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!
Hawkers Barrel-Aged Imperial Stouts 2021
Tapped June 28, 2021
As life goals go, setting yourself a mission to become recognised as a leading brewer of barrel-aged imperial stouts is a pretty good one. And it's one the Hawkers team is approaching with gusto for winter 2021, releasing four different barrel-aged versions of said beer. Three of them were aged in bourbon barrels, but let's start instead with the Rum Barrel-Aged version (12.4 percent ABV). It's the leanest, sharpest, and most spirituous of the quartet, with the rum less of the richer, deeper, darker… Read more
Black
- Style
- Barrel-Aged Imperial Stouts
- ABV
- ABVs as indicated
Bad Shepherd Oat Cream IPA
Tapped June 26, 2021
What's this? Two limited releases in a row from Bad Shepherd that resist the temptation to head to the dessert trolley or strive for some unusual colour? Hot on the heels of a tasty American brown ale comes another beer that's rather normal by contemporary standards; even the label art is of a rather more classical bent It's an oat cream IPA called, simply, Oat Cream IPA, in which Pahto (a variety new to us that's designed for bittering), Talus, Cashmere and Galaxy hops are combined with both lactose… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Oat Cream IPA
- ABV
- 7.5%
- Bitterness
- 25 IBU
Hargreaves Hill R.I.S. 2020 & Baboushka '21
Tapped June 26, 2021
The annual release of Hargreaves Hill's R.I.S. (Russian Imperial Stout) is one that's been hotly anticipated by various Crafty team members for many a year now. The 2020 version has been deemed to have spent enough time in isolation to be released into the community, once again in 440ml cans, and, while there's some roastier characteristics familiar from the beer's forebears, they come smothered in a wave of glutenous, fudgy molasses, cocoa and figs. It's very much in the lineage of the RISes of… Read more
Black
- Style
- Russian Imperial Stout & Vanilla Milk Stout
- ABV
- 11.2% & 6.0%
Hawkers Red Shift & IIPA 2021
Tapped June 25, 2021
The Fresh Coast Series of higher ABV, hop-driven beers from Hawkers isn't hanging around. It's not long since we found ourselves enjoying the crystalline charms of Nostalgic Tones and yet already the follow up, Red Shift, is here. If its immediate predecessor lent towards the hops, this shifts maltwards: fuller, stickier, with a toffee brittle like character wrapped around its yuzu and red berry fruits. An earthy bitterness is there to dry out the sweetness a little, leaving you with a burnt crust… Read more
Red
- Style
- India Red Ale & IIPA
- ABV
- 8.0% & 9.0%
Cheeky Monkey Guava & Blackcurrant Smoothie Sour
Tapped June 25, 2021
Fruited kettle sours are responsible for welcoming many into beer who wouldn’t have previous considered our glorious fermented, ever-expanding, carbonated realm. They serve up familiar flavours, often trigger nostalgia, come with mostly sensible ABVs, often in vividly clad cans, yet create limited brand loyalty. Most do what RTDs and hard seltzer do – vapid, fizzy fun, without bitterness. Cheeky Monkey’s toe in the lightly acidic water was 2017’s Frosty Fruits, a previous Mane Liquor collab.… Read more
Red
- Style
- Smoothie Sour
- ABV
- 7.0%
- Stockists
-
Available in limited release from Cheeky Monkey’s venues
And WA outlets
Tallboy & Moose Straight To The Poolroom & Nitro Moose Mousse
Tapped June 25, 2021
When tins arrive from Tallboy & Moose, you truly never know where those tins will take you. The Preston brewpub team has always been quick to experiment with new ingredients and brewing methods and doesn’t mind pushing styles to their boundaries either. Straight To The Pool Room is a little closer to an example of the latter over the former, with the strong ale taking a line from a classic Australian movie and adding Tasmanian pepperberry. At 7 percent ABV, the Australian strong ale could… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Strong Ale & Nitro Milk Stout
- ABV
- 7% & 5.5%
Shelter Brewing Campfire Stout
Tapped June 25, 2021
Shelter Brewing Co’s winter 2021 limited release is a straightforward stout inspired by holidays camping in WA’s South West, and it’s a perfectly timed release with the cold, dreary winter weather truly settled in most parts of the state's south at time of writing. Brewed with stacks of oats and generous quantities of specialty malts, Campfire Stout is luscious and rich, but not overly decadent, maintaining balance and ease of drinking. A modest 5.9 percent ABV is centred around dusty cocoa,… Read more
Black
- Style
- Stout
- ABV
- 5.9%
Hope Extra Shot Porter & BIPA 13.2 Cascade
Tapped June 25, 2021
I won’t lie; I first got into coffee by drinking those Gloria Jean’s lattes with the flavours in them. Caramel, vanilla, hazelnut… these were the flavours that brought my teenage tastebuds around to the bitterness of coffee. Hope has captured something of these indulgent lattes in their Extra Shot Porter, but without the same syrupy sweetness that oozed from those tall cardboard cups. The coffee is there from start to finish, while the nutty tones weave in and out, sometimes at the forefront,… Read more
Black
- Style
- Porter & Black IPA
- ABV
- 6.0% & 13.2%
Burnley Brewing Strawberry Witbier & Dunkles
Tapped June 24, 2021
Before they were head brewer and head of sales at Burnley Brewing, Michael Stanzel and Chloe Hoiberg ran a craft brewery in Germany and their two June 2021 limited releases both pay tribute to that time. Strawberry Witbier is a recipe from that craft brewery (which was called Wild Animal Brewing) and it's the first time they've recreated one of those beers at Burnley. It seems like a fitting one too given a fruited witbier might give the middle finger to the Reinheitsgebot but fits nicely into Australia's… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Strawberry Witbier & Dunkle
- ABV
- 5.0% & 5.2%
GABS Festival Pack 2021
Tapped June 24, 2021
GABS might be over for another year, but the party lives on in the mixed packs they've put together for Dan Murphy's. It has to be said the six beers inside for 2021 are a pretty good microcosm of where the festival beers sit these days too, covering hops, haze, dessert, high ABVs and odd colours. Starting with my pick of the six and it's Mountain Culture's Wanderlust. Sure, a 7 percent ABV NEIPA from a brewery that specialises in such beers isn't that out there and GABSy, but for pure drinking pleasure… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Various Styles
- ABV
- Various ABV
Slow Lane Brewing Solitude
Tapped June 24, 2021
Not content with brewing the country’s best Tripel (IMHO), Slow Lane have set their sights on the biggest style the Belgians have to offer. Solitude is a 9.4 percent ABV Belgian dark strong ale and, although it was first released as part of the 2020 Carwyn Cellars Canvent, this is the first time it’s been available for the average punter. Dark strong ales are probably most well known for Westvleteren XII, at one time regarded as the best beer in the world and still highly sought after. They are… Read more
Dark Brown
- Style
- Belgian Dark Strong Ale
- ABV
- 9.4%
Dainton Beer Crumblicious
Tapped June 23, 2021
Dainton have long looked to the confectionary aisle of supermarkets for beer inspiration. It's an approach many breweries use and it's one that can both result in popular releases and the occasional letter from chocolate companies and both those things are true of [REDACTED]; a honeycomb and toffee stout that’s been rebrewed for winter 2021 and has a new name of Crumblicious. Considering it contains what are basically two very similar types of sweet flavours (okay now that I’ve thought about… Read more
Black
- Style
- Honeycomb & Toffee Stout
- ABV
- 7.5%
Six String Double Trouble & Crème de la Crème Is Who I Am
Tapped June 23, 2021
Plug the amp in and turn it up to 11, as the team at Six String Brewery have pumped additional wattage into their Dark Red IPA. Using double the malts and triple the hops, this beer will hunt you down if you leave it in your fridge. Double Trouble is all Lyons treacle and the kind of toffee that comes with a mini mallet to smash it into pieces, while the crew has managed to squeeze fresh grapefruit and a slice of pineapple into the mix. At 10 percent ABV, it is liquid velvet in the mouth with a sweet… Read more
Red
- Style
- Double Red IPA & Dessert Imperial Stout
- ABV
- 10.0% & 8.9%
- Bitterness
- 100 & 18 IBUs
Hop Nation Site Fermentation Project Lapin 2020
Tapped June 22, 2021
For the third year running, Hop Nation have bundled together Victorian-grown cherries and a mixed culture beer to create Lapin. Named after the cherries, Lapin 2020 sits under the brewery’s wild-focused Site Fermentation Project banner and uses fruit picked at the end of 2020 in a one-year-old sour blonde beer left to ferment on said cherries for four months inside Hop Nation’s 70-year-old Port foeder. The new version might not pack the same boozy punch as the previous release but, having tried… Read more
Red
- Style
- Cherry Sour Blonde Ale
- ABV
- 4.8%
Local Brewing Co Moonlight Milk Stout
Tapped June 22, 2021
A brief look over our New Beer releases or a glance on social media will make one thing clear: stout season is here. Melbourne’s Local Brewing have joined the fray with their winter 2021 seasonal Moonlight, which has a fitting name given its release has coincided with the Southern Hemisphere's darkest days. It's a dark beer that fits those days too, ready to be enjoyed by the fire (or the small and frankly, pathetic, heater in your sharehouse) with its rich swirl of dark chocolate. The beer's… Read more
Black
- Style
- Milk Stout
- ABV
- 4.5%
- Bitterness
- 20 IBU
Boston & Modus Coffee Strawberry Cold Brew Coffee Sour
Tapped June 22, 2021
Strawberry and coffee aren’t the first pairing that comes to mind, especially not in a kettle sour. However, when you start digging into the caffeinated bean flavour wheel, it’s more prominent than you’d expect. In fact, it’s something well known to Boston’s Victoria Park venue neighbours, Modus Coffee, which has led to this: adding 400 kilograms of local Denmark strawberries and 50 kilograms of Colombian coffee to a kettle sour. Even with the newly acquired knowledge, there remains a sorcery… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Strawberry & Coffee Sour
- ABV
- 4.0%
3 Ravens Odin's Reserve & BAPIOS
Tapped June 21, 2021
They don't tend to do things by halves at 3 Ravens, and that's certainly the case as they mark the 2021 winter solstice. As well as holding their second Dark Mass event, they've put out two hefty imperial stouts. Odin's Reserve is a collab with the booze-loving Vikings at Mjölner, inspired by their signature cocktail, Odin’s Brew – a spin on espresso martini featuring Muesli syrup, coffee liqueur and goat's milk, and garnished with chocolate and tonka beans. As well as a complex grain bill that… Read more
Black
- Style
- Barrel-Aged Imperial Stouts
- ABV
- 11.0% & 18.0%
- Bitterness
- 23 & 63 IBU
Big Shed Brewing Violet NoRegard
Tapped June 20, 2021
Big Shed are no strangers to the GABS stage; in fact, several of their weird and wonderful entries have polled well in the People's Choice in past: Golden Stout Time took out third in 2015 and Boozy Fruit claimed top spot three years later. So, where to from here? How about an oat cream blueberry milkshake IPA that's bright blue in colour with a swirling of blue glitter? Yeah, that should do the trick. Aptly named Violet NoRegard, this 8 percent ABV concoction seems to hit the mark for the drinker… Read more
Red
- Style
- Oat Cream Blueberry Milkshake IPA
- ABV
- 8.0%
- Bitterness
- 4 IBU
Big Shed Brewing Little RIPA & Big RIIPA
Tapped June 20, 2021
Why release one rye IPA when you can release two? They share the same DNA too as they were brewed using the parti-gyle technique to craft two beers from one: Big RIIPA was built from the sugary wort taken from the first run through of the mash tun before the grains were sparged again to extract the remaining goodness to create its little sibling. The result is two different beers crafted from the same initial genetics, that are further differentiated via different hopping regimes featuring Mosaic,… Read more
Red
- Style
- Rye IPAs
- ABV
- 4.7% & 9.5%
- Bitterness
- 28 & 75 IBU
Stomping Ground & Blackhearts Bramble On
Tapped June 20, 2021
Stomping Ground and Blackhearts & Sparrows are back with their winter collab Bramble On for a third year. As the name suggests, it's one built around bramble berries – in this case blackberries, raspberries and silvanberries. It's also tagged a dark sour, although don't go in expecting the sort of characteristics elicited from dark malts as the colour appears to be derived almost solely from the fruit. They're swirled through a soft and unassuming base beer in which low carbonation, a gentle… Read more
Red
- Style
- Fruit Sour
- ABV
- 4.1%
- Stockists
-
Blackhearts & Sparrows Braddon
Blackhearts & Sparrows North Hobart
And all other Blackhearts & Sparrows stores
More stockists...
