Brewery Rinkuškiai's Dragon Lady Dopplebock Lager

Crank this shit to the max.

Do you love babes? I mean REALLY love babes? Then this beer is for you!

Brewery Rinkuškiai started up in 1991. Currently three bros, Rimantas Čygas, Petras Kalkys and Sigitas Kalkys, run the operation. Their brewery is the fifth largest brewery in Lithuania, which is the equivalent of getting the bronze metal in regional finals of a Jamaican bob sled competition. Sorta prestigious but not totally. Can also be compared to getting to second base with your hottest second cousin.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room; but don't call her an elephant; the babe. If you aren't into babes then you HAVE to be into dragons. Whether you have a history of macking on chicks or playing D&D or Magic: The Gathering you've got to have some appeal to this label. Shit. It IS one of the biggest reasons I bought this beer. She's got so many horns and a killer cod-piece and the dragon is like "I'm totally into this woman. I'm not trying to slay her. I want to be her friend and we battle together against others".  She looks like She-Ra if a 20 year old man was in charge of animating the cartoon. Heck. She-Ra was pretty hot nonetheless. I like how this babe (we'll just call her a babe) isn't all ripped and crap like a "real dragon lady". It's like a dragon lady the way you want to picture her. Have I said "dragon lady" enough in this review? I will probably say it at least one more time. Dragon lady.

So let's talk about the manatee in the room. This beer (of 16.9 fluid ounces) is 9.7% ABV and I paid $2 for it. I would have bought this if it was 5% ABV. It's like going to Shanghai and getting a full body massage for $10 and finding out you get a free happy ending; not that I know anything about that.

So I think we established that this beer looks cool as crap and is strong and is cheap. It's like the holy grail of beers. I also watched Last Crusade today; killer movie. So when you have all those positive variables it goes without saying that this is going to taste like shit. Well...you know...?

Okay, first of all to look at it you can surmise that it has like no head to it and minimal carbonation. These aren't necessarily game enders but a lot of European style beers lack these things. It's got a solid, SOLID, golden hue to it. So golden it almost looks fake. They call it a premium European Lager which really questions "what makes something a PREMIUM European lager" because if this beer is "premium" I'd hate to see "un-premium". Let me just say this beer is not horrible. It has a bittersweet aftertaste, bold, tart aroma and a flat, bitter flavor. Again, not necessarily a stretch from eastern European beer. I mean look at Lithuania's basketball team. Talented (like the label) but looked horrible (sort of like the taste).

So, to summarize, this beer is awesome on the fact that the label is just about the coolest thing since sliced bread and you can get ripped off of it for $6. The problem is that it isn't something you'd have guests over for to sample. This is sort of like you have a buddy in from out of town and you wanna talk about killer babes and you got to your local party store and you know you can stomach one of these. It's a conversation piece for sure. In fact, I know I'd get this again if I did have a visitor because, heck, who wouldn't want to drink a beer called Dragon Lady and get a little sauced after one. The thing about it is, Rinkuškiai has two other beers that are stronger than this but not nearly as provocative (don't worry, we will review those soon).

Drinkability: 4/10
Taste: 4/10
Value: 9/10
Curb Appeal: 10/10

Overall: 6.75/10

Baltic Beverage's Kalnapilis Lager

The pride of Lithuania! Or so their website claims. They keep talking as if there are millions of breweries in Lithuania and Kalnapilis is beating each million in every category ever. I mean how many breweries can there be in Lithuania? Well I checked and there's about four of them. Dare I say though, that this beer is, as Tourette's Guy would say, "Pretty Good".

It's a very light colored beer. It also smells like beer, ya know, beer? It isn't much to write home about but it goes down pretty smooth and also has an almost citrus taste to it. This brewery makes about 10 different beers, so I went with the original with an ABV of 5.0%. This was three bucks for a 500mL bottle and since their website is written in Lithuanian, it's hard to decipher, but I'm pretty sure it says something about drinking like a dozen of these and going to Taco Bell. You can translate it, but what fun is there in that?

If you drink enough of these boys you might start shaving your head and dressing like this. The bottle is pretty cool. It's green, ya know, and has a red triangle on it which I assume means Albert Foight, the founder, was a huge advocate of Zelda. He initially called it "Bergschlösschen" meaning "castle on the hill", but when he realized there wasn't a "ö" on his dingus laptop, he changed it to Kalnapilis, the Lithuanian equivalent of the original German name. Apparently this is the Lithuanian equivalent of Gatorade and may have promoted by Kurt Rambis.

Drinkability: 7/10

Taste: 5/10

Value: 5/10
Curb Appeal: 5/10

Overall: 5.5/10