West Germans Like Foreign Beers Too, Taste Test Shows
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DUESSELDORF, West Germany — German beers were outpointed by French and Belgian brews in a taste test that showed West Germany’s poor opinion of foreign beer is unfounded, the consumer monthly DM-Magazin reports.
“The taste comparison yielded astonishing results. Foreign beers are better than their reputation,” it says in the current edition.
Germans are, to put it mildly, proud of their beer and deeply hostile to European Communities proposals that would permit the import of foreign brands into a market where brewing is governed by a 470-year-old purity law.
But the blindfold test of three German and three foreign beers showed that simple prejudice may form the basis of German preference.
None of the 15 tasters managed to identify all three interlopers as foreign beers. And while a German pilsener, Fuerstenberg, was voted best, Belgium’s Stella Artois and the French Kronenbourg Premium took second and third places.
A few tasters said the Stella Artois was “undoubtedly from Bavaria” and only three suspected the Kronenbourg was foreign.
Nearly all identified Europe’s biggest selling beer, the Dutch-brewed Heineken, as a foreign brand and scored it last.
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