Given the extraordinary lengths that Bridge Road and their Norwegian brewing buddies went to to create the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis beers – involving brews on either side of the planet, and unrefrigerated shipping of said brews from one side of the world to the other in barrels via ship – they will presumably be rather chuffed with their reception. Aurora Australis is currently the highest rated Australian beer ever on Ratebeer and Aurora Borealis scored a top 10 finish in the recent Hottest 100 poll; pretty good for a limited release, 14 percent-plus beer.
Now they have repeated the operation for two more beers, which will apparently be the final two in this rather unique experimental series. The Aurora Borealis II barrels arrived from Norway in Beechworth just before Christmas and have now been packaged ready to be sampled around Australia. The Aurora Australis II will be doing the same thing in Europe. The base beer is a Belgian style tripel and any booze hound would presumably be able to tell what sort of barrels the Borealis travelled south inside. There is an unmistakable heady whiff of cognac that welcomes drinkers before the more familiar characteristics of the Belgian ale come through. In fact, the soft, sweet, pillowy tripel exists like the filling in a cognac sandwich, with the spirit returning at the end complete with a boozy, back palate tickle. There are limited numbers of this never-to-be-repeated beer, so grab one quick.
Published February 12, 2014 2014-02-12 00:00:00
