Red Duck Pale Ale

An English style Pale, this is the most approachable of Red Duck’s regular range and is an easy drinking, thirst quenching ale that combines a touch of specialty malt and malted wheat with enough hops to ensure a gently bitter finish. It’s their biggest seller too.

Style: English Pale Ale
Strength: 4.5%

Red Duck Amber Ale

Scott’s take on the classic UK pub ale, this Amber uses a select blend of malts and low hopping levels using traditional British hops that don’t distract from the beer’s key characteristics – the hints of caramel and toffee that come from the malts. As with the British way, it’s a beer that benefits from being drunk at a slightly warmer temperature.

Style: Amber Ale
Strength: 4.9%

Red Duck Porter

This dark style of beer first came to popularity in London back in the 18th century, with the city’s river and street porters falling for its rich, deep flavours. The Red Duck version is a full-bodied beer, full of complexity due to a wide range of different specialty malts used in the brew, including roast barley, which can lend rich coffee like characteristic. Also lurking within this 6.4% beer are hints of chocolate, toffee, molasses, treacle and liquorice.

Style: Porter
Strength: 6.4%

Red Duck Bengal IPA

IPAs, or India Pale Ales, date from the time of the British Empire when, to ensure beer being sent to the troops on the Sub-Continent didn’t spoil during its long sea journey, brewers boosted the hop and alcohol content to act as preservatives. The Bengal is a traditional recreation of the style given a modern twist with the addition of generous amounts of Centennial and Cascade hops.

Style: English IPA
Strength: 7.0%

Red Duck Overland

This Bright Ale is a light and refreshing beer, crisp and clean on the palate with hints of honey and light caramel on the palate and a subtly enticing citrus and melon aroma. Designed after Scott had completed the Overland Track in Tasmania with friends to be the ideal beer you’d want once you’d taken that final step.

Style: Bright Ale
Strength: 4.5%

Red Duck Pale Rider

Taking its name from the Clint Eastwood classic is the latest release from Red Duck. After playing with Egyptian bread beers, rhubarb, raspberries, honey and beasts from the deep, it’s a return to something approaching sanity for the brewery, an American inspired pale ale with highly hoppy aromatics and bitterness. It’s going to be a member of Red Duck’s permanent range in bottles but, if you’re quick, you might be able to get your hands on it in keg form, with the only three 20l kegs released being tapped at Josie Bones on March 18.

Style: US Pale Ale
Strength: 5.6%
Bitterness: 42 IBU

Red Duck Hoppy Amber

Quite what Red Duck are going to do for a mixed six now they’ve added this, a seventh beer, to their regular lineup, who knows? Perhaps there needs to be a brewer’s half dozen added to the baker’s dozen. In the tradition of a series of British TV ads that had an uncanny ability to stick in one’s head – “Ronseal: It does exactly what it says on the tin!” – here’s a beer that does exactly what it says on the bottle, ie it’s hoppy and it’s amber in colour. To be slightly more specific, the brewer describes it as having “rich, hoppy aromas, moderately high bitterness with rich malt.”

Style: Amber Ale
Strength: 5.6%
Bitterness: 38 IBU

Red Duck Shy Blond

The Crafty Pint belatedly made it out to Red Duck’s current haunt in Ballarat recently (they moved from their original home in Purrumbete late in 2011). There, dotted around the warehouse alongside the tanks named after the world’s leading footballers and pallets of beer were all manner of barrels and experiments. Within just a few minutes it was becoming tricky to keep up with Scott Wilson-Browne’s increasingly obscure journeys into beer, with the latest theme (if there is such a thing) being to take beers that were somewhat unusual in the first place and creating ever more weird and wonderful variations on them; look out for two more takes on Ra, his Egyptian hop-less bread beer coming soon… The latest beer to escape the madhouse is the punsome Shy Blond, a Chai spiced Belgian Blond. Using a strong Belgian ale as the backbone, Scott has gone to work with cinnamon, cloves, aniseed, ginger, fennel, cardamon, black pepper, tea and a touch of honey. Brewer’s note: Does not contain any real blondes.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Spiced Belgian Blonde
Strength: 7.1%

Red Duck Dude, Where's My Cherry?

We’d imagine there are plenty out there who have become rather concerned for the well-being of Red Duck brewer Scott Wilson-Browne in recent weeks. Having released seemingly three new beers a day for a period last year, there’s been radio silence recently. We’re delighted to report that all is well, however, with the first limited release beer from the Ballarat brewery winging its way to shelves right now. Dude, Where’s My Cherry? is described as something of a sister to the brewery’s White Garden although to us it seems a little more straightforward. Whereas the White Garden had a degree of tartness to it, this is a more simple fruity wheat beer, with the addition of Montmorency cherries adding a touch of pink to the colour and a little cherry fruitiness to the base beer. Light, refreshing and ideal for this extended Victorian summer, it heralds what promises to be another rash of releases from Red Duck. We chatted with Scott at the opening weekend of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival and his increasingly madcap journey down the rabbit hole of beer is showing no sign of letting up. Quite the opposite in fact…

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Fruit Wheat Beer
Strength: 4.1%

Red Duck Topaz

Another day, another dollar. Or, in this case, another Red Duck beer. Latest cab off the rank is another that falls inside their bulging collection of strong pale ales as the Ballarat brewery continues what could be cast as a hop series of sorts. Inspiration for this single hop beer, which uses the Aussie hop Topaz, came about when brewing Hop Bach with Anders Kissmeyer earlier in the year. Among the 25 hops that went into that beer was this, a variety that has found a new lease of life as an aroma / flavour variety in the past year or two. It’s a variety with a huge alpha acid level (in other words it can add tonnes of bitterness to a beer) so has only been added very late to the brew (to try and maximise aroma and flavour and minimise bitterness – here endeth today’s technical lesson). According to brewer Scott Wilson-Browne, there’s still a fair amount of perceived bitterness in a beer that “has moderate malt characters, and the hops remind you of some classic English varieties, in particular East Kent Goldings, with soft earthy notes, long grass, and hot breezy afternoons lying under a shady tree…”

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Strong Pale Ale
Strength: 5.2%
Bitterness: 40 IBU

Red Duck The Tiger

It looks like we got things a little out of whack with Red Duck recently. Turns out The Tiger was released when we said the Bell Hop was and vice-versa. But given the brewery is releasing 277 new beers every hour for the duration of 2012, it’s a forgivable mistake. Anyhoo, for those interested in knocking back a Tiger, it’s another nod to the Old Country from Red Duck: a strong pale ale inspired by those of the British Empire. The brewer says it has “strong malt and alcohol notes, soft hopping from Stella in bittering and Northern Brewer for aroma hops”. Given the beer was conceived with India in mind, they also reckon it’s the perfect accompaniment for curry, from a Rogan Josh to a fiery Punjabi, apparently.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Strong Pale Ale
Strength: 6.7%

Red Duck Sexy Thing

Journeys in Mother Pint’s car when a child were rarely blessed with anything remotely approaching decent music. Her favourite musician – the result, one assumes, of meeting him when she was 13 and he was a young, untainted-by-Saviour’s Day-and-Wimbledon pop star – was Cliff Richard. She had a soft spot for Chris de Burgh too. You get the idea. Thankfully, there was a period in which she left Hot Chocolate’s Greatest Hits on rotation in the tape player, providing a welcome respite from the aforementioned horrors and BBC Radio 2’s subliminal attempts to get you to make like a stressed out student and stick a couple of sharpened pencils up your nose. Which brings us to Red Duck’s Sexy Thing, named presumably after the Hot Chocolate hit of the same name, which is an ale laced with chocolate and chilli. The idea came from the brewery’s dabble with chocolate in the Long Shot Porter and chilli in the Beer Here collaboration Ragnarok. The result is, according to brewer Scott Wilson-Browne, is “a hot, wet, lingering, passionate affair”. He adds, helpfully, that “If you see anything cloudy in your beer, apart from yeast, it’s chocolate! Or maybe it’s just sex in a bottle…” Delightful.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Hot Chocolate Ale
Strength: 6.7%

Red Duck Bell Hop

Apparently Red Duck promised that they’d never brew a black IPA – too much bitterness coming from two directions, they reckon. However, they’ve decided to offer up something with a generous helping of hops and a fair touch of the dark stuff too with the Bell Hop. Described as a “mildly hoppy, dark brown ale” it features a blend of eight well known hops – Columbus, Chinook, Simcoe, Willamette, Cluster, Galaxy, Amarillo and Cascade. And apparently, they’re considering a double Bell Hop in the future – the Concierge, perhaps – which may or may not look like a black IPA after all.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: American Porter
Strength: 5.8%

Red Duck / Kissmeyer Rebellion

The third and final collaboration between Red Duck and Danish brewer Anders Kissmeyer from when he visited Australia earlier in the year is a strong pale ale. Not as strong as the 25-hop-variety Hop Bach they composed together but a solid 7 per cent nonetheless. According to the brewer it’s “an ale that promises a rich reward, with deep golden leads, mild hops, strong malt aromas and a well balanced, full flavoured payload.” Just one batch was brewed, meaning there are just 650 wax-sealed, swing top bottles in existence then it’s gone. To read about Red Duck’s approach to naming beers, head here.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Strong Pale Ale
Strength: 7.0%

Red Duck Gnaume

In a recent piece for the site, we asked Red Duck founder Scott Wilson-Browne for the favourite of all the names he’d given his beers over the years. This was the one he picked. When we suggested it was something to do with Gaume (a place in Belgium) and gnomes, it seemed we were on the right track. There’s something to do with “small interesting creatures” too. The best way to solve the puzzle might be to get your hands on one of the beers while you set the cogs a-whirring. It’s the second of the beers Scott brewed with visiting Dane Anders Kissmeyer back in March (the other being the 25-hop-varieties Hop Bach) and is their take on the Belgian Lambic style (sort of), brewed with a whole bunch of yeast strains, some sugars, and a pair of fermentations. The result is a light, cloudy beer that’s subtly fruity, a little tart, a wee bit spicy and finishes refreshingly dry. Another oddball to add to the brewery’s rather large collection of oddballs and one that the brewer loves so much he’ll be back for more.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Belgian Lambic Golden Ale
Strength: 6.2%

Red Duck Bumble Bee

Red Duck’s entry for this year’s Great Australasian Beer Spectapular makes a reappearance in bottled form, having landed a spot in the People’s Choice top ten. Continuing Scott’s penchant for brewing with honey (a quick flick through the mental rolodex brings up a honey porter and three braggots with honey – there could be others), this is a honey amber ale, which in this case means there are some soft, nutty malts at play with the honey. It’s the brewery’s first single hop beer, with said hop being Bramling Cross from the UK and adding some fruity, floral aromas.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Honey Amber Ale
Strength: 5.7%

Red Duck Smells Like A Pony

The third braggot to come from the Ballarat brewery – braggots being a Medieval style of strong alcoholic drink that are a blend of strong ale and mead. This one wears its heart on its sleeve (or something like that) with the name an indication that it smells a little pony like. Or, as the brewer’s notes say, the buckwheat honey lends it a “curiously aromatic, pony like, leathery aromatic”. That said, the sweeter side of the honey seemed more prominent to The Crafty Pint’s palate, resulting in a full-bodied aperitif of a beer that is more approachable, if not as crackpot, as Red Duck’s first one, the Ugly Duckling released in 2010.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Braggot
Strength: 13.7%

Red Duck Gruiter

Even by the brewery’s standards, Red Duck’s Canute the Gruit was a weird one. A hopless beer designed to be like the gruit beers of Medieval days, it featured homemade nettle goo and hawthorn berry juice as well as some deliberately scorched oats in the kettle. It was a beer we found beyond challenging when it was young but which developed into a really exciting smokey sour beer with age. The Gruiter is the follow up, designed to be how a beer might have been around Renaissance times. Less smokey and less confronting, it’s got some roastiness in there, but that plays second fiddle to the sourness. Fuller in body than the first one and with a sharper sourness, it’s a welcome addition to to slowly expanding canon of Aussie brewed sours.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Gruit Stout
Strength: 6.8%

Red Duck Long Shot

A public service announcement with this beer. This was a beer brewed in conjunction with a team of six people from Westgate Brewers (a home brew group from Melbourne) to a recipe by one of their members called Amber. It was a prize for winning the last VicBrews home brew competition. The whole brew day event was coordinated by award-winning home brewer John Kingston. Unfortunately, brewer Scott Wilson-Browne had a brain fade and put the wrong name on the label. So, when you pick one up and prepare to indulge yourself in its mocha-like treats, courtesy of Campos coffee and EquaGold organic Dutch cocoa, and read “John Preston” on the label, be aware that while John Preston is a very nice man and runs a very nice home brew shop called Grain and Grape, he had nothing to do with this beer. This beer was brewed by John Kingston, Amber and friends. And don’t you forget it.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Chocolate Coffee Porter
Strength: 6.0%

Red Duck Ra #2

OK. It’s confession time. Embarrassing though it is to admit, our knowledge of Egyptian beers is pretty slender. What’s more, our knowledge of Egyptian bread beers is slimmer still. And when it comes to ancient imperial Egyptian bread beers, well, doncha just know it, we come up empty. Or at least we did until now, when the generous souls at Red Duck decided to culture up some sourdough yeast from a the tiny batch of Ra they made a couple of years back and make just that: an imperial Egyptian bread beer. It’s a hop free beer as they didn’t get added to beers until centuries later, but does contain, in no particular order, spelt, oats, wheat and barley, as well as a lot of raisins, sultanas and a small amount of dried orange peel and a sprinkling of spices. The result is a beer that’s all manner of things: it pours a cloudy, yeasty yellow, is thick, vinous, initially tart then fruity, with sweet honey characters joining in the fun later on. It’s also utterly unique and will never be brewed again.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Imperial Egyptian Bread Beer
Strength: 11.3%

Red Duck The Ox 2012

We’re unashamed fans of The Ox here at The Crafty Pint with a beer fridge that’s still home to a 2010 bottle (a gift from a very generous reader) and a few 2011’s too. In fact, we like it so much we put it on the Crafty Curates lineup during Good Beer Week last year. It’s Scott Wilson-Browne’s attempt to brew a beer like Three Floyds' legendary Dark Lord, uses only first runnings and requires a 22-hour brew day. We’ve only had a wee sample of the new one and it was instantly apparent there had been a little tweak. Turns out the level of roasted malt has been raised a tiny bit, and the level of crystal malt is down. As such, there’s a little more of a roasty, bitter chocolate edge to it and possibly slightly less of the engine oil like body, resulting in our declaration that it was “pretty sessionable for an imperial stout”. There’s much else to savour in its richly layered malty mass. There’s not a lot around though so if you want some, grab it now before we do.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Imperial Stout
Strength: 9.4%

Red Duck Ragnarok

There’s something a little disturbing about the story behind this new release from Red Duck. According to the release notes: “Ragnarok, from Norse mythology, is the final battle of the Gods, in which most are killed, and the Earth is destroyed. It would be the end of the world as we know it. But the outcome isn’t all bad, as a few Gods survive, as well as 2 humans who are able to repopulate a new and cleansed world.” All well and good, but as they go on to explain that the beer is a collaboration between Red Duck’s Scott Wilson-Browne and Beer Here’s Christian Skovdal Andersen, the implication is that they are the two men responsible for repopulating the Earth. Hmmm… Still, at least the beers their offspring would be drinking would be nothing less than fascinating. Or perhaps they’re among the few Gods who survive? Either way, the beer they’ve produced is suitably epic, a big, bold Belgian style quadrupel full of luscious dark fruit characters and with an alcohol warmth that’s boosted by the addition of a wee bit of dried chilli. Like the Hop Bach, there’s just 650 wax sealed swing top bottles around and once they’ve gone, it’s even more gone than the Earth post-Ragnarok.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Belgian Quad
Strength: 10.6%

Red Duck Hop Bach

While Red Duck do have some hoppy beers in their range (the Bengal IPA, Hoppy Amber, for example), they’re generally a brewery that explores the beer world in other ways, whether with malt-led numbers, experiments without hops or blending meads and strong ales. With this one beer they could be seen to redress the balance in one fell swoop. Concocted with 25 different hop varieties in conjunction with visiting Danish brewer Anders Kissmeyer earlier in the year, it’s a nigh-on ten per cent Imperial IPA. Brewer Scott Wilson-Browne says it wasn’t a case of just throwing any hops at it, rather “for this bitter sweet harmony, we carefully picked as many as worked together, some for bittering only, some in aroma, and a few for both. All of the aroma hops, and two of the bittering hops were also used in dry hopping later on.” The result is silky smooth, with a bitterness that belies its parts and with the hops nicely balanced by the malt. A beer to sit alongside those big US imports, yet crafted in conjunction with a Dane in Ballarat. Just 650 bottles.

Available:

Slowbeer
Purvis Cellars
McCoppins
Press Cellars
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Swords Select
Olinda Cellars

Style: Imperial IPA
Strength: 9.8%

Red Duck Golden Dragon

A Red Duck limited release that hasn’t seen the light of day for quite some time. The Golden Dragon is another that continues brewer Scott Wilson-Browne’s love of big, malt-led British styles. It’s a strong Celtic Ale that sits nicely alongside other Red Duck limited releases such as the whisky barrel-aged Loch Ness and last year’s Red Admiral. A complex bugger that can offer up treacle, caramel, stewed and dark fruit flavours with an earthiness and spiciness too, it’s one to savour.

Available:

Red Duck
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Others tbc

Style: Strong Celtic Ale
Strength: 7.8%

Red Duck Canute the Gruit

Back before Red Duck existed, King Cnut Ale by the UK’s St Peter’s Brewery got Scott Wilson-Browne thinking. A hopless beer that set out to recreate ales as they might have been back in Medieval times, it ultimately inspired this. The label declares: “EXTREME ALE” and with good reason. Featuring a mix of grains, oats and spelt – some of which was “scorched” in the kettle – as well as stinging nettles and homemade hawthorn berry juice, it is as weird as they get; one that most people will probably want to share and experience rather than knock back for mere refreshment. Pouring an opaque, dark brown with a thin, brown head, it boasts a pretty thick body that belies its relatively low alcohol content. The aroma is both smoky and earthy, with dark roast and burnt coffee beans coming through as it warms. There’s a faint whiff of tartness too, but nothing to prepare you for the intense and lingering fruity sourness that awaits once quaffed. Decidedly odd.

Available:

Red Duck
Slowbeer
Carwyn Cellars
Purvis Beer
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Josie Bones
Olinda Cellars

Style: Gruit Stout
Strength: 4.4%

Red Duck Belgian Vanilla Porter

Yet more proof that there are no rules when it comes to brewing these days. Whether it’s Murray’s throwing a tonne of hops at an Imperial Stout, Feral combining Belgian yeast with Japanese-developed hops or people turning India Pale Ales anything but pale, it’s very much a case of anything goes. Here a Belgian yeast joins the malts of a porter in a beer that’s finished off with some organic vanilla extract. The result is a beer that will be familiar to fans of Red Duck, with plenty of chocolate, roast and mocha malt characters at its heart. That said, there’s much to differentiate it from its stablemates, not least the vanilla that’s fairly prominent on the nose and adds a smooth, lingering finish. Speaking of the nose, it’s also reminiscent of the limited edition Cadbury’s Dream bar that featured strawberry bits, but given that was last on shelves six or seven years ago this is probably as pointless a sentence as any to have appeared on The Crafty Pint. The Belgian yeast adds just the merest undertone of funk to this dark ruby beer that throws a little blackcurrant into the mix for good measure and will find favour with those who appreciate something luxuriant at the end of the evening.

Available:

Red Duck
Slowbeer
Carwyn Cellars
Purvis Beer
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Josie Bones
Olinda Cellars

Style: Specialty Porter
Strength: 6.5%

Red Duck Queen Bee

Time for some honesty. Faced with a wobbly table at Crafty Towers, chances are we’d fold up a bit of card, shove it under one of the legs and be done with it. We’re willing to wager such a solution simply wouldn’t do for Scott at Red Duck. After all, any man who refuses to make one of his beers for a couple of years because he can’t get hold of exactly the right type and shade of wild bush honey with which he made the previous batch doesn’t seem like the “No one’ll notice” type. Thankfully, for anyone who’s been wondering where the Queen Bee Honey Porter has been, the right honey was located and the beer is back. One of four dark beers coming out from the brewery this month (although far from the darkest – it’s a slightly cloudy dark amber / brown), it’s another multi-malty release from the soon-to-be-in Ballarat brewery. The honey’s there in the aroma, along with some plummy dark fruits and a touch of sweet alcohol, while once it’s in your mouth you can expect to find everything from toffee, cocoa, chocolate, coffee and even some nuttiness coming through along with warmth from the relatively high alcohol content. As for the name, apparently it comes from Scott’s great grandfather’s champion yacht, which dominated the Norfolk and Oulton Broads racing in the early 1920’s. So there you go.

Available:

Red Duck
Slowbeer
Purvis Beer Richmond
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Josie Bones
Carwyn Cellars
Valley Cellar Door

Style: Honey Porter
Strength: 6.6%

Red Duck The Ox (2011)

If ever the world of beers designed to be sipped and savoured was looking for a poster boy, it could do far worse than give The Ox a call. Whenever a bottle is cracked at Crafty Towers, it’s the only one that needs opening that night; the sort of beer you can happily return to over a couple of hours. It seems only appropriate to enjoy it this way given that, on the rare occasions the Red Duck guys make it, they spend 22 hours in the brewery. Ox by name, Ox by nature, it’s a thick, dark brown beast that’s so gloopy it could almost pass off as spent engine oil. Crammed with so many different malts (and so much of it), you never know what’s coming in the next mouthful: liquorice, chocolate, burnt toffee, roast coffee, molasses; you name it, if it can be described as dark, sweet, rich or mysterious, chances are it’ll make an appearance. Who knows when it’ll next be brewed, so if it sounds like your kind of thing grab some now (before we snaffle it all).

Available:

Red Duck
Slowbeer
Purvis Beer Richmond
Blackhearts & Sparrows
Josie Bones
Carwyn Cellars
Olinda Cellars

Style: Imperial Stout
Strength: 9.4%

Red Duck White Garden

Crafty’s not allowed to drink at the minute (there’s a good reason) so it’s over to the brewer’s notes for the latest intriguing limited release beer from Red Duck. It’s a hybrid beer – a combination of Belgian witbier and the uber-rare Berliner weisse, an acidic, tart style of wheat beer that is deliberately soured – made with rhubarb and raspberry and therefore pink. Scott says: “At Red Duck we wanted to pay homage to Berliner Weisse, but wanted a very light tartiness, no sourness, and we didn’t want to achieve this by adding lactobacillicus or lactic acid.. He started with a wit/weisse beer base, used a soft English ale yeast to avoid spice and extra alcohol formation, and added a lot of Raspberry & Rhubarb Jam. “When the sugars from the Raspberry & Rhubarb jam are stripped out during fermentation, the true flavours are no longer masked by sweetness,” he adds. “The result is a very lightly coloured, soft pinky white ale, cloudy and very slightly tart.”

Style: Fruit-infused hybrid
Strength: 4.1%

Red Duck Burton

It wasn’t until Crafty was sat in a room of home brewers (in Boronia of all places) studying to become a beer judge that the significance of his birthplace in the world of beer became apparent. There’s a term in brewing – “Burtonisation” – which denotes the addition of salts to your water to try and recreate the water natural to Burton-on-Trent, the birthplace of the classic English Pale Ale (and Crafty). As such, this is Red Duck’s version of the beers from that area. Being a strident traditionalist, the brewer has gone for a beer true to the style’s early 18th Century origins with far lower hopping than found in the India Pale Ales (IPAs) that were to follow. As such, the “Bitter” of the title is something of a misnomer for those raised on highly hopped beers with big, bitter finishes. Instead, this is a cloudy, unfiltered copper coloured beer with a nutty, fruity nose (with a hint of alcohol) and a creamy mouthfeel displaying soft malt characteristics.

Style: English Pale Ale
Strength: 5.4%

Red Duck Red Admiral

Another Red Duck beer that looks to the UK for inspiration, this is a Celtic Ale by name, but one which brings much more to the table than that might suggest. Again displaying brewer Scott Wilson-Browne’s love of layering different malts in his beers (with the use of the rarely seen, fairly mild US hop Glacier), this throws up all manner of aromas and flavours: rum-soaked cherries, stewed fruits, sweet caramel, raspberries and chocolate on the nose; plums, dark fruits and cocoa powder to taste. Pouring a deep ruby red, with some sediment and cloudiness, the bitterness is gentle and the alcohol invisible. According to Scott, “the flavours are evocative of a rich plum pudding covered in treacle” while he says it’s a nod to his Anglo-Saxon ancestry in Suffolk and “is hoped to be a worthy tribute to the first King of the Suffolk Angles, Raedwald.” And when was the last time you could say that about a beer?

Style: Celtic Red Ale
Strength: 6.2%

Red Duck Black Heart

Another extremely limited release, most of this has been committed to beer clubs and homebrewers. However, a small amount is available from the Red Duck Provedore in Camperdown and some Melbourne bottleshops. Crafty’s not had the chance to sample with the Microbreweries Showcase getting in the way, so over to Slowbeer’s Chris Menichelli for some guest tasting notes: “Golden pour, darker than you come to expect from the style. Nose has a honeyed malt sweetness from the pilsner malt & a touch of caramelized orange-type esters, certainly not too unlike Duvel. Also displays clove-like yeast characters. Mid-palate has a decent amount of carbonation to balance the sweetness from the malt. On the finish we have a big old whack of phenolic spice, no doubt attributed to both the high ABV & belgian yeast strain used. Finishes with the slightest touch of earthy hop bitterness for good measure. A very interesting interpretation of the style, given the addition of spices. The name is quite appropriate, as this is certainly not for the faint of heart!”

Style: Belgian Blond

Red Duck Loch Ness

Red Duck’s Loch Ness is a dark, malty brew, with rich flavours from chocolate malt, roast barley and other dark malts. It had an extended boil time to boost caramelisation, a slow and gentle fermentation period, then a short maturation period of six weeks in charred former whisky barrels. The result is beer which pours with a tan head and displays rich but subtle flavours: roasted malt and bags of dark chocolate with touches of caramel, oak, stewed dark fruits and, atop the lingering, warming finish, some whisky. Those fruits reappear on the nose, mingling with chocolate and a touch of oak. And, says the brewer: “In case you’re worried that the char would impart a smokey character, it doesn’t. Pure carbon has a cleaning effect – this is not a smokey beer at all.”

Style: Barrel-aged Scotch Ale
Strength: 6.7%

Red Duck Ugly Duckling

Two years in the making, this blend of a mead made with locally sourced bush honey and two 50l batches of barrel-aged strong ale was described by one of The Crafty Pint’s friends on first tasting as “beyond beer”. It’s a recreation of a medieval style called a braggot. At 14.3%, the Ugly Duckling is still in its infancy and will mature “for decades”, according to its maker. Even now, it’s wonderfully multi-layered: viscous, uncarbonated and golden, it boasts a lightly wooded aroma with hints of calvados and toffee apple. Honey, oak, spiced rumkopf fruit and sweet alcohol combine in a slightly tart palate with a dry finish. A digestif to surprise your guests.

Style: Braggot
Strength: 14.3%

Red Duck The Ox 2010

To create a good Imperial Stout demands the maker doesn’t hold back. And that’s the case with The Ox, an appropriately named behemoth of a beer from Red Duck. Its thick, almost tar-like body is apparent the moment it leaves the bottle and crawls down the side of your glass. It’s a beer to be savoured over an evening (just as well given its strength!) and one in which all manner of flavours can be unearthed, from mouth-filling molasses to rich, treacly chocolate. Exquisite.

Style: Imperial Stout
Strength: 9.4%