Beer in Georgia

I recently visited Georgia and Armenia and somehow I have to start reporting on this trip. Today I'll start with something innocuous, namely beer in Georgia. While there are some types of beer that are brewed locally in Armenia, I couldn't find any in Georgia at first. That's not surprising, because Georgia has been a land of wine for 8,000 years. I'll write about one type of wine and how it's made later. I didn't like modern Georgian wine at all, so I looked for beer and found two strange Russian beers that somehow imitate German and Czech beers. The correct title of this blog post should actually be Russian beers in Georgia. But on the other hand, on my last evening I found the Georgian beer Kazbegi, which also tasted good, but I'll turn to the two Russian beers now.

The first beer is labelled: „Brander Bier - Deutsches Premium Lager - Gebraut mit deutschem Hopfen - Qualitätsbier - 4,5% - Gebraut in Russland von den Baltika Brauereien in St. Petersburg“ ["Brander Beer - German Premium Lager - Brewed with German Hops - Quality Beer - 4.5% - Brewed in Russia by Baltika Breweries in St. Petersburg"]. Interestingly, this Russian beer has a lot of German written on it, because they want to make it look like it was a German beer. This is far from being the case. The other interesting point is that it is brewed by Baltika Breweries in St. Petersburg. Baltica produces pleasant lagers, such as No. 3 and No. 7. But I did not like this Brander beer at all.

The other beer was Zatecky Gus. I thought it was a Polish beer, but that has been a far guess. It is also a Russian beer, but they make it look like a Czech beer. There is a Czech entry on Wikipedia [1]. This beer is also produced by Baltica. The name of the beer refers to the tradition of adding Žatec hops to the beer, and this is a key point in the Wikipedia article, because it does not mean that it is exclusively made with Žatec hops, but rather that it is probably added to the beer in homeopathic doses. Zatecky Gus is available in the Czech Republic in the Tesco supermarket chain; I assume that it is a beer in the lower price segment. The name is always given in Latin and not Cyrillic letters. There is also a hint of Czech in the beer advertisements, or at least that is what you think if you are Russian (or German), because Czech words are used. And you can also hear that in a commercial [2]. If you are Czech, however, you will hear that it is pseudo-Czech, i.e. just invented for the commercial.
In any case, this beer also tasted catastrophic, I can't put it any other way. Both beers are bad. They are worse than beers that I know from Russia. Why is that? Maybe so that there are cheap beers in Russia.

These are two beers that you should forget about, especially since Georgia also offers beers from Austria, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and other countries. You could also just drink Baltika, which is much better. Or as mentioned above: the Georgian beer Kazbegi (ყაზბეგი).

Links and Annotations:
[1] Zatecky Gus https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDateck%C3%BD_Gus
[2] Quoted from [1] Реклама Zatecky Gus | Жатецкий гусь безалкогольный "Хорошечно". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlaJ6vJGzpQ

.