There are lot of regional adjunct lagers that are beloved in their area of origin, but nowhere else since they’re all essentially the same. Pittsburgh has Iron City, Baltimore has National Bohemian and Texas has Lone Star Beer. This really doesn’t have any qualities (or demerits) that none of the other beers of its ilk don’t have. It’s a standard, familiar and rather boring lager.
Lone Star: Appearance
Pure golden color with near crystal clarity and carbonation visible. Pours to a small, white, soapy head which mostly evaporates and leaves no lacing.
Lone Star: Smell
Initially quite skunky like a green bottle import, but eventually becomes that of generic adjunct lager. Some cereal grain sweetness, but no distinctive traits. No noticeable flaws, either.
Lone Star: Taste
Not too many beers aside from Budweiser use rice as an adjunct, though I think that’s what Lone Star uses as it’s noticeably sweet up front but doesn’t have the raw corn flavor often found in beers and malt liquors of this type. No discernible hop presence in the form of flavor or bitterness. A bit of a metallic tang on the finish and a slight vegetable character in the aftertaste. Mostly, this palette is inoffensive and unexciting once you get used to it. That’s not intended to be a compliment, though.
Lone Star: Drinkability
You want a fizzy yellow lager? That’s what you get with this: though not so much “fizzy” as it is genuinely crisp and controlled rather than spastic. The mouthfeel is paper thin, though the texture is clean as is the aftertaste (many brews like this tend to be oily). At 4.65% ABV, Lone Star Beer is arguable sessionable; though I wouldn’t particularly recommend it considering how mild the palette is.
