Next up we have some tasty, tasty beer in the form of Grafenwalder.
Grafenwalder is a German beer company exclusive to Lidl. There are several different styles of beer but I’ve only ever seen two of them at my local Lidl; pilsner and wheat. I’ll be reviewing the wheat beer soon, but this post is only about the pilsner.
Grafenwalder Pils comes in a 500ml can with a design that makes it appear more drinkable than most other cheap beers. Clocking in at 4.8%, the beer is around the same strength of most other similar drinks. Each can of Grafenwalder is 89p, which is on the expensive side of things. Combining this with the beer only being sold in individual cans in a shop that never gives you a bag means that Grafenwalder is not a beer which is easy to buy in bulk. I have previously attempted to buy an entire crate of it, but trying to carry 48 cans of beer in a 2 inch high flimsy cardboard box simply ends up in a car park full of dented beer cans.
My first experience with Grafenwalder was when I saw Norwegian rockers Taake performing at a concert. Their lead singer, Hoest, spent the duration of the show drinking it, so I figured if it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for me.
It wasn’t forming a head so I started pouring it more violently but then it got too big.
Grafenwalder pours a large head which quickly disappears. It seems slightly darker in colour compared to other beers, but the can says it’s brewed to German purity laws and I don’t care enough to look into it any further. The beer gives off a standard pilsner aroma which is much more pleasant than I expected. The taste is slightly pissier but still not too bad. It contains notes of Stella Artois, freshly cut grass and that weird taste you get from shitty bottled water.
One strange thing I’ve noticed about Grafenwalder is that it is really hard to cool. After being in the fridge for several hours it still isn’t at the ideal shitty beer drinking temperature. Once removed from the fridge it also seems to heat up to room temperature a lot faster than any other beer. My theory is that it comes in a steel can rather than the usual aluminium can which is acting as some kind of insulator, although I’m no gynecologist so take this with a pinch of salt.
Overall Grafenwalder is not a terrible beer. It’s slightly expensive but definitely preferable to the likes of Budweiser and Carlsberg. Grafenwalder is definitley a beer for getting drunk during the summer rather than the winter, although you could stockpile it during the cold months and harvest the heat it radiates.
Booze Review rating: 6/10 deliciouses
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well folks my take on the old graffenwaffen,this is a sort of bog standard pilsner,but having said that it defo does not taste cheep,my preferd taste in beer /lager is a hoppy taste and graffen just about comes into this catagory, and our local lidl sell it for 85p a can or as i buy a case for just over £20 give it a try .
Yep, it’s a decent beer. Not only it is better for the likes of Calrsberg (at least one sold in UK), Carling or other piss-beers but can easily be put alongside more decent beers like Stella, Grolsch or Heineken. The only difference being… well… it considerably cheaper AND it’s made in Germany which certainly isn’t a bad place for beer (or anythign else for that matter) to be made in.
All in all it’s a bit of a gold mine if you want something like Stella or Grolsch but prefer to pay alot less.
Grafenwalder now 4.8% is a drink for a Tuesday night when your skint. At 89p you cant go wrong, its drinkable fizzy wee. Colour is right for lager, not very hoppy, bit too sweetish malty flavour. Roll on payday when I can afford Becks or better.
I’m living in Leipzig, Germany at the moment, and there’s a Lidl about 3 mins walk from my flat. You can get a 6 pack of 500ml bottles of Grafenwalder here for €1.69….yep, that’s 25p a bottle. And it’s 5.2% here. Happy times.
im a light drinker but 2 cans on Saturday and 2 on Sunday get me to sleep nicely sloshed
love it.
Lucky you going to ship some over here to scotland for me at price
Just back from germany, 6 x 500ml bottles from lidels cost 1.69 euros plus you get 25 cents per bottle back at the lidel bottle bank. Therefore you only 19 cent per 6 pack. Virtually free beer.
i grew up in Germany so i know exactly how much our UK customs take the piss out of us!! You can get really good Brandy for €3. i love my Grafenwalder. i have a can every night! when i visit parents in germany it’s Bitburger Pils Stubbi::))
My go to brew these days. I can’t buy in bulk any more as I tend to consume whatever is at hand be it 6 cans or 26 so supermarket bulk buys are out of the question. At first I thought it was truly awful and to this day the hangovers are worst than similar lagers of the 4.8% variety. It does the trick though and if you keep your ear to the ground LIDL do 2 cans for £1 on certain super Saturdays;)
The steel cans remind me of when I was a nipper collecting cans for scrap and you had to use a magnet to separate the steel from the all new aluminium:)
my Favorite drink sometimes i will stay away from it for a couple of weeks and try other German Beers but i’ll always go back to Grafenwalder. Lidl charge 1.09 euro a can in Ireland. no bottles available. come on lidl start selling bottles in Ireland. Try the wheat version its makes a nice change.
Its lovely 10cans for 10 euro great.then hit the club,free in before 12 a cracking cheap night enjoy;)
top brew!! 15 cans for €7.50, drink 10, batter the wife and chill with the last 5. true wet the bed cheap beer, thank you lidl.
Graffen has a nice full sweet pilsner flavor when drinking it, however it is quite acidic leaving an acidic after taste a while after your last can. Especially the morning after can be a bit hard on the stomach compared to other similar beers. In general its good value with taste of a good quality beer.
Graffen is cheaper than most brands of similar strength at 85p a can. Ok Bavaria 5% beer is £1. But that extra 15p may not seem much it adds up when you get 10 or more cans.
Lidls used to have regularly buy one get one free on graffen and occasionally reduce it to 50p each. But that hasn’t happened for several years.
I’m not really what you would call a lager boy, if I’m in a pub I’m looking for the real ale. However, when buying to consume at home things change. The cost difference between real beer and lager increases and despite the best efforts of the breweries, the real stuff isn’t quite the same, whereas lager is more similar to the pub experience. I find Grafenwalder quite palatable, more so than Carlsberg Export which I personally find watery. It’s cheap, you can buy as many as you like, and probably due to the German purity laws, it doesn’t leave you with a head in the morning that feels like a donkey has been using it for football practice.
Veryucky to have a Lidl 5 minutes walk away. Grafenwalder is now my regular tipple. Easy on the pocket and a delightfully refreshing proper beer. There are of course ‘posher’ beers on the market but for the price and the availability it is a cracking drink.
i will disagree with that graffi is better summertime than winter! did someone try hit up on pan the lovely pils with some sugar or pouring hot to pint glass with some cordial? f.e polish malina(rasbery) u can get in any tesco…….that a business during wintertime! then the silly raiting…why is 6 out of ten only!!!common guys thats the most dissent lager in whole uk
Worked out last summer you could buy it in French Lidl for 29p a tin. Duty is where it’s at
This is a good tasting beer at an amazing price. It tastes much much better than carlsberg/carling and all the other mass produced piss you get at the big four supermarkets. It’s 85p for a 500ml can and 4.9% abv. What I found surprising is that this beer doesn’t leave me with a big headache like the other mass produced lagers on the market and upon looking at the can it doesn’t mention any sulphites or any other crap just “brewed to german purity laws” which could be why. I drank this chilled on a hot saturday evening and it went down a treat! Very easy to drink. All in all I think this is my lager of choice now.
I haven’t had Grafenwalder Pils for a long time, so today when shopping at Lidl I though I will get few cans for the Friday evening.
In Finland it’s 1,69€ / 0,5 liter can (-0,15€ when returning the empties) and it’s one of the cheapest beers here.
Taste is good. I’m not an expert with beers. I just like or don’t like. Grafenwalder Pils I like.
Easy to drink, and taste is good with a bit of bitterness in it. Better than those bulk beers we have in here.
Now, the second can……. just to make sure I like it 🙂
This Graffenwalder is nectar of the Gods for the money and taste. I won’t drink anything else except Graffenwalder wheatbeer when available. In UK we don’t get the other Graffenwalder varieties which is a crying shame. Well done Lidl for great quality and value as far as UK customs highwaymen will allow.
I like Grafenwalder but is it suitable for vegetarians as I have a couple in my family. It dosn’t look like it is.
Thought I’d try it. Honest opinion is its OK if you like the taste of flat lager. There really is hardly any fiz. Taste is OK but very flat.
A tasty pils can get 4 cans for £2.75 go forth and drink!
Very good beer.
Heavens, Grafenwalder seems to have disappeared from Lidl in and around Croydon and been replaced by Perlenbacher, which is good, but not as good. And I don’t know how the Wikipedia entry about Graffy can say it’s brewed by “Lindenbrauerei in Unna, owned by the Oetker Group” when the cans I’ve bought in the UK says “Produce of France” on the can. What is going on. I’m sure Lidl know but they don’t say much.
It has also gone from my local lidls. in Somerset. The replacement is truly awful. Does anyone know whether Aldi produce a similar beer?
It appears to have gone for good. Perlenbacher is horrid.
Lidl have lost their way completely with their beers.
Graffenwalder is a bog standard beer for people who like getting drunk, aren’t that bothered as to how they get there but haven’t yet descended into the realms of Barnstormer cider.
Get it down you..!!!!
As of March 2016, they still have it at the Lidl in Merthyr Tydfil…
I used to enjoy Grafenwalder but when the taste changed I checked the label. It now contains wheat, is brewed in France and thus no longer subject to the German purity laws. Lidl doesn’t seem to stock it any longer so perhaps I am not the only one that found it had deteriorated.
Looking at the Wikipedia entry for the supposed brewery in Germany, I see it hasn’t brewed for nearky forty years except for a hausbrauerei (microbewery) opened more recently that serves just the local area. It’s now a community centre in Unna so I wonder just who has been brewing and where the beer I used to enjoy so much?