Category Archives: Beer review

Beer with ginger — or ginger beer

29 August 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Though they’re both labelled ‘ginger beer’, there’s a huge difference between alcoholic ginger beer and beer brewed with ginger.

The growth of RTDs and flavoured beers means we’re seeing more of both on retail shelves – the best of both styles providing the exotic flavour of fresh ginger.

Some, like Crabbie’s, reviewed below, are just alcoholic versions of the soft drinks we brewed at home as kids. They’re really part of the RTD world and generally pretty sweet.

But brewers of real beer sometimes season their product with ginger – giving adults the malty flavours and dryness of beer, overlaid with ginger.

Mad Brewers Ginger Chops Alcoholic Ginger Beer (330ml 4-pack $16.99) is a good local version, brewed at Malt Shovel Brewery, Sydney. It even contains a little malted wheat, giving it extra freshness. The full-bore Kiuchi (below) is an excellent imported example.

Kiuchi Brewery Real Ginger Ale 330ml $9.50
Many ginger beers seem like alcoholic soft drinks, tempering cloying sweetness with tart ginger. But Kiuchi is all beer – rich, warming (seven per cent alcohol) and malty, with an abundant, persistent head, and delicious deep undercurrent of tangy ginger flavour. The high alcohol and generous malt make it a good winter beer.

Crabbie’s Original Alcoholic Ginger Beer 330ml 4-pack $15.99
A crafty brew, this one – the Brits down 2.5 million cases year, “tapping into consumer desire for craft”, claims the press release, adding that it’s “made from a base of four secret ingredients”. Our leathery old palate identified only two, ginger and sugar delicious enough, but too sweet for my palate.

Stone brewed in Byron

22 August 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Brad Rogers, brewer at Byron Bay’s Stone and Wood Brewery, says he tweaked this year’s Stone Beer to see it through the 12 months until the next release.

The annual brew uses a technique from the middle ages – heating stones and dropping them into the kettle. Rogers writes, “apart from the obvious heating effects, the brewing stones also caramelised the brew to create subtle but rich toffee-like flavours.

Rogers says a number of beer drinkers stretched their supplies over the year between releases – prompting the decision to build cellarability into the 2012 brew.

Brewers generally achieve this by upping the alcohol and hops and, in some cases conditioning the beer in bottle on its yeast sediment – Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale, for example.

Rogers dispensed with bottle conditioning, but increased the alcohol, added dark roasted malts and Hersbrucker hops for “firmer bitterness”.

Stone and Wood Limited Release Stone Beer 500ml $9.99
Stone beer 2012 moves from copper red to a deeper mahogany colour. The source of the deeper colour – dark, roasted malts – add their own toasty notes to the rich, sweet underlying toffee flavours. The full body reflects the robust 7.2 per cent alcohol and bitter hops bite all the way across the palate.

O’Brien gluten-free beers

15 August 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Rebellion Brewing belongs to a couple of beer drinking coeliac sufferers – John O’Brien and Andrew Laver. Dissatisfied with the quality of gluten-free beers (all imports at the time) they decided to make their own. In 2005 they launched O’Brien Gluten Free Premium Lager, brewed under contract at the Bintara Brewery, Rutherglen. Two years later they established their own brewery in Ballarat.

They now make four gluten-free beers from malted millet and sorghum. We lined the four brews up at Schloss Shanahan this week and liked what we found.

Like all low-alcohol beers, O’Brien Gluten Free Light Lager (2.7 per cent alcohol, $23.45 330ml 6-pack) lacks body, but it’s fresh and dry with a pleasant, light, herbal, hoppy character – a well crafted, refreshing brew for life’s almost sober moments.

Medium bodied Gluten Free Brown Ale ($330ml 6-pack $24.95) offers a salami-like, smoked grain aroma and flavour on a smooth, malty, dry, mildly bitter palate.

O’Brien Gluten Free Premium Lager 330ml 6-pack $24.95
This is a decent brew by any measure, made principally, in the original recipe, from sorghum with a smidge of buckwheat. The colour’s a pale lemon/gold, the aroma and flavour sit in the mainstream lager spectrum and the finish is emphatically and lingeringly bitter.

O’Brien Gluten Free Pale Ale 330ml 6-pack $24.95
The aroma of the light golden coloured pale ale combines fresh, delicate, floral hops with a light fruitiness and malt. The same combination flows through to the well-balanced, mild palate – smooth, fruity maltiness deliciously cut through with delicate hops and finishing with a satisfying bitterness.

Beer and rum review — Knappstein and Bundaberg

8 August 2012Beer review, RumChris Shanahan

Knappstein Enterprise Brewery Reserve Lager 330ml 4-pack $16
Knappstein Clare Valley winery, an outpost of Japan’s Kirin Brewery, released its own Clare-brewed lager in 2006. Knappstein recently announced plans to expand production using Kirin’s Malt Shovel brewery in Sydney. Fingers crossed that he quality holds as Knappstein’s full-bodied, complex, very bitter lager rates among Australia’s very best.

Bundaberg Original Rum Select Vat 207 700ml $48
The press release says Bundy’s new release is literally a separate bottling from a vat selected by the distillers for the quality of its content. The light amber colour, olive green rim and mellow aroma reflect extended vat ageing – and the fiery, flavour-packed palate confirms it as rum, not fine brandy.

Coopers release 2012 vintage ale

25 July 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Vintage Bottle 013 — Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale 2012

We occasionally check out the older Coopers Extra Strong Vintage ales in the Schloss Shanahan cellars – stretching back to the original 1998 vintage. Generally, over time, the hops influence wanes, and the toffee-like malt flavours become more dominant as the beers age.

We note in the just-released 2012 vintage a marked shift in the hops character – away from the pungent, resiny aromas of the 2011, to a more delicate, but still dominant citrus-like character. All of this comes on top of the rich, malty flavour and fruity character we always see in Coopers ales.

Dr Tim Cooper attributes the changes in hops flavour to the varieties and timing of the additions. This year he used five types of hops – Germany’s perle and magnum, New Zealand’s Nelson sauvin and America’s centennial and cascade.

The 2012 provides another delicious variation on this potent, bottle-conditioned ale style.

Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale 2012 355ml 6-pack $22
Coopers 2012 vintage ale retains the full body, high alcohol (7.5 per cent) and cellarability of previous vintages, but introduces a new emphasis on citrus-like hops aromatics – hovering over the familiar fruity, malty notes. The new hop treatment invigorates the full, velvety palate, too. But the satisfying, lingering hops bitterness remains.

Casella unveils new brews

11 July 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Bland or blander seem to be the options. Winemaker Casella’s move into the beer market promised drinkers the perfect lager, based on an iPhone-based consumer survey in April.

Casella says 3,000 beer drinkers responded, giving “valuable information to Casella’s brew masters about preferred flavour profiles and tastes”. Noting two broad streams of opinion, the brewer made two lagers, Arvo Brew 34 and Arvo Brew 51, now released in mixed six-packs.

Brewer Andy Mitchell says Brew 34 targets drinkers who prefer a “hop-driven lager, with fruity aromas and subtle malt characters”, and describes Brew 51 as “a really easy-drinking lager style with less prominent hop character”.

Casella intends to brew only one style in future, based on consumer feedback through its website. To me, though, it’s a choice of which pleasant but me-too lager joins an already crowded and competitive market.

Arvo Brew 34 and Arvo Brew 51 mixed 330ml 6-pack $18.99
Casella’s two new brews offer minor variations on popular lager styles. Pale lemon-coloured Brewed 34 appeals for its freshness and light, crisp, delicately hopped finish. Without the same delicate hopping, Brew 51, fresh as it is, disappears almost without trace. They’re both perfectly sound beers. But where’s the excitement?

Beer and cider review — Mad Brewers and Old Mout

4 July 2012Beer review, CiderChris Shanahan

Mad Brewers Ginger Chops Alcoholic Ginger Beer 330m 4-pack $16.99
Mad Brewers’ delicious ginger beer contrasts in style to the full-bodied, alcoholic, malty Kiuchi reviewed on 6 June. This is a lighter bodied version (4.2 per cent alcohol), tempered further by the use of malted wheat. It’s light, fresh and dry with the tangy bite of ginger adding a little heat to the finish.

Old Mout Boysencider 750ml $10
Boysencider, from Nelson New Zealand, combines apple cider with boysenberry wine, hitting a wine-like eight per cent alcohol. Juicy berry flavours and a good dose of sugar wrestle with the extreme eye-scrunching, mouth-puckering tartness of seemingly unripe fruit. It’s uniquely sweet and sour but really very appealing in small quantities.

Beer review — Sierra Nevada and Bridge Road

20 June 2012Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Sierra Nevada Kellerweis Hefeweizen 355ml $4.50
This is an exciting American expression of Bavaria’s wheat ale style: a glowing, pale lemon colour, suffused with a yeast haze; an abundant, dense, white head; a sweet, enticing banana-like aroma; and a zingy, lemon-fresh palate, with hints of banana and clove and a delicious, dry, refreshing finish.

Bridge Road Brewers Hefeweizen 330ml $4.50
Ben Kraus offers another interpretation of the Bavarian wheat ale style: medium amber-gold colour; an aroma of sweet malt, tinged with banana-like esters; a full, smooth, creamy-textured palate; and a fresh, dry finish, with a spicy aftertaste. It lacked the vibrance of Sierra Nevada. We suspect the retail stock may not have been fresh.

Coopers celebrates 150 years

13 June 2012Beer, Beer review, PeopleChris Shanahan

In May, Coopers released a new ale, celebrating 150 years in brewing. It all began on 13 May 1862, when Thomas Cooper stepped up from brewing in the family bathtub to commercial production.

By the late twentieth century, Coopers had carved a niche for itself, selling bottle fermented ales, then home brew kits. Somehow, the company endured in family hands across decades of brewing industry consolidation, outlasting all the other independents. Then, despite its tiny market share, Coopers became our largest Australian-owned brewery last year, after SAB Miller swallowed Foster’s.

The 150^th anniversary brew (selected by the late Thomas Cooper, says the label) is a bottle-fermented ale – but well removed in style from the other Coopers beers.

This is an opulent, fruity beer with a much stronger than usual (for Coopers) emphasis on hops – both in the citrusy aroma and assertive bitterness.

Coopers Thomas Cooper’s Selection Celebration Ale 355ml 6-pack $20
What a celebration – even long-dead granpa Cooper comes to the party. He’d be happy, though, as descendents Tim and Glenn Cooper brewed up a lovely ale for the firm’s 150^th anniversary. It’s reddish coloured, fruity, with citrusy hops high notes, generously flavoured and finishing hoppy and lingeringly bitter.

Beer review — Kiuchi Brewery and Sierra Nevada Brewer

6 June 2012Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Sierra Nevada Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale 355ml $4.50
Deep chocolate brown Sierra Nevada Tumbler looks like it might be syrupy rich. But it gives the crisp, dry crunch of autumn leaves. The palate starts with rich, roasted malt flavours, but quickly dries out – finishing with a pleasing, lingering bitterness, combining hops and roasted malt.