Mahou Cinco Estrellas

Ask for una caña in Madrid — the small, fast draft that fuels the city's bar life — and odds are the tap says Mahou. Cinco Estrellas, "five stars," is the flagship lager of Mahou San Miguel, Spain's biggest brewer, and the closest thing the capital has to an official beer.

Mahou has brewed in Madrid since 1890, but Cinco Estrellas arrived in 1969 as a fuller, more ambitious pour than the everyday stuff, and it stuck. The label became furniture in the capital's bars, where beer is drunk cold, in small glasses, and quickly — a caña empties before it warms, which madrileños will tell you is the entire point.

Today Mahou San Miguel brews around 15 million hectoliters a year and Cinco Estrellas travels well — the UK, Latin America, the U.S. — but its center of gravity has never left Madrid, where the company is still headquartered in the city that drinks it by reflex.

Deep gold under a fat white head, and fuller than most Spanish lagers: sweet bready malt, a touch of honey, then a dry, gently bitter finish with a faint grassy note. At 5.5% it has real body for a hot-weather beer — built to stand up to jamón, croquetas, and fried everything.