Traverse Australia and you'll find many a brewery with a kolsch – or at least a beer approximating the style with roots in Köln – in their lineup. Often, such beers will be there as the approachable option for guests whose journey into beer's more interesting realms are in their infancy, or as a quaffer for someone seeking simple pleasures.
Given The Barrel Shepherd's co-founder Georg hails from Germany, he's got more reason than most to have a kolsch in his lineup, yet Otto – one of a small number of beers that form as close to a core range as such an operation will ever have – isn't your ordinary kolsch. It's barrel-fermented, a process that means it's picked up some of their house culture's funkier elements.
However, it's also fair to say that Otto is a fine entry point for anyone new to barrel-aged and blended beers as it serves up its goods with a gentle hand. There's a really lovely, restrained Bretty funk woven through the textural creamy-oaky-vanilla-tinged liquid. There's a baseline of doughy kolsch-esque malt too, underpinning what's a very approachable, beautifully constructed farmhouse style beer.
James Smith
