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Cerdos Voladores Pale Ale
Our Rating: 2.25 / 5
Cerdos Voladores Pale Ale from Barcelona Beer Company delivers a friendly, gluten-free pale with biscuit sweetness, mild citrus, and low carbonation. Aroma stays restrained, the body drinks thin, and bitterness lingers awkwardly. Easy to approach and unlikely to offend, it prioritises accessibility over flavour depth, structure, or progression across the glass, just like the rest of the product line.
Beer Name: Cerdos Voladores Pale Ale
Brewery: Barcelona Beer Company
Beer Style: Pale Ale
Alcohol: 6.0%
Taste Notes: Biscuit, light caramel, mild herbal, citrus, metallic sourness, thin body
Serving: Can
Serving Size: 330 ml (11.16 fl. oz.)
A Thin Pale Pig
The turquoise can keep the flying pigs, the chat bubbles, and the friendly slogans that we’ve come to know from the Cerdos Voladores line, sitting somewhere between playful and deliberately un-serious. Inside is a 6% Pale Ale from Barcelona Beer Company, brewed with Northern Brewer and Cascade, backed by Pilsen malt with Caramunich T1 and Carapils, packaged in a 330 ml can and labelled gluten-free.
In the glass, it pours a pale straw colour with a faint, warm tint, clear and bright. A white foam forms quickly but collapses just as fast, leaving little lacing behind
Carbonation looks mild from the start. The aroma remains restrained and low-key, featuring notes of biscuit, crackers, and lightly sweet cereal, with a subtle floral and citrus undertone. Nothing pushes forward, but the malt sweetness is easy to read.
The palate follows roughly the same line that the aroma introduces. Sweet biscuit and light caramel lead the way, joined by a mild herbal-citrus note from the hops. Mouthfeel is thin and flat, with carbonation too low to give lift or tension. Bitterness lingers longer than the body can support, mellowing in intensity but not in a flattering way. A faint metallic sourness appears mid-palate and becomes clearer in the finish, alongside caramel and sweet grain. As the beer warms, the sweetness increases while the hop freshness fades further.
Untappd averages around 3.34, and as it is a very approachable pale ale, with not enough hops, roast or other stylistic elements to push away an audience that is not used to craft beer, I suspect this score is mostly due to it being very friendly and easy-drinking.
My lower score comes from the same structural issues seen across the range: thin body, low carbonation, limited flavour development, and an aftertaste that outstays the rest of the beer. The can is lively and full of personality; the liquid stays polite, simple, and quickly forgettable. The thinning body here might be because it’s gluten-free, and I’ll be upfront that I don’t know a lot about brewing gluten-free beer. What I do suspect is that their spring water might not be very high in carbonates, which anecdotally results in a sour sensation when paired with roasted malts, which could explain the metallic sourness I’ve gotten from this pale ale and its brown ale brother, which we’ve also reviewed.
Final Score: 2.25 / 5
