SorAlaMA Oooh! Barleywine

As soon as I saw Barleywine on the menu my eyes lit up and I'd plotted my course to this beer from when I first entered the pub. The time was now to finally enjoy it.

Except, two things combined to ruin this supposedly epiphanous moment. The first was the beer itself. This is both the worst barleywine I've ever had, and probably not a barleywine. It's 8.1% abv so just squeaking into the appropriate scale, but that's not where I have the issue. It's quite a cloudy brown sort of colour rather than amber and puts out a scent that's far too sweet. It's an artificial, candy sort of smell with a green grape edge in there and nail polish alcohol to boot.

My first thought on tasting it was that I should have ordered a smaller glass. It has a character of tart fruit and sugar, mildly reminiscent of Japanese umeshu. The flat mouthfeel is smooth enough but this is oddly sour, dry, solvent-like and just downright unpleasant. It's not a hopped up US Barleywine, or a pleasantly malty / smooth and deep English variant. I'm not one to protect beer class definitions by any means but this is no barleywine. I just don't know what to call it instead.

The second thing to ruin the experience was the staff. Yes, I turned up on a weeknight and maybe I'm spoiled at the excellent Sail and Anchor but witness this exchange:

Staffer: "What are you drinking there?"
Me: "A pretty bad barleywine, unfortunately"
Staffer (confused): "Oh, have you been to Bali then?"

Cue momentary confusion and massive facepalm. It's written on your damn menu board for chrissakes, apart from anything else. It's like serving these freaks continuously ordering cider and James Boag's Premium Light has rotted either the brains or the enthusiasm of most here.

Oh and Russian Imperial Stouts aren't necessarily from Russia either you idiots.

2.0

Thoughts on Feral

Finally made it out to Feral Brewing and I have to say I was pretty pumped.

We'd booked for my birthday for one thing, and they have done good things in beer of late.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for their restaurant. Frankly ridiculous service levels totally soured what should have been a great day and left us with a pretty poor impression all round. I'm going to leave the details for elsewhere (ie, urban spoon and others), but for now let's just say don't go to Feral for the food or the restaurant.

If they actually have some of their range of beers on tap, it may still be worth your while of course. In our case there was not a great deal we hadn't had before. Couple of quick notes regardless:

983 Lager: Pretty plain sort of a lager, character revolves around late-boil Sorachi Ace so there's lemon and spice to give it something. Still not a beer I particularly enjoyed.

The Runt: Apparently this is an underhopped version of the stalwart mainstay Hop Hog. Which sounds good to me - so why was this so hard going? I found it just OK, mate of mine hated it completely. An answer to a problem that just doesn't exist.

Feral White: I've heard conflicting reports around this - either that Mr Varis is forced to brew this due to a signed contract, or that he is currently brewing it under contract at another brewery to fill orders but wants to take it back in-house when possible. In either case I've had this on a number of occasions and have to hope if it does come back in-house it will also raise in quality. It's a pretty sparse example of a white and outclassed by all sorts of others in the class.

Rust: Well all of us enjoyed this one but having said that the common consensus was it was a nice APA.. turns out it's supposed to be an Abbey Dubbel? Very puzzling but nice enough.

Smoked Porter: A little bit of smoke on the nose but taste wise the chocolate malts are dominant with the smoke certainly not the overwhelming characteristic. It's smooth and easy drinking but again you get the sense there's a bit of a haphazard approach here and it results in a certain level of confusion and/or disappointment when beers arrive under somewhat of a false identity.

Watermelon Warhead: Wow, now this is different. Great naming - tastes like a watermelon warhead alright. Great beer, nice execution, at 2.9% has a variety of uses. I'd love some on hand as a spritz / palate cleanser for a big night on the larger beers, it would likely do an excellent job.

Karma Citra: Feral's Black IPA. A reasonably good effort at the style, the Citra gives it a bit of a kick not found in others in this style. Has two distinct stages of flavour which is interesting. Good beer.

Things that weren't on tap: Boris, Razorback, Rye IPA, etc etc, pretty much everything we went there for (though this is far more forgiveable than their abysmal service performance).

Feral clearly has massive potential but in order to take advantage they can start at the bottom. Fix the terrible website. Put a proper sign to your restaurant. Pull your finger out with the insulting / embarrassing service quality. For "Australia's best brewer" by several measures in the last year it's frankly embarrassing for it to be literally, and by a large distance, the worst "on-site" experience to date at any brewery I've visited in Australia (and for reference I've been to 15 odd in the last year alone).

Dundee India Pale Ale

I have to say I was pretty suspicious about this new arrival nestled amongst the budding craft beer stocks at my local Woolworths.

It's an IPA, and from America to boot so ostensibly there should be good potential. From the start however there are doubts creeping in with the off-orange fanta-like colour and wobbly, obsequious head.


The nose too is of maybe pilsner malt, with a slight edge of american pale ale. A concurrent lack of hop herbals or bitterness means that any wild thoughts of enthusiasm you may have been cradling are now surely dwindling.

The wake continues mournfully as you take a sip, odd notes of maybe grape or sweet orange abound within the wishy washy mouth presence and there's really no bitterness to speak of. Odd dead metallic malting completes the dread procession.

Yeah. So vaguely unpleasant and in a sense, vaguely angering. I wasn't expecting brilliance here but I get the distinct impression that someone somewhere is taking the piss. If you want a good IPA, there are far better domestic options right next to it in the fridge. And hell even if you're gearing up for the fourth of July and want an American drop, you can easily pick up something from Sierra Nevada even at chain bottleshops. Avoid. 3.0

Bali Hai Premium Lager

Surely in the heat, even a bad lager would --

Argh oh god Jesus no. Oddly even the ingredients are listed as water, malt yeast, and hops in that order - wouldn't surprise me if there were less hops than yeast if that's what it means.

Buy something else seriously, beer or not, hell even this thing was a better beer:

Coffee cola's where it's at. Anything to forget the terror. 0.5

Ballast Point Pale Ale

Can't say the bottle's too attractive here.. I like fishing as much as the next man on average but yeah.. pale ale. And an amberjack.

And then you get it home only to find out it's actually a Kolsch. WHY CALL IT A PALE ALE THEN ?? This is not going well.

Taste wise (and this was before I found out it was a Kolsch) it put me more in mind of Coopers Pale Ale than anything else. Quite bland, slight unripe apple, slight metallic notes, uninspired pale malting, and earthy, dusty hops.

I always think 'well America is a long way away' and it's true most of the stuff we get here won't be to the same level as the nectar straight from the source. But even by that measurement this struggles against the other similarly handicapped US beers tested thus far.

Live by the sword, die by the sword: if this calls itself a Pale Ale it will be rated as one, and as such I pronounce it very disappointing. 3.0

Warka Strong Ale

Fozzie bear. There, I said it.

This beer however is not very muppetty at all, to its immediate detriment. Instead it's a clumsy brute of a beer, at once too sweet and too bitter after an ESB style caramel apple flavour profile in a finishing hops sort of sense. Alcohol at 7.5% comes through too strongly on the nose and the taste, it's sticky and quite difficult to drink cold or not.

I've had worse beers strictly in terms of just taste but the other elements really let this down. As such Warka gets an 'avoid' label, but no 'shit'. 2.5

Marston's Oyster Stout

Tools and oysters indeed.

Nice creamy head on this, very attractive. Then you smell it and oh dear, it's all metallic sourness and arse I'm afraid, backing up a piddly 4.5% abv. Unfortunately the taste follows this trend, sweaty sort of watery caramel, metallic notes.

Having given this a few days now and still feeling oddly sick when I think about it, I have to ponder if this now qualifies as bad as our other recent contender. It's a lucky escape for Marston's from only the second flat zero ever awarded, only because I'm not sure if it's this beer, or the style overall that is the real culprit here. 0.5

KJD Brewing Chocolate Cherry Porter

Another NZ brewer - would KJD be joining the ranks of the exalted with 8 Wired and Epic, or the bargain basement slop shop crew of Monteiths, Kaimai?

For a choc cherry porter to be served at room temp, this pours and tastes watery and thin.. so you lose a bit of motivation there. Then you have a whiff and there goes the rest of it to be replaced with trepidation. It's pretty much sourness and alcohol sadly.

Taste wise I can sort of see what they were going for. It's very much 'real' cherry, ie pretty sour, no real sweetness, and I can definitely respect that. But for it to work it needs a richer, fuller, more rounded end to it with malt and backing chocolate. They seem to have forgotten this bit completely though, as with the label the 'cherry' bit is the biggest part .. but then Chocolate and Porter don't even exist.

So, a bit of a shame really. Nice idea, poor execution. 2.0

Mikkeller Wet Hop Kellerbier

Here we go again ..

This is supposed to be a wet hopped version of a cellar beer, which can apparently be either top or bottom fermented and thus take on varying characteristics in line with an ale or a lager.

This takes on most of the characteristics of a bad pilsner to me. Weak head, sour citrus nose, 5.5%, transparent and bubbly, big lager taste, very fizzy. While I'm not closely familiar with this style (is anybody?), the other kellerbier effort tasted was far and away better than this with a unique character and a pleasing, if polarising, graininess.

This is barely better than a macro Any Beer. 1.5

Kaimai Porter's Rye Ale

Brace yourselves, for this is a momentous day.

A momentous day, I say, and it's NZ that have finally done it.

When I rate beers, I generally consider a score of 1.0 to represent widely available macro lager (insert VB or whatever your local rubbish may be here). This is far and away worse. This makes me pine for a Tooheys Extra Dry like a gently frying prisoner pines for the sweet release of death.

I'm not sure which of 'Porter' 'Rye' or indeed 'Ale' this beer even is but it's a horrid sour metallic effort with no redeeming benefit. It's hard to imagine how this even came into being? But it's clearly not a dud / skunked bottle either .. what were they thinking?

The only value I can see for this beer is taking it to parties, to either a) drink a sip and fire yourself up to take advantage (?) of freely available crap lagers, or b) share with others to "demonstrate that weird beer you always drink" and in so doing make sure no bastard ever touches your weird beers in the esky.

As such it receives the very first 0.0. Congratulations.

Monteith's Sparkling Ale

I need to stop buying things just because they're from NZ. Case in point:

What about this is sparkling? It's stale and lamentable throughout, insipid in all ways, with no real redeeming qualities. Even the fact it was a 500ml turned out to be a downside in this case.

Terrible. 2.0

Murray's Porter

Murray's porter has been in fridges all over the place tempting me with its quite exorbitant (for an Aus 350ml beer) price tag. I finally noticed it was 8% and that was enough to push me over the line.

OK 8% is not a small amount. But shit it tells you all about it at all stages through the mouthful. I've had much stronger beers say much less about their ethanol.. seems clumsy rather than intentional. It's less a warming alcohol and more a front of mouth blast quite intrusive to taste.

Outside of that.. it's attractive enough in a pitch sort of way. Aroma mostly burnt smokey odours. Sits light in the glass and out of the bottle though - the antithesis of viscous. More like a dark ale than a porter? Little bit of choc, rounds out coffeeish.

In all though what's there isn't good, and you have to slog through a watery, alcohol dominated mouthful of unpleasantness to get there. Can't see getting this again. 2.0

James Squires 150 Lashes Pale Ale

At last. The day of reckoning.

I'd had this on tap in Sydney several months ago and oddly enjoyed it - then came back and bought a carton in Perth only to hate every stinking last drop of it. This then would be the decider in a very fair setting - the lair of the foul brewer himself.

What can I say - this is pretty bloody horrible. Is it really a pale ale even or some sort of unpleasant hybrid lager? Light, fizzy, fluffy, and with no real taste outside of an offputting sour (rather than bitter) edge.

Above and beyond not delivering on any of its claims to be a craft beer (or even a premium beer) [or even a beer actually come to think of it], this is actually really very unpleasant as well.

"Never Forsake Flavour" eh Squires? Don't make me laugh. 1.0

Things not to buy

Sunner Kolsch. And Fuller's ESB.

I thought I liked both Kolsches and ESBs.

Then these two versions from their own homelands prove me wrong.

Horrid. Like 'Australian Chinese' food we have imported the thing and then done it better. When you are at the bottle-o next and tempted by these 500ml bottles of wisdom, for gods sake buy something Australian instead.

That is all.