he Bottom Line A crisp and refreshing pilsner from Kenya.
Do you speak beer? I do. A lot of people I know speak beer too. Beer is a universal language, after all. You may not know how to communicate to somebody who speaks Swahili, for example, but offer them a beer, and you’ve made an instant friend. If only we could get world leaders to sit down and settle their differences at a pub over a few glasses of their respective local brews. What a better place the world might be.
A former co-worker of mine, an émigré to America from Kenya, spoke beer. He spoke Swahili and English too, but he loved a good brew almost as much as I do. He would often reminisce about a beer from home he missed dearly: Tusker. Imagine his surprise one day when I came to work with a few bottles and told him it was readily available here in America. You just need to know where to look.
Tusker is a lager beer broadly in the pilsner style. Kenya Breweries, the company that makes Tusker, has operated since 1922, and Tusker is one of the more popular African beers imported into the United States. Tusker is sold in half liter brown glass bottles that sport the profile of a bull elephant head on the label. Ironically, one of the brewery’s founders, George Hurst, was killed in 1923 by the very animal that now appears on every bottle of Tusker beer.
Tusker is brewed with Bima equatorial barley and water from Kenya’s Mizuma Springs. The resulting beer is crisp and refreshing, perfectly suited to hot African weather. It’s also on the lower side in alcohol content at 4.2% by volume, which makes it a great quenching beer that won’t leave you feeling quite so tipsy.
Tusker lager pours to a pale yellow color with a light creamy head formation and a soft malty nose. The palate is very crisp and refreshing with a refreshing creaminess and notes of biscuity, crackery malt. It's also quite clean of fruity esters and adjunct notes. In the finish, a light hoppiness emerges, nothing Earth-shattering mind you but bitter enough to impart a dry, quenching quality.
Tusker is easy to drink and great with lots of different foods, from African peanut soup to fried fish to pizza. Every Tusker label says Bia Yangu Nchi Yangu (my beer, my country). A sentiment my Kenyan friend would agree with most wholeheartedly.
EPINIONS CRITERIA:
Overall Rating: Three and one half stars
Beer Rating: A Solid Performer
Weight: Medium Body
Flavor: Balanced, dry
Complexity: Direct
Price: $2.99 per ½ liter bottle