Haandbryggeriet – Haandbakk Nordic Oud Bruin 375ml Bottle 6.7%. Sour Red/Brown ale, aged in oak wine barrels for 18months. No idea how old this one is, but its best before 05/05/23. Thats fine, its an Oud Bruin style beer, its just going to be extra sour… Brown sediment on the lid and caking the lip of the bottle (saved for brewing). Cloudy “dirty” dark brown colour, no head, little noticeable carbonation. Smells like an intense oaky red wine, leather, dark fruity vinegar, a little farmy spiciness. Taste is sour and tannic, that leads to sour citrus more lime than lemon, pucking green apples, and a big oak dryness on the finish, but the tartness keeps the mouth watering, and I keep sipping. Still great, regardless of when it was meant to have been at its best.
Wychwood Brewery – Hobgoblin Ruby Red ESB 4.5% 500ml can. Bready malts, caramel, dried dark fruits and a little spiciness. All the flavours and aromas really pop as it warms up. A real nice Bitter. Rocky Ridge – Lone Palm, Paloma Pale Ale 5.5% 375ml can. Guava, tropical fruit, lightly malty with a very soft hop bitterness. Has a fuller mouthfeel than a normal Pale ale. Rocky Ridge – Are You A Robot IPA 6.5% 375ml can. Its an modern IPA. Smell is mango, guava, pineapple, the usual suspects. You know the rest. Big modern hop bitterness with a soft hazy hop thing going on. Its fine. Rocky Ridge – Syncopation Pinapple Session IPA 4.5% 375ml can. Taste is very IPA bitter with no back up, very XPA kind of thing. Citrus pith bitterness and a what tastes like a rice XPA. Rocky Ridge – Polski Pivio Grodziskie 4.5% 375ml can. Real nice balanced smokiness. Not overpowering, and Its a good lager, the smoke seems to gives it just a bit more dryness. Nice. Slow Lane Brewing – Like a Chimney Lichtenhainer 4.0% 375ml can. The sour is pretty standard, probably kettle soured, and theres a bit too much of it. The smoke is light and is overpowered and disappears too fast after a couple of sips. Its fine except for that. Slow Lane Brewing – Liquid Bread Doppelbock 8.5% 375ml can.– This is big and boozy. Its rich, dark, fruity, viscous. Almost a port wine. There is a tonne of depth. A great version of a classic style. It is a fantastic beer. Artisan Brewing – Blonde Belgian Ale 5.9% 375ml can. Funky, fruity Abbey ale yeast. Pilsner-like malts. Its quite dry. Its everything missing from modern stronger pale ales and Golden ales. Saaz hops are well balanced. Real nice. Currumbin Valley – Waste Oil Stout 5.8% 375ml can. Looks like actual used motor oil, tastes like pith and ash. First sip you’re like Jesus, thats huge hopping for a Stout, It smells great. Pirate Life – Best Pilsner 4.8% 355ml can. Extremely clear light golden straw colour. Its a lovely beer, nice malts, nice bitterness, the combo of Ahtnahtum and Loral make the bitterness a bit sharp. Its nice. Finlays Brewing – Munich Helles 5.0% 375ml can. Slightly bready malts, nice light bitterness, and quite dry. Quite a lot of yeast esters going on. Its pretty good, could be a bit cleaner, but its good. Slow Lane Brewing – Refectory Beligian Blone Ale 4.8% 375ml can.– Theres little malt character, this is all yeast and hops. Its moderately light, crisp, with depth from a nice bitterness and spicy yeast character. Slow Lane Brewing – Frozen Seas Baltic Porter 8.5% 375ml can. – Pours a dark brown. This is big, rich booze infused dried fruit and port wine. Dry, big oaky dry, maybe the Special B malt. It’s really nice. Slow Lane Brewing – Stanger Danger Kolsch Style Ale 5.0% 375ml can. – Big yeast character, spicy. Its unfiltered. Weirdly Saison Dupont. This is a kolsch? Pirate Life – Lager Italiana Italian Lager 5.2% 355ml can. Its a nice lager. Its pretty much their Best Pilsner with a different hopping and lighter malt character. Rocky Ridge Brewing – M is for Milk Stout Cookies & Cream Milk Stout 5.5% 375ml can. Chocolatey, lactose, cocoa, all the good stuff. Nice!
Nail Brewing Gareth Skywalker Golden IPA, its a good beer, no idea when this was last canned though, probably a year old! | Innate Heirloom Czech Pilsner is a nice beer, Innante make some interesting stuff, | Rocky Ridge Crispy Concord NZ Pilsner one of their recent collabs real nice | Rocky Ridge Staved & Confused Oaked WCIPA, another of the collabs big oakyness, nice stuff | Nowhereman Rice IPA a collab with a local bahn mi place (Le Vietnam), really prominent rice character in a good way, some light lemongrass and ginger, another nice one | Beerfarm Firkin of Duck Dry Hopped Sour, real tart, real “fresh” hoppy, great | Beerfarm Azacca Vodou Haze, an Azacca hopped hazy, again real nice stuff.
Some random beers from the last few weeks and a bit…
Otherside x Copper and Oak Imperial Pilsner collab was a bit too hot, big unbalanced ABV, I love Copper & Oaks collabs usually. Rocky Ridge Syncopation was not very pineapple but it was very pine resin, very standard IPA. Slow Lane BA Old Ale was very good, they consistently make great stuff. Gage Roads Cheeky Pash was a nice standard fruity sour.
Rocky Ridge – Rock On XPA, 4% 375ml can. This is an XPA, but its not as “weird” and empty tasting as many. It has a nice fruity hop smell, nice piney bitterness, no idea if there’s rice or what grains are used, its also gluten reduced. Nothing over the top, 4% and easy drinking. 2.5/5
Rocky Ridge – Rock Candy Fruit Sour, 5.5& 375ml can. Smells like a sour with some kind of sweet candy-like smell, sherberty. Taste is like a sour sweet fruit, some kind of red fizzy candy. Website says the fruit used is passionfruit, kiwi and strawberry. Real nice 3/5
Garage Project – Pickle Beer Sour, 4.3% 375ml can. This big on dill flavour, and its actually great. Thought this might be a bit gimmicky, or also/otherwise a Gose style, but its not either. Its a nice sourness, some cucumber freshness and a lot of dill flavour. Theres some other things in there which I think are the “pickle spice” listed on the website, unsure what that is. Very enjoyable. 3/5
Rocky Ridge – Karl Requires Clarification West Coast IPA, 5.8% 375ml can. Its a modern West Coast IPA, always a bit lower on the malts than they used to be, the bittering hops are a bit less piney/resinous as well here. Ticks all the boxes for an IPA. Its fine. 2.5/5
Bonehead Brewing in Melbourne Victoria, another new brewery for me. Bonehead Brewing – Sweet Pea M.D.L. Melbourne Dark Lager, 4.8% 375ml can. The style is basically a Schwarzbier. The smell is fantastic big coffee malts and cocoa. The taste complex but not muddled or overpowering, its nice roasty dark malts, bitter cocoa and coffee notes, and it has that cola thing going on that keeps it all open on the tongue. The hopping is very mild and leaves it all up to the dark lingering malts it seems, that or its just well balanced with the malt bitterness and cola-thing. All of this and its still a very crisp, and clean even, very drinkable, super enjoyable dark lager. What a great beer. 3/5
Rocky Ridge – Good Energy V2, West Coast Juicy IPA, 7% 375ml can. Another good colab with my local alcohol purveyor (Copper & Oak). Stinks real big and nice, Hi-C orange juice, mango, guava, passionfruit etc… The more oldschool West Coast IPA elements are there in the pine resin and sweeter malts as a base, but then it has all the big juicy style stuff as well on top, the soft mouthfeel and big rounded out hop bitterness, the crazy fruity juicyness. It works well. Real nice. 2.5/5.
Pirate Life – Short Stack, Brown Ale. 8% 355ml can. I just assumed this was a standard Brown ale, it is not. Its 8% to begin with, is dark, viscous and contains maple syrup. This is some kind of big sweet stout. Its really damn nice. Great thick lasting tan head, nice mild carbonation, smells like a sweet, syrupy dark stout, too. 3/5.
Rocky Ridge – The Door to Helles, Helles Lager 4.5% 375ml can. Nice textbook lager smell. Clear clean golden amber colour, nice head on pouring that settles to light speckled lacing. Very clean, very crisp. Minimal, light, with a nice sharp bitterness. Absolutely crushable, quenching, moreish, fantastic. 3.5/5.
Slow Lane Brewing – Definitely Maybe, Maibock 7% 375ml can. Nice old school Euro hop and biscuity, slight caramel malty smells. Taste is lovely malts, biscuity again, toasty, nothing too sweet or “crystal”, with good balanced hop bitterness. Just real nice stuff. A good version of a classic style. 3/5.
Slow Lane Brewing – Rye Sense of Humour, Roggenbier 4.5% 375ml can. A German Rye Ale. This smells funky as heck. A dark red-brown opaque colour. It uses a Heffewiezen yeast so that explains the funk. Has a bit of that rye “spicy” thing too. A very weird ale. Not a fan. I wont rate it because I don’t know other examples, I didn’t like this one too much, though. Not a Heffe fan, so very biased.
Eagle Bay – India Red Lager, 5.8% 375ml can. A colab with Copper & Oak. This is good. Caramel malty smells, taste is fanastic, its a IPL Red Lager. Well balanced, nice bitterness and a bit of dank, a bit of that Nelson Sauvin white wine thing, nice roasted and carmel malt flavours. Its basically like a West Coast IPA but a red ale and lagered and its rounded out and smoother. Its very damn nice. 3/5.
Nowhereman – 123 Days Later, Pilsner. 5.4% 375ml can . Lagered for 123 days. Very light sudsy head, rich golden colour, and crystal clear. Smell is lager funky with a little bit of biscuity malt. Taste is mainly nice traditional style bittering hops (unsure what hops were used but its Saaz-like) and very light bready malt if any. Decent but a little low carbonation, and it has a surprisingly for style very nice mouthfeel. Its dry, crisp, funky, and bigger than I was expecting on the bittering hops and funk. It is very nice. 3/5.
Nowhereman – Carnival, Passionfruit Rice Lager. 5% 375ml can. Not much head, a light golden colour, slightly cloudy. Its smells heaps like passionfruit. It has that rice taste initially, and a little bit of some other malt maybe? Theres a mild passionfruit taste, and a light fruit sourness in there. A very light hop bitterness. Its unusual to have fruit used so mildly, it kind of replaces the hops in some ways. Its like a commercial lager with a real nice passionfruit smell, and a mild passionfruit taste. Its very nice. Good carbonation. A super drinkable mildly fruited beer. 2.5/5.
Nowhereman – Birra Negroni, Amber ale. 5.8% 375ml can. Blood orange, corriander, juniper, orange peel and Citra hops according to the can. Ruby red/brown colour, a slight and lightly lacing head. It smells like Citra, because you cant escape Citra, and caramel malts maybe? The taste is pretty complex, a kind of a rye-like spicy thing? earthy? In the taste, and to some extent the smell, I feel like there is a brettanomyces character? Theres definitely orange peel and pith,and a bit more citrus sour as it warms, and that whatever it is spicy thing? Thats not bad. A Farmhouse Negroni would be an amazing decision. 2.5/5
Edit 19/10/22 – Trying the Birra Negroni again. Nowhereman confirmed no Brett anywhere in their brewery or beers, so…thats that. As I said the first time, I like this beer!
