Hofbräu Session Lager

Review Date 5/3/2024 By John Staradumsky

  Style: Light Beer   Brewery: Hofbräu   Country: Germany   State: N/A   $ Per OZ: $.11 (B)   ABV: 3.3%

Whodve thunk it? German light beer! I bought a can of German light beer! Actually, American style “light beer” was not really invented by Americans at all. Dr. Josef Owades, at the time of Rheingold Brewing fame, often gets the credit for inventing light beer, and he was responsible for the birth of light beer in America. Owades’ beer at Rheingold, though, Gablinger’s Diet Beer, is named for Hersch Gablinger, a Swiss chemist who developed a process for reducing carbohydrates in beer. This led to light beer in America and later, dry beer (an oxymoron if there ever was one).

German brewers have long produced such beers, called there Diät Pils, originally intended for diabetics. The beers in this style are low in calories and carbohydrates, just like most light beer.

Now comes Hofbrauhäus Munich Session Lager, a beer also low in alcohol. The alcohol content is 3.3% by volume, which you can tell from the large fonted “3.3” on the label.

From the can label:

Minimal alcohol, maximum taste

The unfiltered truth of minimal alcohol but maximum taste! Get the crisp and refreshing flavor of Bavarian hops balanced with the subtle aroma of barley malts.

Easy drinking, easy going, easy Bavarian! Why drink just one when you could have a whole Hofbräu session?  

I paid $1.99 for my half liter can of Hofbrauhäus Munich Session Lager from Half Time. Total Wine sells it for $6.99 a 4-pack in Richmond Virginia. My can is stamped PROD: 01.20.2023 EXP: 01.20.2024. I drank my can on April 28^th so a few months past the “EXP” date, but it seemed no woprse for the wear. I would try it again if I could get a fresher can. The label references 89 calories, but that is per 12-ounce serving, so if you drink the entire can (which most people will) it will be 134.

Hofbrauhäus Munich Session Lager pours to a cloudy yellow color with a prodigious fluffy white head and a nose of soft bready malt. Taking a sip, the beer is light in body with the delicious bready malt the nose promised. The beer is masterfully balanced in the finish with grassy, earthy hops and a lingering bitterness.

An excellent light beer. Hops and yeast don’t add a lot of calories, but here they add flavor, and the slightly thinner body is the only tell this is a light beer.

Glad I tried it?  T

Would I rebuy it??