Review: Salva Vida (Cervecería Hondurena)

As you know by now, I'm quite a cranky person.. in fact, I consider myself the anti Guy Fieri, for beer. But we do have one thing in common, we like stuff that tastes good, and we both have big guts.. I guess that makes two things in common.

Bless my parents, every time they go on a vacation anywhere they bring me back beer. They used to bring me back tshirts, hats, pins or buttons, etc, but seeing as I have no use for that, they started to bring back a few local beers from every trip they went on. Since they prefer Molson Canadian 67, Keystone and Labatt Blue 55, they don't know what to get me, so.. it sometimes ends up in disappointment. But, they try, and they try hard.

They brought back a few beer from Roatan (an island off Honduras), this - Salva Vida, and two others that I will be reviewing in near future.

Salva Vida translates to english as "Life Saver", which makes sense as there's a life saver graphic right on the can.

Salva Vida isn't a beer I've seen in Canada before, compared to other tropical beers like Sol or Carib. Salva Vida is "la cerveza nacional" (The National Beer) of Honduras, apparently, and first was brewed in 1916 apparently (or the brewery started up). This is my first Honduran beer, so here it goes!

Appearance: Pours pale golden, like any standard lager, like straw hay. Lots of tiny bubbly carbonation going on, bit of a head that quickly depletes, actually - the head is quite mix range of bubbles, some very decent sized bubbles, medium, small, tiny, miniscule bubbles all coming together.. pretty weird actually. White foam.

Aroma: A bit malty like a beer such as Molson Dry, not much going on, bit of hay, bit of skunk and a bit of corn husk.

Taste: Mixture of malt and straw. That's all really. Really straw-tasting in fact. Tastes like straw water more than any beer. Kind of strong at same time because of that maltiness you expect from some tropical lagers, as well as Eastern European lagers. The amount of maltiness is compareable to Stag Lager out of Grenada. Also noticing a bit of a corn taste, oh fun.

Overall Thoughts: Just your average tropical lager. My parents didn't like this, and they are not too picky when it comes to yellow piss water (beer). It's a bit too malty, and really does taste like straw. I wouldn't pay for a beer like this. This is an example of a "can of hay". This Salva Vida came in a 355mL can (just like in Canada - some countries have smaller can sizes), has an ABV of 4.8%, and the beer states it only contains Water, Malts, Hops (what hops?) and "Adjuntos", which I'm assuming is a combination of corn and barley or "various grains", not associates.

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Cervecería Hondurena