate sweet, sour or smokey notes. Outstanding.

The similarities between Danish Royal Stout and Connors are in more than just ownership. The same copywriter seems to have written the somewhat fractured blurb for both.

And in my research I think I have solved a historical mystery. Let's read the blurb.

Royal Stout is a premium Danish stout brewed to honour the great feat of Danish Kings in the 19th century.

What great feat? Which Kings? Did multiple Kings carry out one great feat?

The clue to this dilemma is in the marketing blurb for Connors which claims to be Inspired by the British stout recipe from the 1700s.

Again we see that weirdly used determiner, 'the'. Was there only one British stout recipe? Did Arthur Guinness destroy all the rest before leaving for Dublin leaving only one to be found by Carlsberg's intrepid explorers?

Maybe finding it was the great feat of the Danish kings!
This might be the real reason why the House of Oldenburg lost its hold on the Danish throne in 1863! Perhaps finding THE 18th C British Stout Recipe is how Christian IX proved that the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg was a worthy successor!

Alas the books of history are closed on these matters, but you and I, r/Singapore, we know the truth!

After my review of the original ang ji gao I decided to try the other lau ah pek beer, ABC Stout.

You can see the linked post for the history of Foreign Extra Stouts in general, but ABC, unlike Guinness, has a purely South East Asian history. ABC's roots start in 1931 in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia) with the setting up of the Archipel Brouwerij Compagnie which was a Dutch/German joint venture to initially brew and distribute Becks lager. In 1933 they incorporated a branch in Singapore and translated the company name to English as the Archipelago Brewery Company. Their flagship product was Anchor beer (hence the modern Anchorpoint at Alexandra Road where the brewery originally was.

Many mergers and acquisitions down the road the brand is now owned by Asia Pacific Breweries (which itself is owned by Heineken).

So, on to the beer. While still a drop from the old school 8%, this is more alcoholically robust than our Guinness FES, coming in at 6%.

Taking a sip straight out of the can- this was less flat tasting than Guinness, it seemed more carbonated, muting the licorice/herbal medicine/soy sauce taste.

Poured on the rocks it also seemed more actively carbonated, fizzing up.

The taste is more astringent than Guinness was. Interestingly it's less sweet than Guinness too despite the higher abv. Not so much of a coffee taste either- An almost burnt taste, but not unpleasantly so.

While it initially seemed more carbonated, it turns out to a rather flat texture and thin mouthfeel (which goes with the lack of sweetness). I'm not sure where the sugar from the higher abv is going. The more of this I drink, the less I'm enthralled. It's just very insubstantial.

I'm in a bit of a dilemma about this- on the rocks it's too thin but chilled and drunk straight up I suspect the charcoal taste might be too overwhelming.

Guinness is still the leader when it comes to FE stouts IMO.

A couple months ago I reviewed a Malaysian (truly Asian)/semi-uniquely Singaporean beer- Connors Stout Porter which is as far as I can tell specially produced for the Malaysian/Singaporean market.

Today, I turn to the quintessential uncle drink, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, the original Red Tongued Dog/Ang Ji Kao.

So what is this and how is it different from a nitro stout like Guinness Draught or Connors?

Long before the nitro stout process was inventedm(in the 1960s) Guinness was also in the business of having stout brewed overseas. In the North American market I understand that this is Guinness Extra Stout, which I remember having had a bottle of way back in 2002 (IIRC this was my first exposure to stout).

However in the more tropical areas of the world, Guinness has had a long tradition of licensing *Foreign* Extra Stouts, generally with much higher abv values and bolder, sometimes harsher, tastes. Nigerian FES is famous, not only weighing in at 7.2% but adding sorghum to the grain bill alongside the usual barley.

For these Extra/FES versions Guinness brews a wort concentrate in Ireland that can be exported and then brewed and tweaked to local tastes overseas.

Here in SG and MY the alcohol content has been brought down from a 7% 8% (!) to a more modest 5.5% due to alcohol taxation but one interesting thing about the way its traditionally (and still often) drunk...

We put ice in it

When I posted this on r/beer it led to quite a few ang mohs clutching their pearls at the thought of ice in beer.

There's a reason for this, though. Back in the day refrigeration capacity would have been distinctly limited. People therefore plopped ice into the beer to cool down. The powerful taste of the FES meant the ice didn't wash everything out. If I may digress, this (IMO) is why Tiger has an unpleasantly thick and sweet taste out of the can- it's meant to be iced.

So above you can see the can, with its cheerful yellow signature. I poured it into a glass of ice and sat down to enjoy it.

Temperature of can- around 12 C. To simulate creaky 1960s refrigeration I stuck it in the wine chiller instead of the fridge.

Temperature of me- too hot. I had just gone on a 3.5 km afternoon run in 33 degree heat and 70% humidity. The beer was necessary.

My first sip, directly from the can, was alright. A bit too bitter and somehow slightly flat, licorice tasting. Heavy but without any redeeming sharpness, and a bit too much alcohol sweetness.

Pouring it over the ice angried up the bubbles and unlike the creamy head of a nitro stout this had large carbonated bubbles. It was also more distinctly black than a Draught, almost like a cola.

My first sip from the glass revealed a much better taste profile than straight out of the can. This, on the rocks, is a sharp, bittersweet beer. Much more coffee flavoured than a Guinness draught, astringent and refreshing.

My conclusion is that the lao ah peks were correct. If you're drinking a Guinness FES in tropical heat ice works just fine.

Edit: On why it was called Ang Ji Gao (the Red Tounged Dog)

Back in colonial times, breweries rather than marketing their beer themselves would license it out to dlstribution companies for export and sale in the colonies.

One of the major distributors of Guinness (and Bass ales) was Blood Wolfe & Co whose logo was a wolf with a red tongue. Thus the ah peks would just ask for yi ping ang ji gao.

Besides Guinness Draught, the Irish Dry nitro stout exported worldwide, Guinness has also been in the business of having stout brewed overseas. In the North American market I understand that this is Guinness Extra Stout, which I remember having had a bottle of way back in 2002 (IIRC this was my first exposure to stout).

However in the more tropical areas of the world, Guinness has had a long tradition of licensing Foreign Extra Stouts, generally with much higher abv values and bolder, sometimes harsher, tastes. Nigerian FES is famous, not only weighing in at 7.2% but adding sorghum to the grain bill alongside the usual barley.

Here in South East Asia the alcohol content has been brought down from a colonial era 7% to a more modest 5.5% due to alcohol taxation, but Singaporean/Malaysian FES is still reasonably popular, albeit as a bit of an old man's drink.

And one interesting thing about the way its traditionally drunk...

We put ice in it

There's a reason for this, though. Back in the day refrigeration capacity would have been distinctly limited. People therefore plopped ice into the beer to cool down. The powerful taste of the beer meant the ice didn't wash everything out.

So above you can see the can, with its cheerful yellow signature. I poured it into a glass of ice and sat down to enjoy it.

Temperature of can- around 12 C. To simulate creaky 1960s refrigeration I stuck it in the wine chiller instead of the fridge.

Temperature of me- too hot. I just went on a 3.5 km afternoon run in 33 degree heat and 70% humidity. The beer is necessary.

My first sip, directly from the can, was alright. A bit too bitter and somehow slightly flat, licorice tasting. Heavy but without any redeeming sharpness, and a bit too much alcohol sweetness.

Pouring it over the ice angried up the bubbles and my first sip from the glass revealed a much better taste profile. This, on the rocks, is a sharp, bittersweet beer. Much more coffee flavoured than a Guinness draught, astringent and refreshing.

My conclusion is that the ancients were correct. If you're drinking a Guinness FES in tropical heat ice works just fine.

Chicken 65 and a pint of the black