Bayreuther – Hell, Helles Lager, 4.9% 500ml bottle. Nice standard Helles Lager, a little sweet, a little spicy, nice moderate bitterness, clean, crisp. Sierra Nevada – Celebration, 6.8% 375ml can. No idea when this was canned, but still fine, old school stuff, a classic. Hargreaves Hill – ESB, 5.2% 375ml can. Bitter, malty, hits all the marks for style, decent beer. Sudden Death Brewing – Bull Dog Brown, Brown Ale, 4.5% 500ml can. First beer from these guys, surprised its German, canned March of 22 so…Instantly comes across visually and smell as too massive and dark, more like a Porter, on drinking its mild and a decent Brown Ale, nice enough even with the age. Fruh – Kolsch, 4.8% 500ml can. A perfect standard, a great beer. It is what it is every time. Rocky Ridge – Karls Date Turns Sour, Lemon Sherbet Berliner 2,6% 375ml can. Its nice, its a lemony sour, tart and sherbetty.
I havent had or seen this since 2014, it was the first craft beer 6 pack I purchased and it was somewhere between $26 – $30? The most expensive 6 pack I had purchased at the time. I love the art on the containers and on the 6 pack holder. Its also a great old school style Rye IPA. Caramel and spicy rye malts, and a real nice big traditional bitterness. That old school “balanced” idea. Great stuff.
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.
A Lot of beers over the Long Weekend plus Thursday, some better and/or fresher than others, but all pretty good. Altbier is a fantastic style, very happy to have discovered it.
Little Bang – Geezer Pleaser, ESB. 5.5% 375ml can. First beer from this brewery. Canned in Feb, but shouldn’t be an issue for an ESB. Nice colour, decent carbonation. Caramel malt and some kind of hops on the nose. Taste is nice straight bittering hops, thats where this shines, and caramel malts rounding it out. Takes a bit of warming up, obviously, to really shine. Its straight up and nice. 2.5/5
Rocky Ridge – Mel’s Gin, Sour Ale. 4% 375ml can. – Packaged in March so I was expecting this to not be great, but I do try and try all Rocky Ridge stuff I can find. Its surprisingly still minty on the first few sips. No melon, no gin. Its a kettle sour (or however they do the short and stopped sours these days), so it has that particular character of sourness. The mint is definitely there and its strange possibly unnatural, at first, but the sourness eventually removes it from being detected anymore. I would like to know what this was like fresh. 2/5.
Mash Brewing – Red Cat, Red IPA. 6.5% 375ml can. – Nice colour, very nice head that becomes real cloudy and lumpy. Smell is a big malty, sweet, super fruity, IPA. Taste, Its a big malty almost cloying IPA with that red malt bite crossed with that big piney resinous hops. All the things I dislike. Dont usually expect to encounter a IPA like this in 2022 outside of like Sierra Nevada Torpedo. Its really not that bad. Its well made, hits all the points for style and more. I just unfortunately cant handle 375ml of this style of beer anymore. Its 2.5/5 because its good, possibly very good, despite my dislike.
Black Brewing – Bad Boy BaoBao, Milk Stout. 4.5% 375ml. – I can smell the cherry, and the choc, a Cherry Ripe, theres no hops or malt in the smell. The Taste is a Cherry ripe, sweet and tart, its all on the sides of the tongue. There is dark, and black malts that slowly appear and overpower the cherry and chocolate. Its viscous and tart and sweet all around the sides, but with a dryness down the centre of the tongue. Nice, different, 2.5/5
Artisan Brewing – Great Southern, Belgian Style Table Beer. 3.5% 375ml can. – This is nice. Big fluffy head, nice zesty yeasty smell, cloudy golden almost orange colour. The taste is mild but enough, mainly yeast character; Belgian-y, spicy, peppery. A slight hop bitterness is balanced well with the yeast. There is little to no malt taste. A very soft mouthfeel. A real nice little beer. 2/5
Slow Lane Brewing – Altogether, Altbier, 5% 375ml can. – Insane thick tan head. Smells like a lager, but slightly fruity. Brown-coppery colour, rather hazy. This is nice, and I dont think I have ever had this style before. Like a British Mild but with higher carbonation, and more yeast character. Slightly more hopping, too. Its fruity yeast esters up front and a nice traditional hop bitterness. The malt character is mild, but both dark and sweet malts are detectable. Crisp and clean enough. Nice beer, great style. 2.5/5
Slow Lane Brewing – Simpicity, Helles German Lager. 5% 375ml can. – Cloudy, very light amber, golden colour. Small light head. Smell is light colour malts, slightly bready, kind of fruity? Great bitterness, very defined and clean, all bittering hops. The malt character is very light. There’s a little bit of fruitiness, too. Nice. 2/5.
Mismatch – Dark Ale. 5.5% 375ml can. – I have never seen this one before. Color is brown/dark read and clear, nice tan head. Smell is fruity dark malt, clean yeast. Taste is a very clean, rather crisp dark ale with a nice amount of bittering hops. Good. 2/5.
Bach Brewing from Auckland New Zealand. A new brewery to me. And my first beer from them is a style I pretty much dislike. West Coast IPA.
Bach Brewing – Throbbing Grist, West Coast IPA. 6.6% 440ml can. Amarillo, Citra, Idaho 7 and Talus hops. Stinks like mango, passionfruit, guava etc.. but theres a bunch of other stuff going on I cant place. The earthy character balanced with the dryness from the really deep pine resin is the best bit. Its not over malty or sweet and cloying from trying to “balance” the malts with the bitterness or anything. Its a good IPA with nice modern hop weirdness, not much else to say. 2.5/5.
Dainton – Hopf’n Juicy Blood Orange Hoppy Weiss. Hazy Hefeweizen, 5.5% 375ml can: Has that banana-smell that Hefeweizens have, but I don’t care for too much. Its not bad but there isn’t a lot else going on. It is very hazy, the hop bitterness is hazy style. Wish it had a bit more carbonation. The blood orange isn’t that noticeable, there is some bitterness that could be pith/rind? Its a Hefeweizen with hazy style hopping. 2.5 stars. It fine.
★★★
Rocky Ridge – Woodin’ It Be Nice Oaked Pale Ale. 5.0% 375ml can. This smells great, big fruity “juicy” hops (Mosaic, Strata, Vic Secret and Ella), and also vanilla supposedly from the oak. The oak/wood character is interesting in a clean crisp pale ale (its their core range Pale Ale) rather than as usual in a darker beer (or wine). There’s a dryness, a musty note, an astringency of sorts that combines with the hop bitterness? Nice. Different. 3 stars.
★★★
Rocky Ridge – 9 New Zealand, Hazy IPA (All NZ Hops). 6.66% 375ml can. First smell; Resinous and sweet, but also pretty juicy, and a bit of white wine? Its an IPA but they have rounded it out to be more “hazy” than the initial aroma suggests. The malts are there in the sweet notes, but not doing much. Its actually a bit uneventful in the end, unfortunately. Motueka, Nelson Sauvin and Nectaron hops. Its just a bit flat all round, Maybe 3 months on the shelf didn’t treat it right. Carbonation is fine, if a bit “sharp” initially. Its pretty easy drinking, and you get some interesting white wine notes. It just doesn’t pop or showcase the N.Z. hops as much as I would want. 2 stars?
8 Wired – Horseshoe Texas Brown Ale. 6.2% 440ml can. Its an American Brown Ale, maybe a bit more darker/roast malt character, but same mild carbonation. Then there is a far more than usual load of hops even for an American Brown Ale. Its not bad.
★★★
Daintons – Burnout Black IPA. 6.2%, 375ml can. This is good and that is because it is well balanced. Its big dark roasty malts, but also big IPA style hops, and they aren’t fruity or resinous so a nice straight Old World/UK bitterness comes through and doesn’t have other hop characters that could get in the way of the malts. Balanced. Very nice.
★★★★
Eclipse – Brown Ale. 5.0% 375ml can. A straight up Brown Ale. A bit low on carbonation, but it hits that weird area between light fizz and mouthfeel that works anyway? A bit too hop bitter. maybe? Nothing too detrimental. Its fine.
★★★
Finlays Brewing – Starboard Stout. 5.4% 375ml can. Black malts, very dark. There’s a nice hop bitterness in there. Its mainly all big dark malt bitterness. Almost a dry finish, nice light carbonation, not any real mouthfeel though.
★★★
Daintons – Chipmunk Choc Hazelnut Porter. 6.0% 375ml can. Not a Porter. There’s some cocoa but no Hazelnut. Its a dark mild, but very dark, and unbalanced hops.
These are from a few weeks ago…John Denver and Hall & Oates. The John Denver was NOT my style at all and at 10% was far too much. Big West Coast IPA’s I cannot deal with anymore. The Haulin Oats Pale Ale with oats at 5% was far nicer.
NowhereMan Brewing Co – Dumb Enough, West Coast IPA. 6.8% 375ml can. A Limited Release. This is a very old school IPA, like Sierra Nevada Torpedo style. It does have some new school feeling, like the hops are big but also more soft or, the big malt cloying sweetness they used to do to combat the bitterness is gone, but the balance is still there. Its a old style IPA with new ideas. Its still big, and its good.
Akasha Project – Lupulin Fog, New England IIPA. 8.5%ABV, 375ml can. Just jumping on the spot red faced screaming Serenity Now! again and again after the first sip. Its not actually that bad, but there is a bit of viscosity to it that I just despise and harkens back to the big malt heavy IPA’s of old, but none of the cloying sweetness so maybe theres oats in there? It really does have the New England thing goin on that smooths out the hops a bit, but they are still big as hell. Its a sipper as you recover your taste buds and also not be smashed by the 8.5%ABV, yet you really need to finish it before it gets too warm…hmm.
