Red Horse 

www.sanmiguelbrewery.com

Brewed by San Miguel Brewery
Style: Strong Pale Lager
Mandaluyong City, Metro Manila, Philippines

Red Horse Beer is an extra-strong lager brewed by the San Miguel Brewery from Manila in the Philippines. 

San Miguel beer was first produced by La Fabrica de Cerveza de San Miguel, a small brewery in the Philippines, which began its activity in 1890. In 1963 the brewery was renamed San Miguel Corporation to today where it is Southeast Asia’s largest publicly listed food, beverage and packaging company with over 18,000 employees in over 100 major facilities throughout the Asia-Pacific. It is also among the fastest growing conglomerates in the world with key investments and new business ventures in fuel and oil, aviation, energy, telecommunications, infrastructure, mining, properties and banking.

San Miguel is the undisputed leader in its home market Philippines, with over a 90% market share domestically for beer. The brewing division operate six breweries in the Philippines and plants in Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand. San Miguel is also exported to over 60 countries worldwide and they produce a wide variety of beers, from the usual glut of lagers to fruit flavoured beers, to the non alcoholic beer varieties, to standardized soft drink fruit and cola beverages. 

Now I am sure you are thinking you drank plenty of San Miguel on a beach in sunny Spain. Yes there is a relationship between this brand and the one in Espana. 
As part of its overseas expansion, San Miguel began its foray into the Spanish market in 1953, setting up the company which would later become San Miguel Spain. In the early 1950s, Enrique Suárez Rezona, Ramón Vidal and Jaime Muñiz from the medicinal company, La Segarra, made contact with Andrés Soriano, then president of San Miguel Brewery, to allow them to produce beer under the San Miguel name in Spain. In 1953, San Miguel Brewery, Inc. signed the “Manila Agreement”, with the Philippine brewer setting up a new Spanish brewery, La Segarra, S.A.. The company would later be renamed San Miguel Fábricas de Cerveza y Malta, S.A. in 1957, an affiliate of San Miguel Brewery, Inc. which initially held 20% equity share via its Hong Kong subsidiary.
The company was acquired by Mahou, S.A. from Groupe Danone in 2000, combining to form Spain’s largest brewer, the Mahou-San Miguel Group. On 26 February 2014, San Miguel and Mahou-San Miguel signed a co-operation agreement to promote jointly San Miguel Beer and expand its global footprint. All a little confusing, just better to think of them as two competitive brothers fighting on the same team, the global club of beer drinkers.

Review: 330ml bottle of Red Horse Beer: 8.0% vol.

First brew from the Philippines, lets see how it goes. Comes in a nice bottle with the logo of a red horse, bit of a retro look to it. 

Red Horse is San Miguel’s high alcohol beer brand. Introduced in 1982, its extremely popular in the Philippines, can be found in cans and bottles, and pretty much about everywhere and anywhere in the country, on tap and can even be served in buckets!

The alcohol by volume differs depending on region, with the export version for international drinkers coming out at a high 8%, while it is 6.9%. for the home market. Either way its marketed as “Extra Strong”

On pour it is flat, no carbonation resulting in no head and a golden colour, a very flat terrible looking effort here on the eye……

Getting a hoppy smell on the nose, its not strong and pretty faint overall, but its there. Getting the earthy hops and the sweet fresh grains….

Onto the taste, first impressions are good, tastes not too bad. Has a bit of a tangy taste with the hops and there is some character there alright.

Hoppy and with dark fruits detected in the initial few mouthfuls. Also getting a sweet corn flavour coming out too. Full bodied. Barley malts, hops, sweet. 

Has some interesting flavours and a unique taste but cant say it is winning me over. Doesn’t overly excite, but for an Asian beer its a very good effort. 

Not much from the bottle which is always annoying, not much at all.

Might be a nice beer to sip at a bar on a beach in the Philippines, like all these exotic beers tend to be. Not bad really, not sure what I think of it to be honest, it was ok I guess. Not something I would buy again in a hurry as it wasn’t as smooth as it should be, that with the high alcohol content, but as I said, for an Asian beer and half way around the world, it isn’t too bad.

It is a cheap beer from Asia that has some flavours and a taste to it, is not overly offensive and for that alone it is impressive. Might try again…..

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