Are you here to read about the Pink Boots collab, or the two other recent Newstead releases we’ve tacked on to it?
Wait... I don’t care what your answer is. You’re getting all three.
Recently, a bunch of Pink Boots Society members piled onto the brew deck at Newstead and out came High Hopes, a kick in the teeth to anyone who’s ever used the phrase "girly beer". This big ol’ Westie is a powerful creation that ties together a whomp of malt with Pink Boots’ hop blend. It brings all the citrus peel bite and resinous pine you can handle, with a little tropical flurry in there for good luck. Somehow, even with all this going on, this beer doesn’t overwhelm the palate. I don’t know how a double West Coast is so drinkable, but it is, so I won’t question it.
The theme of this year’s PBS collab beers is Rise Up, and you can’t spell "resinous pine" without "rise up" (or "in nose", I guess). Part of the proceeds go to the Pink Boots Society, so it’s easy to grab a four-pack of this knowing your dollars are doing good work in the beer industry (and that you’re about to drink more of this delicious beer).
Beer’s been called liquid bread before, but when it’s made with sourdough culture (courtesy of the cool Brisbane sourdough bakery kids at Riser) and tastes this bready, it’s just getting stupid. But that’s Zoo v12 Sourdough Culture Wild Ale for ya.
The Newstead brewers used both saison yeast and sourdough starter to get this beer a-bubblin’, then left it in a barrel for 24 months (which is quite a long time… perhaps they forgot about it for a while?). The result is a beer that, believe it or not, carries a lot of sourdough breadiness and a lot of barrel character. There’s that deep, complex funk that comes when a sourdough mother has been through many a generation, but the sharpness is still kept in balance.
This iteration of Zoo is dry, it’s sour, it’s weird and yet it’s strangely familiar for those who like sourdough bread. Which should be everyone.
Then, for something less familiar, you can check out Crossroads Oat Cream IPA. It’s an NZ-loaded IPA packed with lactose and oozing with sweetness, creaminess and bitterness in almost equal measures. Are grapefruit milkshakes a thing? Probably not. But that’s what this tastes like. But it’s not a thing. But someone’s probably made one before. Maybe.
Mick Wüst
Published September 7, 2023 2023-09-07 00:00:00
