New Beers

Barely a day goes by without another seasonal or one-off special flying out of an Australian brewery (if not ten). Here and in our weekly newsletter, we'll bring you news and, if we've sampled them, our take on as many of them as possible. Happy hunting!

Bright Brewery

White Bay Beer Co Higher Now DDH Pale

Tapped July 27, 2020
Hazy pale ales done well can carry all the hop character of a NEIPA but with less wallop factor. Higher Now is an example of such a pale. In the glass it looks like pear juice, with that dull cloudy orange that’s adjacent to beige, but there’s nothing boring going on here. Galaxy, Azacca and the newer Sultana hops bringing fruit aplenty, although Higher Now isn’t a sweet glass of brekky juice like some hazies. Think more of a dry fruitiness, with tropical fruit hitting evenly across the palate… Read more
Style
DDH Pale
ABV
5.5%

Hope Brewery FKA Juicy Mango Hazy Sour & Sunny Boy Sour

Tapped July 26, 2020
If ever there was a way to use the wildly obvious rhyme “sour power” in a non-ironic way, it’s in reference to these two beers. Abounding with fruit and hops, the FKA Juicy Mango Hazy Sour saturates the air with the sticky sweet smell of ripe mangoes, like when you buy a tray of Bowens out of the back of a hot van on the side of the highway. (Can non-Queenslanders relate to this simile?) But don’t expect that fruity sweetness to encapsulate your whole experience of this beer. If the addition… Read more
Style
Fruit Sours
ABV
6.0% & 9.0%

Rocky Ridge Chunky Dates, DB 2020 & Imperial Custard Tart

Tapped July 25, 2020
An imperial stout brewed with dates, created in collaboration with a cookie shop and released alongside not one, but two limited edition imperial stouts... A release this massive wouldn't be attempted by many but the Rocky Ridge team are determined to make this uber-hyped triple release one of the most memorable of the year. Get Chunky takes centre stage: a beer brewed with pecans, lactose and 200kg of dates that were painstakingly caramelised by the brewery team before being added to the boil. This… Read more
Style
Imperial Stouts
ABV
10.0% & 9.5% & 12.5%
Bitterness
25 & 8 & 28 IBU
Stockists

Launching at the Cellar Door on July 25

Details here

KAIJU! & Thin Man Brewery Mortal Wombat IPA

Tapped July 24, 2020
With borders closed and COVID-19 running rife through much of the planet, it's not really an ideal time to be creating an international collaboration. But if the pandemic has proven one thing it's that brewers are a bloody resourceful bunch. Thus it was that, following an introduction by a member of the Collective Arts team in Brooklyn, a couple of nights out and ongoing conversations, KAIJU! and New York State's Thin Man brewery came to brew Mortal Wombat, a hazy IPA featuring Aussie Galaxy and… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA
ABV
7.0%
Bitterness
45 IBU

Mountain Goat Rare Breed: Barrel-Aged Blended Porter

Tapped July 24, 2020
Combining rum with dark beers has become something of a habit at Mountain Goat over the years, and winter 2020 is no different as another Rare Breed leaves the brewery in the shape of this Barrel-Aged Blended Porter. Now they've got a distillery to play with on site, it might not be too long before they're able to mix and match beers and spirits in house, but this time around the beer has been put together in conjunction with Beenleigh Distillery, the oldest registered distillery in Australia –… Read more
Style
Rum Barrel-Aged Porter
ABV
9.0%
Bitterness
34 IBU
Stockists

For more on the beer head here

Hargreaves Hill Beatnik Fudge Stout

Tapped July 24, 2020
It's fair to say the Hargreaves Hill brewers are making the most of winter, with this release from offshoot label Beatnik making it three stout variants in two months. They form a bit of a brioche bun sandwich too as the first of them, this year's Babooshka – a lactose and vanilla heavy sweet stout – and this Fudge Stout that loads up on lactose and cocoa land either side of the 2019 R.I.S., which forms the hearty, bitter meat in the middle. So, what of this top layer? If you were to look at… Read more
Style
Sweet Stout
ABV
5.0%

Bridge Road Brewers Nitro Robust Porter

Tapped July 24, 2020
The team at Bridge Road Brewers always tend to be at the front of the queue, if not leading it, when it comes to trialling anything new, be that ingredients, techniques, promotional tools, you name it. Right now, while nitro beer in cans isn't new, they're exploring its possibilities in more beers than, as far as we're aware, anyone else in Australia. One of the brewery's longstanding mainstays is the latest to get the treatment, and it's not as if the OG Robust Porter hadn't been getting fuller… Read more
Style
Nitro Robust Porter
ABV
5.2%

Modus Operandi Doppelator

Tapped July 24, 2020
I’m a child of the 80s and 90s, so when I first saw Modus Operandi's Doppelator, my mind jumped straight to Terminator (though if I’m being honest, the jingly ad for this 90s toy was actually the first thing that popped into my head). But when I finally untangled myself from my own nostalgia, I was able to see that the -ator suffix wasn’t a reference to that Austrian beefcake Arnold Schwarzenegger, but to Munich brewery Paulaner and the Salvator doppelbock they’ve been brewing for almost… Read more
Style
Doppelbock
ABV
7.6%

Moon Dog Sir Plum McCartney

Tapped July 23, 2020
As with countless millions across the planet, Paul McCartney has played an important role throughout my life, even if I've never got that into Wings, the band The Beatles could have been. Along with The Big O, the latter are one of the few areas of musical common ground between me and my dad, who loves to reminisce about how he was telling his family and friends in the US about them before they'd had their first hit there, while Mrs Pint (then my girlfriend of a few months) and I like to claim at… Read more
Style
Plum Sour
ABV
4.5%

Burnley Brewing Blackcurrant Gose

Tapped July 22, 2020
When Swedish punks Millencolin toured Australia in March 2019, the band’s frontman Nikola Šarcevic made sure to put down a few collaboration brews between performing sellout shows. Aside from being one of Sweden’s top musical exports, Nikola also runs Wizard Brewing and Mikrofonbryggeriet – and you can read more about that side of his colourful life here. In particular, Nikola is into brewing fruit-filled kettle sours, as he did with Old Wives Ales to create Sommar Sour, and hazy IPAs. When… Read more
Style
Blackcurrant Gose
ABV
4.6%

Bodriggy Brewing Good Thanks, Yourself? & Big Night Big Night

Tapped July 22, 2020
Bodriggy have been experimenting with different levels of haze in this pair of bird-studded tinnies. There’s Good Thanks, Yourself?, a phrase people in Melbourne are surely still using but maybe shouldn’t given the current circumstances, and in this case a DDH hazy pale that makes a feature of Citra, Zappa and Meridian hops. It's a combination that brings out a mix of tangerine, sherbet-like orange and a little bitterness in what’s an incredibly pillowy and texturally soft beer. Big Night… Read more
Style
DDH Hazy Pale & Hazy IIPA
ABV
5.5% & 7.9%

Boatrocker KP's & Banshee 2020 & Wildecherry 2020

Tapped July 22, 2020
Remember when a new release from a brewery was something of a rarity, when "seasonal release" meant one beer per season? Feels like a long time ago, no, and rather than slowing the rate of new beers COVID-19 has merely proved to be another accelerator pad. That said, Boatrocker have long been in the habit of dropping multiple beers at once and here, with a trio of 500ml bottles that left the brewery around the same time as the two tinnies we wrote about earlier in the week, they show it's… Read more
Style
Barrel-Aged Beers
ABV
5.0% & 11.9% & 6.5%

Nowhereman Hazy Susan IPA & Wungong Rye IPA

Tapped July 22, 2020
This packaged pair from Perth's Nowhereman ignore Australia’s lactose and dark malt winter addictions in favour of balanced, punchy IPAs. And, in this writer’s recent experience, it’s a sage move that's seen the hopped-up duo gleefully welcomed by those returning from the Mordor-like realms of Pastry Mountain... "So, you mean to say these are bitter, dry and crisp? Amazing! And they are different from each other as well? More amazing!" Hazy Susan debuted in keg in 2019 and, as the… Read more
Style
Hazy IPA & Rye IPA
ABV
6.5% & 7.0%
Stockists

Available from the brewery and WA Nowhereman stockists

Hobart Brewing Co Tascadian Dark Ale 2020

Tapped July 21, 2020
Hobart Brewing Co are well known in Tasmania for putting on amazing mini-festivals, events and gigs at their brewery. They are also recognised as one of the most reliable producers of consistent beers in the state, something reflected in their regular schedule of recurring seasonal releases. When things get cold and dark in Tassie (walking the dog on the beach on the weekend in shorts was one of my braver moves of late) it’s great to be able to turn to something dark and still hoppy. Enter: The… Read more
Style
Black IPA
ABV
6.0%
Stockists

Find HBC stockists here

Pirate Life Imperial Breakfast Stout & Black IPA

Tapped July 20, 2020
There's more than one way of getting two beers from one run through the mash tun. Sometimes brewers split their wort (the sweet, sugar-laden water extracted from mashing milled grains) into more than one batch and change up the hops, yeast or other processes. Sometimes brewers use the first runnings – the densest, most sugar-laden wort obtained when the mash tun is first drained – for one beer and then the second runnings – obtained by putting more water through the grains to extract more of… Read more
Style
Imperial Stout & Black IPA
ABV
11.0% & 6.0%

Pirate Life Loose Lips Sink Ships IIIPA & Smooth Sailing West Coast IPA

Tapped July 20, 2020
Of the two parti-gyle pairs released by Pirate Life in quick succession – of which you can read more here – our bottleshop spies tell us it's the IIIPA Loose Lips Sink Ships that's been selling the fastest. Given the target audience and the sort of beers that dominate the upper echelons of ranking sites like Untappd and RateBeer, it shouldn't be a surprise, what with all those Is, an ABV of 12 percent ABV and 100-plus IBUs (International Bitterness Units). It's a beer that's been around before,… Read more
Style
IIPA & West Coast IPA
ABV
12.0% & 6.0%

Westside Ale Works Weekend Juice & Major Revision & Ryes N' Shine

Tapped July 20, 2020
When you constantly pour 20 different beers of your own creation at your brewpub, it’s safe to say you’ll become accustomed to brewing a pretty diverse mix of styles. That’s certainly the case with these three cans from Westside Ale Works, a trio which sees them transition from hazy to hazelnut to (h)oatmeal as smoothly as this sentence. Weekend Juice is a NEIPA that looks like the juice you’d enjoy with your Saturday brunch, with its colour closest to the kind of tropical drop you might… Read more
Style
NEIPA & Hazelnut Brown Ale & Oatmeal Rye Stout
ABV
5.8% & 6.4% & 6.5%

Boatrocker Variations On A Theme IV & Oakey Dokey Stout

Tapped July 20, 2020
There have been plenty of hazy IPAs from Boatrocker over the past 18 months, to the extent it seems they've given up on finding new names for them. While I've not come across Variations On A Theme I to III, I can confirm that IV†, for which head brewer Matt Houghton spent some time polishing his IPA recipes in an icy Russian wilderness, continues their habit of giving HIPA lovers what they want. From the impeccably solid haze and smooth, gently giving blankets of sweet stone fruit, cream whipped… Read more
Style
Hazy IIPA & Oaked Stout
ABV
Both 8.0%

Westside Ale Works Belgian Brunette & Dan's Self Doubt Stout & Apricot Rye Sour

Tapped July 18, 2020
If you’ve made it to Westside Ale Work’s South Melbourne home, you’d have likely noticed the barrels that line the back of the brewpub. Owner Casey Wagner has been busy experimenting with them in recent beers, as evidenced by the three tins we received this week. There’s Belgian Brunette, a Belgian dark ale that’s been ageing in shiraz barrels, where it’s managed to pick up an impressive amount of wine character. Even texturally, it’s quite vinous, while there's a dark plum flavour… Read more
Style
Belgian Dark, Russian Imperial Stout & Apricot Sour
ABV
8.1% & 9.3% & 5.0%

Molly Rose Brewing Shoulders & Crowd Goes Mild

Tapped July 17, 2020
As Molly Rose’s Collingwood brewpub once again turns into a bottleshop with Melbourne into Lockdown Mk II, brewery founder Nic Sandery has two new cans ready to show off. There’s Shoulders, a slightly tweaked version of last year’s West Coast IPA Shoulders Of Giants that was designed as a showcase of the classic three Cs American hops Chinook, Cascade, Centennial. This time around there’s Galaxy in the mix too, bringing with it a punch of sherbet-like citrus, mango and passionfruit to add… Read more
Style
IPA & Dark Mild
ABV
7.2% & 4.0%

The Crafty Pint is an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. We bring an honest, old-fashioned journalistic approach to beer's brave new world, telling stories because they're worth telling not because someone is paying us to write them.

Like many of the people who have changed the face of beer in Australia, we believe in authenticity, integrity, enjoyment and love. We hope to play a role in helping good beer, brewed by good people, find its way into the hands of more drinkers.

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