I've never tried Slovenia beers before. It's not like they're commonly available in our local supermarkets like the Belgian or Czechia beers. When we travel, we, or rather hubs always like to try out the local beer scene. Afterall, that's part of the travel experience. On our only evening in Ljubljana we ordered a couple of local Slovenian beers with our dinner.
The 3rd Pill came highly recommended by the restaurant waiter and I can understand why. It's very nice, and that's coming from someone who doesn't drink much. It's a 6% American IPA made with 4 different types of malt and 4 different types of hops.
I noticed there's a lot of bubbles in the beer when poured out, almost like a fizzy drink, and it had a good head, which I'm told is good. This was hubs beer, and I tried a sip. It had a lovely aroma, with a hint of fruity flavour but I couldn't work out specifically what fruit.
The label and brand design is very minimalistic. If they removed the references for beer, it could have been any drink, fruit juice, energy drink, health drink or even coffee!
After trying the 3rd Pill, I tried my own beer, a 4.5% IPA craft beer called Mitzi. Hubs ordered this for me because of it's lower alcohol content. Damn! I wished I tried this before the 3rd Pill! Mitzi was nice, but after trying 3rd Pill that was very nice, this was just ok nice.
When you compare the two, the colour of the Mitzi is not as golden, and looks a bit more cloudy. Also, the beer head is obviously smaller.
Don't get me wrong, the Mitzi is an ok beer, but nothing too special about it, and not one I'd be rushing out to order again.
Unlike the Union Radler, we did order this a couple of times and even bought a couple of cans back to our Airbnb to drink in the evening. The Union Radler is a grapefruit and orange flavour beer, and was very refreshing. It's similar to a shandy which is beer mixed with lemonade but I'm not a fan of that. The Radler is a lot nicer, and since it only has 2% alcohol, it was very easy to drink and great for the hot summer evenings when we were in Slovenia.
After Ljubljana, we went to Bled for a couple of days. There was this lovely restaurant by the lake (pretty much everything is by the lake) and it had some tables upstairs on the balcony facing the lake. The sun was still burning hot at dinner time, perfect for another Union Radler.
I don't think Radler is very common in the UK, not that I've been actively looking for them. I will now, and hopefully I will find one that I will like so it can remind me if the nice time I had in Slovenia.
