I have tried a few cans and I can honestly say that I like the lager. It’s just like you’d expect from a lager, and has that nice crisp lager taste. Carlos Garcia grew up on the outskirts of Madrid and after seeing first-hand the central role that beer plays in Spanish custom & lifestyle he began to sell craft beer. This ultimately led him to establish La Sagra, a young, innovative brewery, with a passionate team of beer lovers brewing exceptional quality Beers, leading an unstoppable beer movement in Spain & beyond! And then there was the distribution: Molson Coors was already supplying a lot of bars. ‘The brand already owned Carling, the biggest beer in the country,’ says Brown. ‘All they had to say to pubs was: “Well, you’ve got Carling. Do you want some Madrí as well?”’ It’s strong enough to have a lot of flavour, but not so strong to feel like you’d be hammered after 2 or 3.

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Madrí is a completely manufactured and invented brand,’ says Pete Brown, an expert in beer trends and author of ‘ Clubland: How the Working Men’s Club Shaped Britain’ . ‘It’s purely a marketing reflex exercise. And it’s probably the best [marketing campaign] we’ve seen since Peroni.’ It’s been a while since I tried a new beer, but I saw some Madrí Excepcional and decided I had to get myself a few cans for the summer.

Good to know

Its branding is inspired by the term “Chulapo” – originally a group of people in Madrid during the 19 th century who were famous for their elaborate style of dress and cheeky attitude. Today, the term is often used to refer to people from Madrid and this sense of style and attitude that lives on in the city. Madrí Excepcional embodies this sentiment by bringing together traditional and modern brewing techniques to produce a great tasting fusion beer. Situated between Toledo and Madrid, La Sagra sits in a unique area of Spain, which is historically a melting pot of different cultures and tastes. This philosophy of “fusion” has been integral to the creation of Madri Excepcional. That was exactly the same month that Manchester Evening News reported on the new beer that was ‘everywhere’ in the UK, and the Irish Mirror asked whether the new lager that the UK was ‘obsessed’ with was about to ‘take over’ Irish pubs too. It was the same month that LADbible sent out its Madrí lager appreciation tweet with no explanation whatsoever. This received nearly 13,000 likes and rather a lot of suspicious comments. One said: ‘I’m increasingly convinced it’s a marketing tool for something else and not a real lager.’

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And as for the taste? It’s pretty good, to be honest. There’s a lot of shit lager out there, and Madrí isn’t one of them. ‘It isn’t too strong on one side or another,’ says Haye. ‘Even if you’re a neutral beer-drinker, you’re not going to find it offensive, and you’re not going to find it tasteless. And I think that’s exactly what they were looking for. It just seems to fit straight into the market.’

Questions & Answers

Madrí Excepcional aims to capture “El alma de Madrid” or “The Soul of Madrid” and has all the taste characteristics of a modern European-style lager. The crisp, clean and refreshing liquid is full of flavour and aroma at 4.6% ABV, with a light golden colour and a smooth, well-rounded taste profile with a short bitter finish. I wondered why I had been seeing quite a bit of what seems to be the new brand that is Madrí, so I done a bit of reading. For over two centuries Molson Coors has been brewing beverages that unite people for all of life’s moments. In the UK and Ireland we now have six breweries, with our UK home in the renowned brewing town, Burton-upon-Trent, and a nearly 300-year-old cider press in Suffolk.