Category Archives: Beer review

Lion lowers beer alcohol content, risks consumer backlash

9 March 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Drinkers will have the final say

Success or not of Lion’s decision to cut the alcohol content of three of its beers will ultimately be decided by beer drinkers.

Although Lion bravely declared the flavour of XXXX Bitter, Tooheys Extra Dry and James Boag’s Premium Light would not change, recent history suggests otherwise.

CUB’s VB lost market share rapidly following a reduction in its alcohol content in 2009. A few years later, CUB returned the beer to its original 4.9 per cent alcohol content and sales picked up.

Just as CUB did in 2009, Lion cites containment of costs for the change. Production costs would fall instantly as beer is taxed on its alcohol content. The savings could bolster company profit, fund new investments or maintain crucial retail price points.

XXXX Bitter and Toohey’s Extra Dry will change from 4.6 per cent alcohol by volume to 4.4, while James Boag’s Premium Light will fall from 2.7 to 2.5.

Reviews

Hahn Ultra 330ml 6-pack $10.90–$13
Flavour vanishes as alcohol content declines, presenting a challenge to brewers of low-alcohol beer – especially of dry brews, not propped up by sugar. Hahn’s new Ultra (0.9 per cent alcohol) does a good job of it: light bodied, dry and refreshing, it offers real beer flavour and mild bitterness, albeit without the body of full-strength brews.

4 Pines Imperial IPA 500ml $11
From the grey world of ultra-low-alcohol beer, we move to the gawdy world of high-alchol IPA. 4 Pines Imperial IPA (9 per cent alcohol) radiates sweet malt and hop-derived tropical-fruit aromas. These flow through to an equally brazen, malt-sweet, syrupy palate laced with intense, lingering hops bitterness.

Katoomba’s Carrington turns to brewing

2 March 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Mountain walk, mountain ale

Nothing builds a thirst like a walk in the Blue Mountains – typically starting and ending with a 450 vertical-metre descent and ascent.

And nothing quenches the thirst better than ultra-fresh ale brewed at the new Katoomba Brewing Company.

The brewery forms part of the Carrrington Hotel complex, owned by Mark Jarvis and Michael Brischetto. The complex includes the restored 1883 Hotel, the adjacent old Katoomba power house – home of the brewery and the Carrington Cellar and Deli – and, next door to the Carrington, the Old City Bank Bar and Brasserie.

The latter offered two outstanding beers on our visit: a rich, malty American pale ale (5.2 per cent alcohol, reviewed below) and the lighter, refreshing Great Western Golden Ale (4.2 per cent alcohol).

The brewery expects to expand its range to 10 beers, available on tap throughout the Carrington complex and in take-away “growlers” at the Cellar and Deli.

Reviews

Anchor Brewing Co Liberty Ale 355ml 6-pack $25
San Francisco’s Liberty Ale commemorates Paul Revere’s historic ride. A beautfully balanced, strong ale (5.9 per cent alcohol), it offers fruity, golden-syrup-like malt flavours on a creamy, soft palate. The citrus character of cascade hops cuts through the malt and provides balancing bitterness. If you drink more than one, stay off your horse.

Katoomba Brewing Co Great White Fleet American Pale Ale
Brewed in the old power house behind Katoomba’s historic Carrington hotel, Great White Fleet American Pale Ale provided rich, malty warmth on a cold, wet Blue Mountains day. At 5.2 per cent alcohol, it’s at the tame end of the robust American Pale Ale spectrum, but well balanced and refreshingly hoppy and bitter.

Ulladulla’s little brewery

24 February 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Cupitt’s brewery and winery

Breweries. They’re popping up everywhere. And what a bonus it was to find Cupitt beers out on the western edge of Ulladulla.

We’d called in for lunch and a glass or two of Rosie Cupitt’s semillon –which she grows next to the restaurant and makes in the cellar underneath (with help from sons Wally and Tom).

The boys also make beer, which is served at the bar–patio area next to the restaurant – a marvelous place to drink ultra-fresh ale and enjoy views over the vineyards to the Budawangs and Burrill Lake.

The Cupitt’s write, “All our beers are single batch and brewed in a 300-litre microbrewery on the property…unpasteurised, unfiltered and preservative free”. They offer the beers on tap at the restaurant and bar and in take-away 2-litre, refillable “growlers”.

Reviews

Cupitt India Pale Ale 400ml glass $10
Brothers Tom and Wally brew their full-bore IPA at the family winery-brewery-restaurant complex at Ulladulla. It’s available on tap and in take-away 2-litre “growlers” ($32, including $8 container deposit). This is a true west-coast IPA style, big on citrus hops aroma, intense, lingering bitterness and full, rich, round malt flavours.

Anchor Brewing Co Porter 355ml $6
What better end to a big walk on a cold, wet day than a warm, rich porter. The historic Carrington Hotel, Katoomba, serves San Francisco’s Anchor porter in its Old City Bank pub, alongside locally brewed beers. This is warm, buoyant, luxurious porter – each mouthful a juicy, malt joy.

Blackberry rye ale for Canberra multicultural festival

10 February 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Pact and Pen Monkey Drummer Blackberry Rye Ale

The Canberra Brewers stand at this weekend’s multicultural festival features a unique beer created by two local brewers, Pact Brewing Co and the Wig and Pen.

Pact and Pen Monkey Drummer Blackberry Rye Ale will be available at the stand, on tap at the Wig and Pen during the festival, and, for a short time in take-away “growlers” from Plonk at Fyshwick Markets.

A couple of months ago, Pact Brewing Co’s Kevin Hingston raised the idea of a special festival beer with the Wig’s brewer, Frazer Brown.

Together they came up with a recipe for a fruity, low-bitterness beer to appeal to “people who think they don’t like beer”, says Hingston.

They brewed the fruity, slightly sweet ale at the Wig using about two thirds malted rye, with malted wheat and barley and 40 kilograms of fresh blackberries grown by Hingston’s father.

Beer reviews

Nail Brewing Golden IPA 330ml $6.30
Nail Brewing (Perth) tacks away from the blended IPA style and instead uses a single pale malt and only one hop variety, Melba. The mid-golden colour ale combines floral and citrus hop aromas with the sweetness of high alcohol (seven per cent). The opulent palate matches the aroma precisely, though the hops sit gentle and subtle for an IPA.

La Sirene Brewing Fleur Folie 375ml $8.50
Unfiltered, unpaseurised and referment in bottle, Fleur Folie pours deep golden, with a cloudy yeast haze evenly distributed and a prolific white head. The funky, floral aroma leads to a warm palate combining powerful malt with spicy, tart, sour and bitter seasonings that linger in the finish.

First published 9 and 10 February 2016 in goodfood.com.au and the Canberra Times
Copyright © Chris Shanahan 2016

Honesty’s great, but stale beer sucks

27 January 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

US legal actions highlight beer paradox

Two US beer suits in the latter half of 2015 underscore a paradox: deceptive as it may be to present US-brewed “imports” as German or Australian, offering the real thing could mean drinkers get an inferior product.

In the first suit, Anheuser-Busch InBev agreed to refund cash to customers and to alter the packaging of its US-brewed Beck’s beer.

Following the announcement, we arranged a masked tasting to compare Australian brewed Beck’s with the real German brew. The fresh Australian product cleaned up the stale import.

In the latest suit, announced in December, New Yorker Leif Nelson filed a class action against Miller brewing, claiming he was misled into believing the beer was from Australia, despite being brewed in Fort Worth Texas.

Good luck to him, as we deserve honesty in marketing. But be careful what you wish for. Or, before you buy, at least check the best-buy-before date on imported beer.

Reviews

Brewcult Imperial Milk Stout 500ml $14.90
Brewcult (Derrimut, Victoria) infuses its milk stout with “espresso and cold-steep coffee from our friends at Axil Coffer Roasters”. The coffee-like character of most stouts comes from the use of dark-roasted barley malt. But by using real coffee, Brewcult turns its milk stout into an espresso double-shot, two-sugar lookalike.

4 Pines Brewing Co India Summer Ale 375ml can 4-pack $15
4 Pines Brewing of Manly, NSW, brews a wide spectrum of stlyes. The lightest of the bunch, India Summer Ale, offers light body (4.2 per cent alcohol) and a vibrant, fresh palate, accentuated by a floral and resiny punch of hops. This builds the flavour, and gives a pleasantly tart, dry hoppy finish.

Byron Bay’s IPA fixation

20 January 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Stone and Wood seizes IPA opportunity

Spotting an opportunity to brew and sell a fresh US west-coast IPA style locally, Byron Bay’s Stone and Wood Brewery recently established a new company devoted entirely to IPA.

The new venture, Fixation Brewing Company, rolled out the first kegs of its potent style in December 2015 and says a packaged version will be available in March 2016.

The style is growing rapidly in Australia, as it is in the US. In America, IPA volumes grew tenfold in volume between 2008 and 2015. In the same period, craft beers as a whole tripled in volume.

The powerful IPA style focuses on the hop flower’s wide aromatic and flavour range and intense bitterness – generally offset, by necessity, against luxurious malt and high alcohol.

Because the wonderful hop aromatics fade fairly quickly, IPA needs to be drunk really fresh before the hops descend into a hard bitterness – as they have in the Adelaide Hills IPA reviewed today.

Reviews

2 Brothers Kung Foo Rice Lager 330ml $4.90
Moorabin-based 2 Brothers Brewery uses rice in the brew to produce a clean, light-bodied lager. However, the brewers build delicious citrus and tropical-fruit flavour into the beer with hops. However, the hops season the beer without taking over the delicate palate and dry, moderately bitter finish

Prancing Pony Hopwork Orange IPA 330ml $5.50
IPAs often match powerful malt and turbo hops with high alcohol. But Prancing Horse, from the Adelaide Hills, restrains the alcohol to 4.8 per cent. The bottle, purchased in Canberra, may have been old, as the fruity, aromatic hop notes had given way to a resiny, dry bitterness.

America drives IPA frenzy

13 January 2016Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Tenfold increase in seven years

Within the craft beer market there’s never been a phenomenon to match the growth of IPA. Originally a high alcohol, malty, hoppy beer able to survive the pre-refrigeration shipping from England to India, India pale ale is now the buzz style for the world’s craft brewers.

In the US, engine room of the craft brewing business, IPA volume leapt from eight per cent of the total craft market in 2008 to 27.4 per cent in mid 2015. And that was in a rapidly growing market.

Writes Bart Watson on brewersaccociation.org, “craft brewing is on pace to have a total volume this year three times larger than it was in 2008… [IPAs] would have grown more than ten times its 2008 size, or more than 6 million barrels [704 million litres]”.

IPA is on a similar trajectory in Australia, albeit in a far smaller scale.

Reviews

Feral Brewing War Hog American IPA 330ml $6.90
Golden coloured War Hog, from the Swan Valley, Western Australia, saturates the senses with hop-derived tropical-fruit and citrus characters. Up the nose it goes, then floods the palate with rich, smooth malt flavour and warming alcohol (eight per cent). The hops push through, giving a resiny, dry, very bitter aftertaste.

Pirate Life Imperial IPA 500ml can $11.90
Mid-amber coloured Pirate Life, from South Australia, ups the alcohol content to 8.8 per cent and all the other flavours rise with it. The aroma reveals the resiny, rather than citrus of fruity side of hops. Likewise, powerful, resiny hops stomp over the palate, barely restrained by molasses-like malt, then fanned by alcoholic sweetness and astringency.

Hops – the bitter truth

16 December 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Brewers don’t need to hide behind a ton of hops

The craft-brewing craze brings with it an extreme fascination in hop aromas and flavours. Only mainstream brewers, it seems, retain the skills to make more subtle beers where the main role of hops is to provide a pervasive, lingering bitterness completely integrated into a beer’s flavour.

Good examples of that style are Cooper’s Pale Ale, with a bitterness level markedly higher than in most commercial brews; and Bavaria’s delightful Weihenstephaner Pilsner.

Smaller brewers on the other hand reveal the wonderful range of aromas and flavours various types of hops bring when added to beer at various stages of production. The hops characters scream from many beers and do, of course, give dramatic bitterness.

Perhaps subtlety will be the next phase of craft-brewing’s evolution. In an interview with James Atkinson recently, American brewer Ben Dobler said, “Brewers are getting more talented, they don’t need to hide behind a ton of hops”.

Little Creatures Original Pilsner 330ml 6-pack $24
Lion, a subsidiary of Japan’s Kirin, claims about half of the Australian craft beer market through a number of brands, including Little Creatures. They recently beefed up their pilsener, using 100 per cent pilsner malt and German perle hops. The change means more assertive, delicious and lingering hops bitterness.

Big Shed Brewing Co Kol Schisel German Pale Ale 330ml $4.50
Although only a modest 4.2 per cent alcohol, Big Shed’s slightly hazy, pale-golden ale lands solidly on the palate. Helga hops take a strong resiny, spicy lead over the underlying sweet, malty richness. Hops bitterness builds with every mouthful and finally dominate the finish.

Is push-button beer coming to a bar near you?

25 November 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Press here for beer

Will self-serve beer taps in pubs prove to be all froth and novelty? Or will they become a permanent feature of the craft beer boom?

Taps Mooloolaba set the auto spigots flowing at a Sunshine Coast bar in 2014. And now its website, tapaustralia.com.au, seeks franchisees Australia wide, urging entrepreneurs to “join the latest and greatest innovation to hit the Australian hospitality industry”.

The existing Mooloolaba outlet provides a regular beer service from its eight-tap bar, and offers the same brews from an adjacent push-button, self-serve bar.

Patrons load credit onto an ‘iButton’ at the main bar, pop it into a magnetic holder on a tap and pour any quantity into a glass provided by the bar staff. The machine charges by the milliliter and deducts the charge from the credit.

The flexibility to pour even small tasting amounts could be its most practical feature.

Beer reviews

Pact Beer Co 42.2 Summer Ale 330ml 6-pack $25
Australian reigning amateur brewing champ, Canberra’s Kevin Hingston, turned professional this year with the launch of Pact Beer Co. His new summer ale, brewed and bottled in Melbourne, celebrates Canberra’s hottest recorded temperature. It offers exceptional character and refreshing bitterness for a beer of just 4.2 per cent alcohol.

Riverside 69 Summer Ale 330ml $4.99
Parramatta’s amber-gold coloured summer ale, pours cloudy, with an appealing, thick head. The aroma shows the fruit and citrus character of Australian galaxy hops, a note that follows through on the lively, rich, malty-fruity palate. Hops take over in the finish: refreshing and bitter, but with a (for me) too-resiny aftertaste.

BentSpoke brewery plans cans

18 November 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

New outlet and canning line

Canberra’s BentSpoke brewery recently announced plans to open a second outlet and packaging plant in the industrial suburb of Mitchell.

Brewer and part owner Richard Watkins expects the new facility to open in the first half of 2016. It will operate as a brewery, bar and packaging hall.

Like a growing number of small brewers, Watkins aims to package his beer and cider in cans, citing their superior ability to keep beer fresh. The packaged beers and cider will be available at the new outlet, to be known as The Cannery. Watkins also aims to distribute the packaged product across Canberra.

BentSpoke will be the third Canberra brewer to offer packaged beer. In a one-off exercise in 2009, Richard Watkins brewed and bottled the Wig and Pen’s Kembrey Ale at the De Bortoli family’s Red Angus brewery, Griffith, NSW.

And in September this year Kevin Hingston introduced Pact Beer Co’s bottled beers to several Canberra outlets. Canberra-based Hingston brewed and bottled the beers in Melbourne but plans to build a sizeable brewery in Canberra.

Reviews

Moo Brew Belgo 330ml $5.90
Moo Brew shares its Hobart site with Moorilla Estate and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). The brewery’s gold-amber expression of the Belgian wheat ale style leads with a luxurious white head and sweet, banana-like fruitiness. A creamy, fresh palate reflects the aroma. But an assertive hops bitterness distinguishes it from the Belgian style.

Riverside Brewing Co Eighty Eight Robust Porter 330ml $5.50
This porter comes from Parramatta, just a few kilometres upstream from where convict James Squire grew Australia’s first hops. Inky black and six per-cent alcohol, it blurs the line between porter and stout with its oppulent roasted-grain and molasses-like flavours. Roasted flavours overlap hops bitterness and the fresh, clean finish.