Good news and bad news: Fischer Amber is one of the more common beers to come out of France and likely one you’ll find easily (if you find any French beers). However, it’s brewed by Brasserie Fischer which is also an enterprise of Heineken France, essentially one of the big macrobrewers of the country (they also produce Amstel Light).

Of course, “bad news” is relative; if you have a strong bias against macrobrewers, then this is probably a beer you would avoid. But, good news again, it’s not a bad beer at all.

Fischer Amber is a 6% alcohol beer brewed (according to BeerAdvocate) to the “Euro Dark Lager” style. That’s rather vague; in actuality, this “Bière d’Alsace” is less “dark” and more “amber” and strikes me as being more in line with a Vienna Lager style (think Dos Equis or Sam Adams Boston Lager).

Appearance: Clear and bright, nice copper color. Generous off-white head with lots of beading effervescence.

Smell: Bready/yeasty and a bit sweet, reminds me of raw bread dough. Light caramel, possibly a bit of butterscotch. I won’t swear there isn’t a touch of skunked (lightstruck) aromas either.

Taste: Clean and “beery”; like a Vienna lager, with light caramel and even lighter roasted malts. A touch steely (hops?). A touch grainy—not bad—kind of like the “grain” character you’d get from a loaf of whole wheat bread.

Mouthfeel: Lighter side of medium-bodied, a bit gassy, but finishes fairly clean—there’s something of a steely aftertaste but not overly detracting.

Overall: “Beer”—a clean lager with nice kilned-malt and archetypal “beer” notes.

On BeerAdvocate, it scores an overall grade of C. On RateBeer, it scores 2.39 out of 5 and is in their 12th percentile.