McLaren Vale IPA

A rare IPA from South Australia, bright bottle looks good.

It's got good strong US / maybe Australian citrusy hops smell out of the bottle too. Once it's in the glass, malt is more apparent. It's a reasonable looking pour, decent head to boot. Nice work so far.

Taste-wise, this is a beer thattriestotalkabouteverythingallatonce and it's a bit confronting. Rather than having stages, it's like there's a burst of all different fruits, passionfruit and stonefruit in particular just jump in the door three stooges style and the balance kind of suffers as a result. I think it could stand to be a little maltier too, comes across as a little on the watery side which promotes a sweet fruit, almost berry vibe at times.

Not a bad beer - but not memorable or comforting either. 6.0

McLaren Vale Drk

After the last two from these guys I approached these as a gourmand restaurant reviewer would sidle up to a local dive, grimly determined to write it off with little if any mercy.

Contrary to expectations though this is a tasty enough drop in a blue collar sort of way. You're greeted with an aroma of choc cherry caramel scents which is quite nice. The beer itself is malty with slight roastiness and a burnt caramel character that is pretty damn good.

It's a little watery but I'm just pleased my expectations were proven wrong. This is their best beer by a distance. 7.0

McLaren Vale Ale

Ok - now that it's not a lager, can Vale pull something out?

Hmm. Fancy packaging, yes. But even after drinking two of these on separate occasions I still had to look up to find out what this was even supposed to be. American Pale Ale, I'm told. I couldn't really get past "Um. Ale?" personally.

If you analyse this forensically you can find a little bit of apple, light malt, caramel, and sugar. But I suppose the best you could say is that it's inoffensive, insofar as it's utterly forgettable.

After a bit of thought, I had come to think this would be reasonable as a sort of gateway craft conversion beer. But then I'm not sure it has the punch to do that even. Disappointing. 4.0

McLaren Vale Dry

Bugger, bought this pretty much by accident trying to get some of McLaren's other stuff on here.

4.5%, "australian dry lager", pithy insubstantial head, very light. Minimal aroma. Not motivating. In terms of taste it's a bit better than the preamble would lead you to expect - there's a little bit of sweetness there backed by malts. Kind of apple like tastes.

Not a great deal of complexity, though that clearly wasn't the aim here and I don't want to line this up on purpose just to smash it. I'll rate it not bad as a sort of a gateway lager conversion tool.. still miles behind Knappstein and the like though. 4.5