Category Archives: Beer

Casella’s new brew good for competition

18 July 2012BeerChris Shanahan

The winemaking Casella family’s move into brewing brings commercial excitement, if not thrills in the flavour department. Their two new beers – reviewed last week (but destined to be only one after consumer trials) – sit in the mainstream, so-called premium segment. They’re nice, clean, fresh lagers and compare favourably with others costing $45–$50 a slab.

The family’s move into the mainstream premium beer market seems certain to be welcomed by the big retailers. A new high-volume product from a credible producer gives them leverage against the Foster’s-Lion oligopoly, with its estimated 90-plus per cent of the Australian beer market.

But the big boys won’t just cop it sweet. They’re sure to fight back as the Casella family cranks up its 300,000-hectolitre brewery in the shadow of its 12 million case a year winery.

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?

Savouring more of the hops spectrum

4 July 2012BeerChris Shanahan

In the old days in Australia, beer was beer. Hops provided bitterness, offsetting the body and sweetness of malt, and perhaps adding subtle aromas and flavours, too. But the rise of specialty beers means we can now enjoy a wide spectrum of hops aromas and flavours.

The diversity comes partly from the varieties of hops brewers use, but also from the brewing technique.

Traditionally, bittering hops were effectively cooked during boiling, a process that emphasises bitterness in the hops oils. But adding hops late during the boil (late hopping) carries more of the aromas and flavours through to the final product. You can see this used to good effect in the Cooper’s 150 Celebration Ale reviewed recently.

Dry hopping (adding hops during the fermentation rather than boil), captures even more of the plant’s flavours – demonstrated deliciously in the passionfruit-like character in the popular Little Creature’s Pale Ale.

Lion devours Little Creatures

27 June 2012BeerChris Shanahan

Lion, the Australasian arm of Japan’s Kirin Brewery, is to acquire ASX-listed Little World Beverages – owner of Little Creatures and White Rabbit beers and Pipsqueak cider. Lion took a 20 per cent stake when the business was founded in 2000 and currently holds 36.3 per cent.

And what a juicy little morsel it is for Lion to swallow. In its 2011 annual report, Little World Beverage’s noted 24.1 per cent growth in revenue to $70 million, 35.6 per cent increase in net profit to $9.2 million and a 41 per cent increase in operating cash flows.

The takeover offer of $5.30 a share – endorsed by LWB’s board (which controls 35 per cent of shares on issue) – saw the share price rocket from $3.79 on 15 June to $5.16 on 18 June, the day the takeover was announced.

Beer historian takes aim at Dan Murphy

20 June 2012BeerChris Shanahan

On June 4 in Australian brews news, beer historian, Dr Brett Stubbs, took Woolworths-owned retailer Dan Murphy to task over errors in its new booklet, Beer styles: The beers, the brewers and the breweries.

Dr Stubbs welcomes Dan Murphy’s attempt to educate beer drinkers, but finds the book riddled with careless mistakes.

These include placing Captain Cook at the head of the first fleet in 1788 and asserting the fleet carried two of the colony’s earliest brewers – James Squire and John Boston. In fact, says Stubbs, only Squire arrived with Governor Phillip’s fleet.

Other inaccuracies, says Stubbs, include the founding date of Cascade Brewery (1824 according to the brewery; 1832 says Stubbs) and crediting Matilda Bay as Australia’s first post-war brewery, in face of contrary evidence.

“In effect”, concludes Stubbs, “it is an uncritical compilation of self-serving and adulatory corporate vignettes, dressed up to look like ‘information’”.

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.

Courageous win for Canberra’s Wig and Pen

6 June 2012BeerChris Shanahan

Canberra’s Wig and Pen really earned its title as best small Australian brewery in the Australian International Beer Awards 2012. The competition attracted 1,345 entries from breweries in 41 countries.

The trophy goes to the small Australian brewery with the highest average score across all the beers it enters – that is, its aggregate score divided by the number entered.

A brewery eyeing the trophy might restrict entries to its strongest. But brewer Richard Watkins courageously entered 14 brews, covering an adventurous, challenging range of styles.

Watkins won 12 medals from the 14 entries (two gold, four silver and six bronze). And the winning styles ranged from the easy drinking, popular Balleyragget Irish Red (silver medal) to the luxurious Lunch with the Monks – inspired by Belgium’s potent Abbey tripel ale style.

Cascade’s all-Tassie brew

30 May 2012Beer, Beer reviewChris Shanahan

Two months after Tasmania’s hop harvest, Cascade Brewery rationed 2,850 cases of First Harvest 2012 to retailers across the country and a small number of kegs to a handful of venues in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania.

Anglo-African brewer SABmiller owns Foster’s Group and, through it, Tasmania’s Cascade Brewery. But in a sign of the growing importance of upmarket beer brands, Cascade retains its regional identity in fact as well as in name.

Cascade’s eleventh First Harvest ale retains its Tasmanian origins, giving the beer a sense of time and place. The time is the annual hop harvest – in this case three varieties of hops handpicked and delivered fresh to brewer Mike Unsworth on 14 March.

And the place is Bushy Park Estate in the Derwent Valley. Even the malted barley comes from Tasmania. The result – a full-bodied malty ale cut with ultra-fresh hops.

Cascade First Harvest 375ml 4-pack $18.99
Mmmmm mmmm, what a fine, winter warming brew Mike Unsworth made this year. It’s slightly more alcoholic than Premium Lager (below), deeper coloured (amber versus gold) and more luxuriantly malty – and cut through with pungent hops aroma and flavour. The assertive, lingering, resiny bitter hops offset the sweet, malt opulence.

Casella to enter beer market

23 May 2012BeerChris Shanahan

Griffith-based Casella family – makers of Yellow Tail, the biggest selling wine brand in the USA – plans to enter the Australian beer market.

They’ve built the brewery and employed former South African Breweries’ master brewer, Andy Mitchell, and Anthony Clem, veteran of South Australian Breweries, Castlemaine Perkins and Knappstein Enterprise Brewery.

Yellow Tail’s Gillian Martin says Mitchell and Clem are using consumer feedback to decide what the beer will taste like. They are gathering information through a free iPhone app (search ‘the perfect lager project’ in the app store).

Martin says around 2,000 people have already downloaded the app and provided information about what they like in beer.

The new brew, to be launched in June, will be a lager, distributed Australia-wide by a dedicated, recently recruited sales force. I’ll review the beer here as soon as it’s available.

Australia’s top 100 beers

9 May 2012BeerChris Shanahan

We’ve just grabbed the second edition of The critics’ choice – Australia’s best beers ($19.95, Scribal Publishing 2012). It’s a slim, advert rich book, set in an eye-wrenching sans serif typeface (compounded by a too-dark background colour in the early pages) only an advertising agency would choose.

Struggle through, though, and discover Australia’s top 100 beers as rated by a mix of retailers, journalists, bloggers, venue operators and brewers. Members of the group independently listed their favour beers tasted from any source during 2010.

They then ranked their selections, awarding 50 points to the top beer, 49 to the second and so on, then sent their ratings to a coordinator. The aggregated scores determined the beers on the top 100 list, ranked in order of their scores.

Top three on the winner’s dais were Feral Brewing Company Hop Hog India Pale Ale, Stone and Wood Pacific Pale Ale and Little Creatures Pale Ale (reviewed below).