Category Archives: Beer review

Lion to include nutritional info on beer labels

26 August 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

What’s in your beer

If you’re confused about what goes into beer, you’re not alone. Galaxy research, cited by Lion as it announced plans to include nutritional labelling on its Australian beers, found that “87 per cent of Aussies don’t know what goes into beer”.

Lion said that from August it will begin putting the information panels on its “wholly-owned Australian beer portfolio – meaning 887 million bottles of beer will carry helpful information on sugar, preservative, calorie (kilojoule) and carbohydrate content every year”.

The rollout will begin on Lion’s biggest brands, including XXXX, Tooheys, Hahn and James Squire, before spreading out across the entire portfolio.

Lion says the new labelling will be part of a broader public education campaign on beer facts and myths. There have been growing calls from some quarters in Europe, the US and Australia to include nutritional information on alcohol labelling.

Reviews

Sünner Kölsch 500ml $5.90
Kölsch, one of Germany’s classic beer styles, made only in Köln, is pale-lemon -coloured ale that’s been cold cellared, like a lager. Not surprisingly, it straddles the style border between lager and ale, with ale-like, rich, fruity palate and lager-like briskness. Sunner is a vibrant, fresh, easy drinking but complex example of the style.

Cavalier Courage 330ml $4.90
The website describes Cavalier Courage as an Australia blonde ale “developed to help raise awareness of and funds for research into motor neuron disease”. Every bottle sold generates $1 for the cause. Exuberant hopping matches the flamboyant head. The lively palate offers gentle malt character and an assertive hoppy bitterness.

30 breweries sign up for Canberra Beer Week

19 August 2015Beer, Beer review, PeopleChris Shanahan

Canberra beer week and beer day out

Canberra might lack the geographic breadth of greater Sydney or Melbourne for a beer event. But it more than makes up for it in enthusiasm – and perhaps in beer geeks and brewers per capita.

Canberra Beer Week, scheduled for 5 to 11 November, incorporating Beer Day Out craft festival (6 and 7 November), claims to have 30 breweries signed and is currently working with venues around the city to host the various activities.

Specialist beer and cider retailer, Plonk, of Fyshwick Markets, runs and coordinates beer week. This year it’s set to attract a great diversity of brewers and cider makers to host tap takeovers, brewer talks and food matching events in various venues across the city.

Put the dates in your diary and keep an eye on canberrabeerweek.com and beerdayout.com.au for details and tickets.

Reviews

Southern Bay Requiem Uber Pale Pilsner 330ml $4.60
What’s in a name? Will I need a cab? Ahh, no, uber pale malt and uber hopping give Southern Bay a quirky take on pilsner. It’s also uber fresh and frothy, which is good. And the uber hops will please some but not all with their uber resiny flavour and uber bitter finish.

Jennings Brewery Cumberland Deep Golden Ale 500ml $8.90
Cumberland UK Lake District beer stirs memories of Santon Bridge pub, stodgy food, mediocre wine list, beautiful countryside and delicious ale, made to drink too much of. The beer is indeed deep-golden coloured, with a warming malty palate and sturdy, lingering and refreshing hops bitterness.

Mr Malty’s favourite Phew

12 August 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Bitter Phew, 137 Oxford Street, Paddington

Late on a warm, sunny Sydney day, my beer scout, Mr Malty, marched me up Oxford Street to the remarkable Bitter Phew bar.

We strode up the narrow, dark staircase at number 137 and into the homely watering hole, lit gently by oblique winter sun slanting through open windows.

Tuesday, 4.30pm, workday barely ended, and already beer lovers hugged their stools behind the bar, facing 12 taps and an obliging barman. Overhead, a whiteboard listed the wild-ferment cider and 11 craft beers currently on tap.

We ordered two Victorian beers – a pale golden, French-style farmhouse ale and a robust American brown ale – then finished on an exotic, sour, challenging brew from Italian brewer, Birrificio del Ducato.

The owners, Aaron Edwards and Jay Pollard, search widely for cutting-edge beers and rotate them through the moving feast on tap, making Bitter Phew a must-visit for beer lovers.

Beer reviews

Castlemaine XXXX Gold Australian Pale Ale 375ml six-pack $15
Australia’s market leading mid-strength beer, XXXX Gold Lager, has a new mid-strength sibling (3.5 per alcohol) – XXXX Gold Australian Pale Ale. A press release describes the beer, accurately, as having, “less bitter and hoppy flavour than other pale ale styles in the market”. It’s an easy drinking quaffer destined to offend no one.

Woolshed Brewery Amazon Ale 330ml $4.90
Woolshed Brewery dedicated its first beer to Amazon Creek, a picturesque waterway near the brewery, located on the Murray River, South Australia. The mid-gold-amber coloured ale offers rich caramel-like malt flavours, cut through with citrus-like hops flavours and finishing with a lingering hops bitterness. A portion of wheat malt gives the palate notable briskness.

Brewing up history – Goulburn’s Bradley Grange

5 August 2015Beer, Beer review, PeopleChris Shanahan

Bradley Grange, Goulburn. Photo Chris Shanahan

The remarkable Bradley Grange property, housing the Old Goulburn Brewery, lies behind the big merino’s arse, near the Goulburn back roads Canberrans once navigated to avoid main-street.

Grange’s buildings, designed by Francis Greenway and built from 1833, housed “the various activities associated with brewing, malting, milling, coopering, smithing and stabling”, according to the brewery website.

Amazingly, the buildings survived the centuries. And now restored to their original shapes, if not full functionality, they stand as a unique museum of colonial architecture and commerce.

We visited for the beer and finally did taste it in the old malt house. Before that, however, the ghosts of brewers, coopers and maltsters past lured us through the old buildings.

There’s a homespun feel to the displays. But beautifully written information boards in the various galleries give profound insights into the brilliant mind of Francis Greenway, and the diverse – and surprising – influences on his designs.

Old Goulburn Brewery Goulburn Gold 750ml $9.50
The Old Goulburn Brewery barman, Michael, isn’t telling us much. In fact he’s serving the pale golden beer blind, leaving us to work out what it was. Well, it was delicious, surprisingly so for an ale of just 2.7 per cent alcohol: gentle, soft and malty with an assertive, refreshing hops bitterness.

Orkney Brewery Skull Splitter 330ml $7.50
Orkney’s “wee heavy” delivers the dessert-like richness of traditional, strong Scottish ale. Forget about hops and bitterness. This is all about rich, sweet malt flavours – including caramel- and –molasses-like characters – combined with a heady 8.5 per cent alcohol. It’s a delicious, harmonious, winter warmer – in fact, far from skull splitting.

Canberra brewer’s gypsy pact

29 July 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Pact Beer Co, Canberra’s ambitious new brewer. Photo Giancarlo Del Miglio

Like the Wig and Pen, Zierholz, and Bent Spoke, Canberra’s new brewer, the Pact Beer Co, arose from the vibrant, anarchic underworld of home brewing.

In 2014, Kevin Hingston, a keen home brewer, became national winner of the Australian Amateur Brewing Championships.

His appetite whet, Hingston moved into the professional ranks this year. With the backing of Canberra-raised mates Mark Grainger and Tim Osborne, Hingston brewed Pact Beer Co’s first ales at craft breweries in Sydney and Melbourne – a widespread practice known as gypsy brewing.

He offers the beers on tap at the Transit Bar, the Durham Castle, the Pot Belly, the Old Canberra Inn and A. Baker, and take-away “growlers” at Plonk.

Hingston plans to introduce bottled beer into Canberra by September, and has ambitions to build a sizeable brewery here in future. “We’d like a brewery larger than the existing Canberra operators – large enough to supply wholesale”, Hingston said.

Pact beers reviewed

Pact Beer Co Brickworks Brown Ale schooner $7
“Gypsy” brewer Kevin Hingston launched Brickworks Brown Ale at the Durham Castle, Kingston, on 16 July. The beer pours deep amber with an abundant, inviting head. Strong, floral hops aromas leads to a rich, warming palate, with flavours of caramel, malt and roasted grains under the pervasive hops, which linger in flavour and bitterness.

Pact Beer Co Tennent Pale Ale schooner $7
A big, bold beer in the American pale ale style, Tennent sets pungent, resiny hops against rich, sweet, malty flavours. Hops dominate from first sniff to the lingering aftertaste, in an harmonious and characterful interpretation of the style. On tap at Durham Castle, Transit Bar, Pot Belly and Old Canberra Inn.

Fat Yak sires lazy offspring

22 July 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Herd mentality

The release this month of CUB’s Lazy Yak – first offspring of Matilda Bay’s successful Fat Yak Pale Ale – reveals much about the rapidly growing craft beer market. It also supports predictions the big brewers are best placed to profit from it.

Fat Yak was itself a toned-down version of Matilda Bay Alpha Pale Ale. Brewed originally at the CUB’s Matilda Bay Garage Brewery in Dandenong, the astonishingly bitter, malt-sweet Alpha displayed the sheer power and idiosyncrasy of the American Pale Ale style.

The enormous success of Alpha’s less astonishing offspring, Matilda Bay Fat Yak, saw Fat Yak supplant Matilda Bay as the brand drinkers recognised.

And now to appeal to a growing herd of less savvy craft beer drinkers, the Yak herd expands. The new member, not yet tasted, tones down the bitterness considerably from the original while remaining an all-malt brew.

Beer reviews

Rye River Brewing Co McGargles Granny Mary’s Red Ale 330ml $4.20
Granny Mary’s warm, burnished mahogany colour comes from the roasted malt used in its making. Subtle roasted-grain flavours push through the beer’s malt and caramel-like flavours, giving a pleasant tartness to the dry, moderately bitter finish. The ale comes from Rye River Brewing of County Kildare, Ireland.

Hawthorn Brewing Co Pilsner 330ml $4.20
Hawthorn Brewing’s pilsner emulates the classic Czech style from the town of the same name. It succeeds to a large degree with its bright golden colour and fresh, full, malty palate, cut through with lingering hops bitterness. It’s more fun to drink than the average mass-made pilsner, thanks largely to its notable hops bitterness.

2013 – a great apple year in Orange

15 July 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Good vintage for Small Acres Cyder

Like winemakers along the southern NSW tablelands, James Kendall loved the 2013 vintage. However, Kendall’s enthusiasm is for cider apples, not grapes.

In 2006, with wife Gail, Kendall bought bare land at Borenore, near Orange. They established the Small Acres Cyder business and planted three hectares of English and French cider apple varieties.

Kendall, with local winemaker Chris Derrez, makes most of his cider off-site from purchased fruit. However, in good seasons, he uses his own cider varieties and cellar to make a bottle-fermented version.

He uses the traditional rack and cloth method to extract juice from the apples. This oxidative process enriches the flavour and deepens the colour of the resulting cider, which undergoes a secondary fermentation and 24-months’ maturation in bottle.

The just-released 2013 vintage replaces the sold-out 2011 vintage, winner of the champion Australian cider trophy at the 2013 Australian Cider Awards.

Beer and cider reviews

Small Acres Cyder “The Cat’s Pyjamas” 2013 750ml $33
Maker James Kendall writes, “We named the Cat’s Pyjamas after the 1920s saying meaning the best that you can do. It’s certainly not your average cider”. Bottle fermented and aged for two years, it pours deep lemon-gold with persistent small bubbles. It’s ultra fresh and mature at the same time, with delicious, piquant pure apple flavour.

Wychwood Brewery Pile Driver Classic English Ale 500ml $6
Wychwood’s loveable, deep-amber-coloured ale remains a winter favourite, with its warm, malty, molasses-like aroma. The rich, smooth palate reflects the aroma. And spicy, herbal hops cut through the malt adding flavour and a long, persistent bitter finish. The malt–hops combination delivers flavour galore despite a modest 4.3 per cent alcohol content.

Cooper’s release 2015 vintage ale

8 July 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Another fine beer for the cellar

Cooper’s released their first extra strong vintage ale in 1998, not too long after Dr Tim Cooper turned from medical practice to brewing for the old family firm.

At a time of rapidly growing interest in so-called “premium” beers in Australia, Cooper blazed the trail for powerful beers capable of improving with bottle age.

Beer aficionados were well familiar with the concept. But Cooper brought the idea – and the beer – to a wider audience.

Cooper produced follow-up vintages in 1999 and 2000, skipped 2001, started again in 2002, missed 2003, produced another in 2004, missed 2005, then continued non-stop from 2006. He released the 2015 vintage this week. It’s available nationally in bottle and on tap.

The ale’s keeping qualities come from its rich maltiness, high alcohol, high level of hopping, and the anaerobic environment of maturation following secondary fermentation in bottle.

Beer reviews

Coopers Extra Strong Vintage Ale 2015 355ml 6-pack $28
Cooper’s fifteenth vintage ale, continues in the fruity, malty, high-alcohol (7.5 per cent) style established by earlier vintages. However, the beer varies each vintage. In 2015 hops aromatics integrate smoothly with the ale’s natural fruitiness and the bittering level is higher. The assertive, lingering bitter finish works well with the deep, sweet, malt flavours.

Matso’s Lychee Beer 330ml $3.42
Brewer Marcus Muller developed this now popular hybrid at Matso’s brewery, Broome. Muller now brews at Zierholz, Canberra, but Lychee continues under his successors. Slightly reminiscent of the Belgian wheat style, Lychee offers fresh, light, delicate flavours with a little sweet kiss, courtesy no doubt of the lychee and elderflower in the brew.

Has craft beer had its day?

1 July 2015Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Canberra brewer disillusioned with “craft”

In an interview with Radio Brews News, reported in Australian Brews News, Canberra brewer Richard Watkins said he’d become disillusioned with the name “craft beer”. Many people regard it as pretentious, he said, and it downplayed the skills of large-scale brewers.

Like the “premium beer” category used a generation ago – or the current “natural wine” movement – “craft beer” lacks a formal definition. It might imply small scale; or it could mean skilfully crafted (as opposed to being merely brewed?).

If we ever define “craft brewer” in Australia, we’ll perhaps take a different tack than America’s Brewers Association. For them, a craft brewer makes as much as 702 million litres a year, provided they’re less than 25 per cent owned by a non-craft business and use traditional methods.

More likely, Australia’s pragmatic drinkers will skip the semantics and go on enjoying good beer, no matter who makes it.

Beer reviews

South East Brewing Behemoth Black Ale 500ml $17.95
Behemoth black ale truly is a huge and monstrous creature. Its impenetrable darkness, 10.8 per-cent alcohol, massive malt and mother lode of hops strain at the chains, before running amok on the palate, saturating it with, well, monstrous flavours of the sweet, malty, bitter kind. For consenting adults only.

St Louis Kriek Lambic 250ml $4.00
Belgium’s kriek-lambic beers were originally lambic beer (sour, spontaneously fermented with a tag-team of yeasts and other microbes), to which whole cherries (kriek) were later added for fermentation. This sweetened, but still spontaneously fermented version, provides a glimpse of the idiosyncratic, sour style, albeit a little sweet for my palate.

Beer review – Woolshed Brewery and Brewcult

24 June 2015Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Woolshed Brewery Judas the Dark 330ml $4.70
Woolshed Brewery of Murtho, South Australia, adds roasted wattle seeds to Judas, giving an Aussie twist to a timeless villain. This deep, dark Judas, though, gives a sweet, warming, gentle kiss. Coffee- and –chocolate-like flavours of roasted grain give way to a charry, grippy bitterness that offsets the malty sweetness.

Brewcult Full Metal Anorak English IPA 500ml $10
In the US and Australia, IPAs proliferate daily as thrill seekers explore the world of pungent, resiny, bitter hops. Brewcult (Derrimut, Victoria) offers a dark-brown version, overflowing with resiny, fresh hops aroma. The fruity-malty palate, at a modest-for-the-style 5.8 per cent alcohol, balances the hops, which nevertheless give a bitter, lingering aftertaste.