The new releases keep flowing at Tumut River.
Let’s start with Staring at the Sun NEIPA. TRBC first brewed this beer at the end of 2020 as a way of looking forward to a bright future in 2021. We all saw how that turned out. So they’ve had another crack at the end of 2021; while we’ve gone through half the Greek alphabet of COVID variants since then, there’s still a chance that 2022 will be slightly brighter than the two preceding years. And, if it is, we’ll all be staring at the figurative sun, wisdom and blindness be damned.
The haze is light in this one, but the aroma is heavy with sticky malt and sweet citrus. Aussie Eclipse hops lead the way with mandarin syrup, backed up by compatriots Enigma and Galaxy to pad out the fruitiness. The sweetness up front is balanced out by a bitterness providing a strong finish, not unlike the repetition in the final chorus of Staring At The Sun by The Offspring – the only part of the song I can remember as it’s now stuck in my head.
Nectaron Juicy IPA doesn’t provoke any earworms from the 1990s, thank goodness, but it does share some of those other traits: the sweet fruit notes balanced with hop bitterness. Rather than citrus, however, this one is a display of stonefruit. Loads of apricots and millions of peaches (I retract my previous statement about the earworms) in natural juice take over your nose and your tastebuds alongside a smooth alcohol flavour.
If you’ll forgive my lack of creativity, Hoppy Jack IPL also oozes with the aroma of tinned peaches, but that’s no surprise since it also is full of Nectaron hops. But this is no duplicate of the above beer; rather than a seven percent juicy IPA where the hops dominate from first sniff to final sip, this is an India pale lager that lures you in with the full-on fragrance of said stonefruit but then provides an easy drinking body with subtle hops. Nectaron Juicy IPA is the thwack of flavour you want when you’re sitting down with mates to chat and laugh and reminisce, while Hoppy Jack is the clean refresher that cools you off after you’ve mowed the lawn, and pumps you up for your next task.
Finally, we’re at Black Betty Blackberry Sour, and there’s not a single song that it brings to mind. No catchy song that could get stuck in my head and distract me from everything else I’m trying to think about. Luckily this beer is memorable, at least: it pours the strangest bluey-green colour; carries both the sweet aromas of apple juice and the distinctive banana of a Euro wheat beer; tastes like super tart berries, but that powerful sour is lightened by the dryness of the finish. While I expected this blackberry sour to Ram Jam down my throat, it ended up hitting with a tartness that buzzed like a trapped fly… I suppose you could call it Spiderbait.
Mick Wust
Published December 8, 2021 2021-12-08 00:00:00
