Beer guide for visitors from Central Europe

If you are used to the Czech or Slovak beer, use this guide when coming to Central America to prevent the mistakes I did.

In Costa Rica you have basically 3 brands of what they call beer: Imperial, Pilsen (yes, they have a beer called Pilsen) and Rock Ice. Based on my examination I would say, that Imperial is a good beer, and lot of people say, that it is the best one here. It is the strongest brand here, you can order it almost in every bar in Costa Rica. Maybe because of the name I prefer to drink Pilsen (definitely it is not because of taste - you just cannot compare Pilsen and Pilsner Urquell), which I think is the same quality as Imperial. Basically I would put both brands into group "drinkable".

Rock Ice is not a beer!!! Be careful. Maybe it is tasty, but if you open a bottle, on which is written beer, you expect some particular taste. I did that mistake only once. And there is advanced level of the beer joke provided by Rock Ice - drink called Rock Ice limon. I did not find the courage to try it yet, so I cannot say anything about it, but I think that the name provides enough information by itself.

In Panama, there are more beer brands (if anyone can tell me, how much brands are registered in Czech, please write me this information), but the most popular are Balboa and Atlas, which you can get in every bar (at least one of them). Besides these two I also had Soberana, but it was only once and I cannot say very much about it - it wasn't very good, but definitely better than Rock Ice.

My preferred brand in Panama is Balboa - again I would say it belongs to "drinkable". Atlas is also very popular here, but I don't like it at all. I would say it is too sweet for me (like Slovak Kelt), but if you prefer such taste, try it.

At the end I should mention few more things, whcih might surprise you here:

• Don't expect drought beer here, in bar you will get bottles (usually 330 or 250 ml). Good old garden U houdku...
• Drinking the warm beer is one of the biggest tortures for me. But here I realized, that also very cold beer is not very good. And here, in all bars they have beer stored in freezers, so the temperature is definitely not "from the 7th stair", as it should be (for those, who don't understand, watch the movie Vesnicko ma strediskova).
• There are exceptions to the previous point, but if they don't bring you ice cold beer, they will bring you the glass full of ice - can you imagine drinking beer with ice cubes in it? (Here it is normal).
• If you will not find and brand here, which you would consider as drinkable, in majority of shops and bars you can get Heineken. I also found Amstel in one bar, but that's the whole portfolio of European beers sold in Central America.

At the very end just one statement: "All the information provided here are my personal subjective opinion, so when reading it, please take into consideration, that I am going to be in Central America for one year, and therefore maybe I am not as critical as if I would be here only for few weeks (because I know, that I will be drinking it next 11 months, so I am trying to find positive sides of the beer here...)."