Drinks, Other

Some Beers – Feb & March

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!

Drinks

Lemon Sour

Japanese non-alcoholic Lemon Sour. Tastes like grapefruit pith, very sour! Awesome.

Drinks

Tea.

Two teas that were pretty good.

Suntory Green Dakara Yasashii Mugicha. A standard barley tea. You can taste the seaweed which give its a nice extra taste.

Ito En Oi Ocha Bold Unsweetened Green Tea. This is really strong flavoured, and has a very pungent green tea smell.

Drinks

Some recent beers…

Random November & December stuff.

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.

Other

Some beers…

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

Drinks

Some beers…

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.

Drinks

Some beers…

Nowhereman – Fresh Hop Lager, 5.3& 375ml can. A collaboration with a local hop producer. This kind of stuff will always be best on tap at the brewery as fresh as possible, unsure when this was canned but it seems to be about 3 months ago. Regardless, its a nice lager, nice malt character balanced with a real nice crisp bitterness from Victoria hops, they smell orange, mango, passionfruit. Though not as fresh as could be, this is still a real good beer that ticks all the boxes. 2.5/5.

★★★

Garage Project – Epuni Street Bitter, ESB, 5.5% 440ml can. An Extra Special/Strong Bitter. Big thick creamy head like a tap pour, very nice. Colour is amber/brown and and not fully translucent. Smells very malty, wholemeal bread, slightly yeasty with a touch of hops. Taste is biscuity, toasty, some slight sweetness from the malts, but the stand out is a herbal, earthy, very forward hop bitterness. The earthiness of the hops is really nice. This is really good. 3/5.

★★★

Jindabyne Brewing – Ol Black Diamond, Schwarzbier, 5.2% 440ml can. Another nice thick head on this pour. This is dark, opaque, with a nice tan head. Smell is dark roasted malts and lager yeast. Taste is dark and roasty malts, not overpowering, but very clean, as per the style which is basically a Pilsner. Pilsner hop character, obviously, and well balanced against the dark malt. A good Lager with nice dark roast malts that are not over powering, well balanced with a traditional hop character, and a clean finish. Very nice. 3/5

★★★

Sierra Nevada – Celebration, Fresh Hop IPA, 6.8% 355ml can. This was canned in October ’21 and it was still very damn good. An old style IPA with big malt character, the hops had dropped off so far as brightness and big notes, but still good bitterness, clean with only mild oxidization. I dont think I have had one of these for maybe 10 years? Nice. 2.5/5 only because the age doesn’t offer the full fresh hops it should, but the big malts allow for age and it was still very tasty.

★★★
Drinks

Amazake

I had one of these previously, but it seems I didn’t blog it at the time. This one is pumpkin flavour. The weird sweet-umami/mushroom thing really didnt give me any pumpkin character, but it was still anice. I like that fermenty funky thing amazake has going on. The price is stupid, but thats certain drinks from Japan in general.

(Note: Both the pumpkin and matcha green tea below are Horaiya Honten brand)

I found the first one I had, It was matcha green tea flavour, and did have a green tea light taste and tannin bitterness if I remember correctly. The Morinaga Amazake can in the picture I do not remember unfortunately.

Drinks

Bubble Tea in a can

I have had an Ocean Bomb brand drink before, which was also good, and this was also good too. Brown Sugar flavour it says, and thats accurate. A nice brown sugar sweet milk with that strange unnatural bubble tea element. The tapioca/”Starch Balls” according to the ingredients, were a nice but different than usual texture. Nice.