It states right on the bottle “Belikin - the beer of Belize” and they aren’t kidding. Belikin is “the” only beer available in most places in Belize. I was in Belize for 9 days and I only saw Belikin products and occasionally Red Stripe. Belikin Brewing makes 4 products: Belikin Lager, Belikin Stout, Light House, and Belikin Premium. The Belikin Company also produces Guinness Foreign Extra Stout under license from Guinness. Belikin Lager is by far the most popular beer you will find in Belize. Every place that serves alcohol will have it in bottles, and if you ask for a Belikin or just a “beer” you will get a Belikin Lager. The others can be more elusive, but are generally available at better bars and resorts. They all pretty much taste the same, the differences being that Light House is a light beer and the Belikin Premium comes in 12 ounce bottle with a alcohol content around 5.5%. I understand that Belikin on draft exists, but I never saw any draft beer in Belize.

Belikin Lager tastes pretty much like most tropical beers: slightly sweet with very low hops flavor and a clean finish, making it a refreshing beer you can drink a lot of in the tropical heat. I found the taste similar to, but even milder than, Miller High Life (which is my favorite summertime drinking beer). The lager goes great with the seafood and rice and beans dishes that are a staple of the Belizean diet. Belikin Lager’s alcohol content is a little lower in than most US domestic lagers at 4.8% alcohol by volume. The stout is a dark, very sweet stout with a higher alcohol content at 6.3% by volume. The stout is surprisingly good, but a bit too sweet to drink more than a couple of bottles in a row in the heat of Belize.

Belikin Lager and Stout come in the same bottle, the only difference is the bottle cap; green caps for lager and blue caps for stout. The bottles are the heaviest I have ever felt. They are the same size as a U.S. 12 ounce bottle, but hold 9.6 ounces. The locals joke that the bottles are as heavy empty as they are full. So, if you are US tourist looking to tie on a tropical beer buzz, be ready to put away few more bottles than you are used to drinking at home due to the smaller bottle volume and lower alcohol content. If you get sick of Belikin beer, Belize also produces many excellent rums.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 8:25 am by Pete and is filed under Beer Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.