As far as beer names go, Get Lost is a fitting one for Burnley Brewing’s New Zealand IPA for two reasons. First off, that's because there's a difficult to define medley of fruit flavours at play (more on that below) and secondly, there's as an impressively detailed scene on the can's design that you could spend a lot of time getting lost in. The post-hike campfire scene includes the likes of a search and rescue crew, a crocodile, a long-dead pilot that had me thinking of the television’s seminal Lost (look the writing was messy but it was prime-time TV that thought big) and that's all from just a cursory glance. The artwork is by Melbourne illustrator Luke Sommerfeld, while the beer inside is the work of Burnley’s Cal Fowler, who has as much of a love for hiking as he does brewing and being unable to enjoy a fresh New Zealand beer while outdoors, decided to brew one of his own.
He did so using all Kiwi malts and the hop combination of Rakau, Kohuta, Motueka and Wai-iti, which is where we get to the mix of fruits inside which are just about aromatic enough to suggest that at a stretch, maybe you could be justified removing actual fruit from your bag and packing this beer. It flitters between juicy pawpaw, tinned pineapple, stonefruit, orange pulp and a slight touch of lime, plus has a soft touch of diesel often associated with hops from across The Ditch so that if you close your eyes long enough, maybe it will get you there.
Will Ziebell
Published August 11, 2021 2021-08-11 00:00:00
