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!
Wolf of the Willows & Tequila Tromba Jalisco Sour
Tapped May 31st, 2019
Wolf of the Willows enjoyed success with their 2018 GABS beer, a delicate and subtly complex spin on the Tom Collins cocktail. So they decided to follow a similar route in 2019; well, similar in that they hooked up with a spirit company when concocting their festival beer. In most other respects, it's a different beast altogether: if Tom Collins was subtle, this is the sledgehammer, the yin to its yang. In making it, they combined agave, the base ingredient of tequila, with chargrilled pineapples,… Read more
Pale Yellow
- Style
- Spiced Sour
- ABV
- 4.2%
Clare Valley Brewing Co Double NEIPA
Tapped May 31st, 2019
The Clare Valley crew continue to explore the world of IPA with this late autumn limited release, upping the booze and doubling the hops and the haze in creating an 8.2 percent ABV double NEIPA. To ensure the beer was a hoppy monster, head brewer Damo used Cryo Hops: created by freezing hop cones with liquid nitrogen, removing the lupulin glands and creating a concentrated hit. They're typically used late in the boil or in the dry-hopping phase to impart hop flavours and aromas with limited bitterness. The… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Double NEIPA
- ABV
- 8.2%
Barossa Valley Brewing Peanut Chocolate Milkshake
Tapped May 31st, 2019
These days, with some parts of the beer world like a year round GABS, the festival beers brewed for the annual beer circus come in all shapes and sizes. You'll always find those with odd ingredients, funky sours, turbid IPAs and those pushing the extremes of booze content. Yet there remains a place for the sort of beers the earlier runnings of the festival helped gain some limelight: sweet stouts. And this, kind of, at least, is where Barossa Valley Brewing's 2019 entry sits. As the name suggests,… Read more
Dark Brown
- Style
- Peanut Butter Chocolate Porter
- ABV
- 6.5%
Hawkers & Pink Boots & Cryer Malt Saint Hildegard XPA
Tapped May 31st, 2019
Pliny The Elder might have been the first person to write about hops but, centuries later, Saint Hildegard enriched our knowledge of hops like nobody before her. An artist, writer, composer, philosopher and Christian mystic, Hildegard of Bingen is widely considered the founder of natural history in Germany. Among the myriad animals and plants the polymath observed during the 11th century was the humble hop. Saint Hildegard is the first person to described hops in a scientific manner, even describing… Read more
Pale Yellow
- Style
- XPA
- ABV
- 4.6%
Five Barrel Brewing Spiced Ginger Sour
Tapped May 30th, 2019
A food processor was the quiet hero behind this beer. Brewer Phil O’Shea put 20kg into the 350 litre batch - all of which had to be chopped up by the food processor first. But, says Phil, he’s had to tackle more difficult ingredients before. “The ginger wasn’t too bad,” he says. “It was easier than some of the other things we’ve done. Shucking oysters was worse and zesting lemons was worse again." Cardamom and tea leaves (for some earthiness) were also chucked into the beer, which… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Spiced Ginger Sour
- ABV
- 4.5%
Five Barrel Brewing Pastry Stout
Tapped May 30th, 2019
The pastry stout is a style more popular in the United States than Australia, where it started out as a bit of a derogatory term for sweeter dark beers. For Five Barrel, where they have a fondness for stouts, having a crack at a pastry stout was only a matter of time. They just needed to wait for the cooler weather to arrive. For this beer, Phil O'Shea uses the base of the milk stout from his core range, adding more lactose, more malt and throwing in some vanilla to come up with some “super chocolaty,… Read more
Black
- Style
- Pastry Stout
- ABV
- 7.5%
Five Barrel Brewing Raspberry Pastry Stout
Tapped May 30th, 2019
Phil O’Shea brewed a big (for his Wollongong operation) 700 litre batch of his supercharged milk stout then left half as is for his straight Pastry Stout. With the other half, he went and threw in a load of raspberry purée. “Raspberry and chocolate always work well together,” he says. “We really like the raspberry sour that we do so it was a no-brainer to jump to this to start with.” The key phrase there is “to start with”; Phil has plans for a few other pastry stout flavours before… Read more
Black
- Style
- Raspberry Pastry Stout
- ABV
- 7.5%
Batch Brewing Co What A Melon! & Hoppsy Mozy & Señor Spicy
Tapped May 30th, 2019
The word fruity gets bandied around the beer world a lot as a general descriptor of beers but, boy oh boy, not all fruity beers are the same. Here are three "fruity" beers with very distinct personalities. For a summer ale that’s been infused with the juice from a full pallet of watermelons (this sounds it would’ve been a real pain to collect), What A Melon! handles subtlety and refreshment with finesse. The clear and sweet melony aroma is balanced out with a hint of tartness, a touch… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Various styles
- ABV
- 4.6% & 6.4% & 4.5%
Five Barrel Brewing Black IPA
Tapped May 30th, 2019
There are typically three sorts of black IPA. One sees the roasty, coffee flavours of the “black” side of the equation take centre stage. Another sees the reverse, where the hops are king. Then there’s the third version, where the beer combines the best bits of both sides of the fence. That’s where the Five Barrel black IPA sits; the citrus notes and flavours meld in with the coffee notes, with neither overpowering things here. That’s just the way Phil O’Shea wants it. “I always really… Read more
Black
- Style
- Black IPA
- ABV
- 6.0%
Bridge Road Brewers Nitro Mountain Lager
Tapped May 29th, 2019
Carbonation, nitrogenation – who cares as long as there’s bubbles and the beer is good right? WRONG. Unless you’ve been under a rock or in the National Party Room, the Earth is experiencing a little something called human-induced climate change. And the culprit? Carbon dioxide. Now, we’re not suggesting that the gas fizzing up your favourite beer is responsible for catastrophic ecological collapse, we’ll leave that up to the experts. But do you know what isn’t going to be responsible… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Nitro Vienna Lager
- ABV
- 5.0%
Nomad Brewing Supersonic Rossa
Tapped May 29th, 2019
It’s hard not to love a red IPA. It’s harder yet not to love a red double IPA. And it’s harder still not to love a red double IPA when the label has a picture of a magpie driving a red sports car through the Italian countryside, and you find yourself dreaming and wishing that you were there, taking those roads at 130km/h and soaking in the rolling hills and rustic farmhouses. (I say this as someone who just got back from a trip to the Italian countryside and is dying to go back. Does it show?) Even… Read more
Red
- Style
- Double Red IPA
- ABV
- 7.8%
Nomad Brewing Piccolo Stout
Tapped May 29th, 2019
What do you think of when you hear the word "piccolo"? The Italian word for "small" means different things to different people: to the musically inclined, it’s a small flute; to the Dragonball Z inclined, it’s a green guy in a cape; to the coffee inclined, it’s a small, strong latte that showcases the characteristics of coffee in the way a full-sized latte may not do. Nomad Brewing’s Piccolo Stout plays on this last use of the word, while also taking the word for its own… Read more
Black
- Style
- Coffee Milk Stout
- ABV
- 4.0%
Holgate Brewhouse Double ESB
Tapped May 28th, 2019
A full two decades on from first firing up their brewery, then in the back of their house, Holgate’s eyes are directed firmly towards the future, with their brewery expansion and creation of a visitor centre at the rear of their pub edging ever closer to full completion. But, as they approach their 20th birthday later this year, Paul and Natasha Holgate are also looking back at what brought them here. And what better way to celebrate a double decade than by releasing a double version of one of… Read more
Rich Brown
- Style
- Double ESB
- ABV
- 7.5%
Holgate Brewhouse Millennium Falcon 2019
Tapped May 28th, 2019
A long time ago, in a galaxy… well, you know the rest. In 2013, Holgate Brewhouse decided to celebrate their 1000th brew with an “Emperial IPA”: a big, bold IIPA filled with Star Wars-esque hops Galaxy, Falconers Flight and Millennium. That was well before the proliferation of George Lucas-inspired beers we now see released for International Star Wars Day (May 4). Millennium Falcon is a beer that’s since become a fixture of the brewery’s special release roster, picking up the odd gold medal… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Imperial IPA
- ABV
- 9.0%
Mash Brewing Epic Hazy Bogan NEIPA & Banoffee Pie Cheesecake IPA
Tapped May 28th, 2019
When the South West Craft Beer Bogans joined forces with Mash Brewing to create a new beer, it was quite the endeavour. Firstly, there was a poll run on their Facebook page to decide the style, then a competition to select the name of the beer before a bunch of bogans headed north to the Swan Valley. Fifteen of them were shown around the brewery and even got to select the hops to be used in the final product. We're assured no bogans were harmed in the making of this beer but many did leave the brewery… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- NEIPA & Milkshake IPA
- ABV
- 6.0% & 5.8%
- Stockists
-
Available for a limited time from both Mash venues and leading liquor stores around Perth
Moon Dog Cake Hole (Cans)
Tapped May 27th, 2019
Moon Dog continue to move more of their beers into cans with Cake Hole, their winter seasonal now making a third appearance, the latest to make the transition. To give the beer its full name, it's a Black Forest stout, inspired by the cake of the same name and thus featuring sour cherries, cacao and vanilla as well as a half dozen specialty malts. The recipe has been tweaked for the 2019 release, which is best imagined as a wad of fudgey chocolate smothering the cherries within. It's soft on the… Read more
Black
- Style
- Black Forest Stout
- ABV
- 6.5%
- Stockists
-
Available nationwide where you usually find Moon Dog beers.
Bruny Island Fresh Hop Harvest Ale 2019 & Bruny Black
Tapped May 24th, 2019
After serving up a dry, spicy and grippingly bitter Belgian-inspired ale for their 2018 fresh hop beer, Bruny Island Beer Co are back on more familiar harvest ale territory in 2019. The Strong Pale Ale that debuted at the Fresh Hop Beer Festival also eschews head brewer Evan Hunter's fondness for including raw or rarely seen grains in the mix, opting instead for a simple combo of two malts and freshly picked Tasmanian Cascade hops. As is typical when using wet hop flowers, the hop aromatics are soft… Read more
Dark Brown
- Style
- Dark Ale
- ABV
- 6.0% & 5.5%
CoConspirators The Wise Guy
Tapped May 24th, 2019
Whether it’s thanks to the small tasting serves or the sheer number of beers at each festival, dessert beers have certainly taken a hold of GABS. But when it comes to a Weiss Bar, should it be classified a dessert or a delicious afternoon snack? For the uninitiated, contrary to my popular assumption, Weiss Bars aren’t actually frozen yoghurt, but fruit-filled ice cream. Surely, that means they fits better into "tasty afternoon treat" territory than "fully-fledged dessert",… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Mango Cream Sour
- ABV
- 5.0%
- Stockists
-
More stockists...
Swords Select South Melbourne
Cellarbrations at Chas Cole
Fitzroy Cellars
Wines On Poath
Bottlemart Frankston
Parkhill Cellars
Heartbreaker
Camberwell Cellars
Village Vineyard
Hippo Bottle & Bar
Ritchies Towerhill
Bottle-O Romsey
Beer 360
Bar SK
The Hop Supply Co
Bar Josephine
Kekou Melbourne
Lazerpig
CoConspirators The Apprentice
Tapped May 24th, 2019
Brunswick may be home to countless cafés and a fair share of coffee roasteries but, if you’re in the neighbourhood want to see how chocolate is made, Ratio Cocoa Roasters is where you need to be. From bean to bar, each part of the chocolate making process is showcased inside the Sydney Road store where, of course, myriad finished products can be purchased. First brewed for winter 2018, The Apprentice is a collaboration between CoConsporators and said chocolatier. Pouring black and with a thickness… Read more
Black
- Style
- Chocolate Milk Stout
- ABV
- 5.9%
Hawkers & Against The Grain & Liberty Collabs 2019
Tapped May 23rd, 2019
They've been enjoying quite the 2019 to date at Hawkers. Their collab with US brewery Balebreaker, Tom Needs New Friends – an IPA featuring an experimental US hop variety and Oregon malts – is one of the finest beers to come our way this year. They spent their trip to the US for this year's Craft Brewers Conference brewing beers with some of the country's leading brewers then returned to collect Best IPA in the Australian International Beer Awards' most hotly contested category (as well as Best… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- DDH IPA & Kettle Sour
- ABV
- 7.0% & 4.5%
