2 days ago
The best Aldi beers to buy, tried and tested
Aldi was named Drinks Retailer of the Year for the seventh year on the trot at the Retail Industry Awards in 2024, which can partly be attributed to its wines – for reasonable prices it delivers some excellent summer sips – but it also has a growing reputation for beer.
You will find a good mix of well-known labels (Corona, San Miguel and Stella Artois, for example) along the aisles, nestled between own-brand replicas (an approach echoed at Lidl) that deliver the same level of quality but at a considerably lower price – as I discovered in a tasting of the supermarket's most commonly available brews.
In fact, I found almost all of the dupes to be equal to, if not better than, their big-name equivalents. The only exceptions were the Rossini Lager (not a patch on Peroni) and the Harper's Brew Co IPA, which, while being a drinkable beer in its own right, can't hold a candle to St Austell's Proper Job, a true modern classic. You will find my tasting notes for both bottles below.
While Aldi offers more lagers than anything else, as you'd expect, it does have an excellent set of options for ale drinkers – just surpassing Lidl's range, in my opinion. Traditional brews such as Abbot Ale and Shepherd Neame's Bishops Finger sit alongside high-quality craft cans including the irrepressible William Bros Brewing Co's Magma Hazy.
I tested all of the following beers blind, so neither my own bias nor even the snazziest of packaging was able to influence my reviews.
Here I share my recommendations for the best beers to buy at Aldi – as well as flagging those which aren't worth a pour.
