From time to time in the past, I used to review the state of Korean beer. Sometimes in depth.

Although I do not drink much beer these days, I have seen some improvements in the beer scene, so I thought I would start out 2014 talking about our hoppy friends. These aren’t terribly new, but they were new to me, so here are my late-to-the-party thoughts.

Hite-Jinro has come out with two Queen’s Ale options, Blonde and Extra Bitter, and I’m shocked to say that both are quite decent.

I had the Blonde with some pizza the other day and was very happy with the taste and aroma. Not overpowering, but it had substance. Then I had the Extra Bitter with some Kkongchi Jjigae my wife cooked, and the stronger taste of this beer worked very well with the thick stew. Neither was a “wow,” but both were more than drinkable.

Hite has also added a variation to its Max line, calling it Max Special Hop Oktoberfest (or something like that. This was less exciting than the Queen’s, although better and more flavorful than the usual Max.

(Now I look forward to someone telling me this is just the same Max and I was taken in by the placebo effect. But hopefully not).

I also see that Wa Bar, the Korean bar franchise, has its own brand of Dunkel beer, made in Germany and sold under the Wa name in Korea. But it is nearly impossible to find the beer mentioned on the Wa Bar website, and the photo I did find does not match what I bought. So if Wa thinks so little of its beer, I’m not about to rock the boat.

Luckily, there are plenty of places to go in Korea these days for microbrews, like the ever-growing Booth franchise and Magpie, and Canada’s Alley Kat Pale Ale is wildly available. If only I still drank beer …