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

Some Invasion Day beers…

Don’t support Australia Day, but always happy to have a public holiday and have a few beers.

Here’s a cool riff about it

Anderson Valley Blood Orange Gose, Orange Ale 4.2% 375ml can. Pretty sure a version of this was my first Gose? I’d have to look back but some version of this was always around in the early days and disappeared and is now back on shelves. Its a good, enjoyable Gose, nothing extreme, easy drinking. Nice!

Nowhereman Raspberry Citrus Lager, 4.5% 375ml can. I love Nowhereman, but this is a bit meh because this particular can has real low carbonation, the raspberry and citrus suffers because of this I think. Decent beer, I reckon It would have been great fresh on tap. Will try it again if I can.

Beerfarm Passion Pils, Pilsner, 4.2% 375ml can. Smells like passionfruit and passionfruity hops. Did not expect how hoppy this would be for a fruited beer, Its not dulled down to allow for the fruit at all, just a straight up Pilsner with passionfruit in it. Its a nice beer, with some passionfruit adding a slight sourness and a nice smell. Crazy.

King Road Brewing Seasonal Pilsner, 4.5%, 375ml can. Made with a local grown hop called Beedelup. Canned in October so worried these hops wont be shining like they should. Still, its a Pilsner, so we’re not looking too hard at flavour or smell as much as bitterness, I guess. It still smells fantastic, very lemony, and that nice standard lager smell. This is a fantastic Pilsner, the hops are a very rounded bitterness rather than a sharp or focused bitterness but still fully fulfills the Pilsner hop needs. Excellent choice of hop. The malts, the yeast, the balance is all really great. Super enjoyable. First beer from this brewery and I hope to try more.

Big Shed Smash Gordon, SMASH Pale Ale, 4.5% 375ml can. Gladfield American Ale malt and US Bru-1 hops. This is a pale ale, tastes like a perfectly fine pale ale. Clean as all heck. The malt is very slightly bready. The hops seem very candy berry and pineapple. Perfectly good pale ale. Nice.

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.

Drinks

Orion 75

Orion Breweries – Orion 75 Premium Series Pilsner, 5%ABV 350ml can. A bit of an oddity as you don’t generally see even normal Orion draft around here, let alone some special edition. Orion 75 Premium Series Pilsner. Smells like a Pilsner, funky but also light fruity notes, very light bready slightly toasty and caramel malts. It’s a golden amber in colour, has a nice big tan head on pouring which disappears rather quickly, carbonation is fine. The hopping is all bittering hops, standard for a Pilsner, but they are very up front and really hang around, not really any stronger than some European Pilsner hop bitterness, but I think these may be a modern hop, not like Saaz or other Pilsner standards? As it warms, and you get adjusted to the lets say bold hopping, a light but defined malt character appears that reminds me of basically eating actual Pilsner malt grains. Its all very refined and exactly what is says on the can. This is actually pretty good. 2.5/5.

Drinks

Some beers (from Nowhereman)

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!

Drinks

Some Beers…

1) Klosterbrauerei Weissenohe – Weißenoher Eucharius Pils, 4.9% 500ml bottle.
A decent German pils, bit light on the malts, some nice pils style bitterness and good carbonation. A little old (BB 21/04/21) and probably not kept well, but its good.

2) Bayreuther Bierbrauerei – Original Landbier Zwick’l, Kellerbier / Zwickelbier, 5.3%, 500ml bottle.
Not much carbonation, it feels/tastes like a British session bitter. Kind of bready malts kind of biscuity in the aroma and taste, slightly medicinal but nice bitterness. I’m sure this isn’t at best quality but its not bad.

3) Rocky Ridge Brewing – Socks and Sandals ESB, 6%, 375ml can.
This is a hop bomb, its definitely a lot of UK hops giving that earthy “soil” thing. Its good? Its a big IPA I guess. Smells like mangoes and soil. Makes me think it used a Kveik yeast really.

4) Slow Lane Brewing – Thirsty Miner, Grisette Pale Belgian Ale, 3.8% 375ml can
This is OK, it does have hops, which I thought the point of a grisette was to not have hops. It also uses some amount of wheat, which I guess added to its light and drinkable character. No idea where the Belgian comes into it, maybe the yeast? Very drinkable at least.

5) Alesmith – 398 San Diego Style Pale Ale, 6%, 354ml can.
Another pale ale. This is a lot more malty, lots of toasty and bready malts, nice mild bitterness. This is more toward a British pale ale. Nice.

6) Molly Rose Brewing – Resolved, Saison, 5.8%, 355ml can.
This was lemony. probably the hops. A modern Saison, light beer with a citrus note. Not bad but wasn’t as great as previous beers I have had from them.

7) Boat Rocker – Dank & Bitter, IPA, 6.1% 375ml can.
This could be a lot more dank, its definitely bitter. A nice IPA.

Drinks

Some More German Beers (Late-Toberfest 2)

Hofbrau – Oktoberfestbier
Hacker Pschorr – Kellerbier Naturtrub
Weltenburger Kloster – Plis

Weltenburger Kloster – Pils, 4.9%, 500ml bottle.
Klosterbrauerei Weltenburg, this is a German Pilsner, the smell is sweet and kind of wheat-beer-ish, lager yeast smells. Its very clear, light golden-straw in colour with a big head on pouring. This is quite bitter, and almost spicy, could be the yeast. Apart from that it is very easy drinking. Good, not great.

Hacker Pschorr – Kellerbier Naturtrub, 5.5%, 500ml bottle.
A German Lager/Kellerbier/Zwickelbier, an unfiltered beer and it shows. Nice golden amber colour, quite cloudy, a nice head. Aroma is biscuit malts and lager yeast. Taste is very nice very biscuity malt, a mild bitterness balancing out a very mild sweetness. Well balanced, the malt character is very nice.

Hofbrau – Oktoberfestbier, 6.3%, 500ml bottle.
Hofbräuhaus München. A Germen Lager/Marzen/Oktoberfestbier. Golden amber, very clear, nice head with good lacing. The smell is very lager yeast, not very funky though. Taste is bready and lightly sweet malts, theres a nice lager yeast character balanced with the mild hop bitterness, slightly spicy. Very good.