Over at Psychedelic Kimchi, Sparkles posts an absolutely side-splitting review of Hite’s Prime Max beer. Read the whole thing, but just to some up:
So how is Prime Max? Besides sounding like an Image comic released in the early-nineties, pencilled by Rob Liefeld and inked by Danny Miki, it’s the best So-Ko beer I’ve ever tasted, though that’s akin to stating that sex with a panda is preferable to sex with a grizzly bear: both are wrong, though the the former feels a little righter.
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Hite Prime Max, huh? Somehow, something tells me that this trend of adding impressive-sounding words onto beer names could continue. So that, in 2020, Hite will be producing Hite Prime Max Super Ultra Numa-Numa Wiki Babaganooj Pro.
Funny review. Almost makes me wish I were back in Korea so that I could try this new beer thing (but I can buy real beer here, so why bother?)
One reason the beer sux here is the huge duty on imported malt (something like 275%). Luckily hops have no such duty, but good malt is key to good beer, and the local malt, which is monopolized by the big brewers, is crap.
There is an amazing mark-up on everything: wine, beer, magazines — anything of quality, that is ridiculous.
Additionally, if there is a good bar in Seoul, I have not found it yet. Many places are clip joints that try as hard as they may to seperate one from their money by requiring one to purchase appetizers to go with their beer or just plain selling imported beer for 7,000 - 12,000 won per bottle. Most draft beer (with a few exceptions in Seoul) I’ve tasted seems to have additives or the taps are just plain dirty.
After visiting a good bar in Europe , one is inclined to avoid spending their money out in Seoul.
Really? Gee, if hops are cheaper than the other beer ingredients, you’d think they’d actually use them. I always attributed the PPQ of Korean beer largely to the utter lack of hoppiness… more so than the fact that they don’t use much malt (and make up the balance with rice).
Three Alleys Pub has a few decent Belgian brews on tap.
“if there is a good bar in Seoul, I have not found it yet” Second that. Outside of the swanky hotels there’s nowhere to go to just sit and have a quiet drink in a place without being pushed to buy some shitty, overpriced fruit plate anju thing by people who like to twirl bottles around like Tom Cruise in “Cocktail” and yet can’t make an actual cocktail.
I don’t expect a Musso & Frank’s level of bar, just a bar for grownups. And Korean beer sucks ass.
I think you guys need to hang in anju-free Itaewon a bit more. 3 Alley has some excellent reasonably priced brews on tap, including the fine Alley Cat Ale from Edmonton (a classic West Coast-style pale ale), and they do clean those taps.
Three Alley is great, but it’s a pub (bright lights and a patio), not a bar. I mean like:
http://losangeles.citysearch.c.....alty_id=86
Thanks to our man No Mu Han, KAL will start flying directly to Athens, where they have good bars all over. Their Korean is not very good but their bars are far better than Seoul.
I certainly can’t argue with this beer’s name.