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!
Stomping Ground & BOB Bar Laughing Matter
Tapped April 5th, 2019
At the rate they've been going in their first couple of years of existence, forging partnerships left, right and centre across Melbourne, there's a good chance that, come 2030, the city will have been renamed Stomping Ground and we'll be living in some sort of Being John Malkovich-esque reality. The latest step along that road for the Collingwood-based operation sees them hook up with BOB Bar, a pop-up venue opened by Triple J alumni Alex Dyson and Kyran Wheatley for the duration of the Melbourne… Read more
Pale Yellow
- Style
- Pale Ale
- ABV
- 4.5%
Mornington Peninsula Brewery Larrikin
Tapped April 5th, 2019
Every year, as Anzac Day approaches, you'll find a few breweries creating beers to mark the occasion. And, in 2019, Mornington Peninsula Brewery has put theirs out in cans too. Larrikin ticks the requisite boxes on the outside, with the name joined by an image of bare-chested soldiers playing two-up and a poppy there for good measure too. As for inside, well, they used all the ingredients that go into the biscuits of the same name in an amber-hued beer that comes as quite the change after a summer… Read more
Rich Brown
- Style
- ANZAC Biscuit Beer
- ABV
- 5.5%
Holgate Brewhouse Hazy IPA
Tapped April 5th, 2019
You might think this draught-only release is Holgate coming late to the hazy game, but you'd be wrong. Turns out it's a case of the brewers revisiting their 2017 GABS beer, then tagged a New England IPA going by the name Cloudy With A Chance Of Mangoes. Not that there's any mangoes in it. Instead, they've used wheat and oats to build and soften the mouthfeel and opted for "huge" additions of US hop varieties Azacca, Amarillo and Mosaic to conjure the fruity side. They tell us the result… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Hazy IPA
- ABV
- 6.8%
- Bitterness
- 20 IBU
Fixation & Wizard State Of Mind Hazy IPA
Tapped April 5th, 2019
As seems to be the case with many people at this time of year, there's a cold that refuses to die hanging around Crafty Towers at the minute, meaning beer sampling has been outsourced where possible. Including here, when I arranged to meet Slowbeer founder Chris Menichelli at The Incubator and asked him to offer his thoughts on the Fixation-Wizard collab as I luxuriated in chilled, draught soda water. The result suggests I should hand him the reins full-time as a couple of sniffs, a few sips and… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Hazy IPA
Bridge Road Brewers The Harvest Fresh Hop IPA & Dark Harvest 2019
Tapped April 4th, 2019
Bridge Road's fresh hop twosome have become as much part of the annual hop harvest in Australia as the hops themselves. While scores of brewers across the country release all manner of fresh / wet hop beers these days, nobody has been releasing them every year for as long. The Beechworth brewer started out with a single Harvest Ale before adding the Dark Harvest – originally brewed with Mikkeller overnight – and then boosting the former to become The Harvest Fresh Hop IPA. Due to timing and availability,… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Harvest Ales
- ABV
- 6.0% & 6.6%
Bridge Road Magical Easter Unicorn
Tapped April 4th, 2019
Many moons ago (well, 2015), Bridge Road released the Magical Christmas Unicorn, a vanilla ice cream-inspired beer designed to be enjoyed as a dessert tipple. The beer’s become a regular fixture in the brewery’s roster of beers since and now, with Easter on its way, another unicorn has joined the clan. This one’s been given a chocolate twist to better fit the idea that it should be hidden in the garden for any grown up Easter egg hunters. It’s an impressively decadent beer places the rich… Read more
Dark Brown
- Style
- Chocolate Ale
- ABV
- 6.0%
Nowhereman Preston Harvest 2019
Tapped April 4th, 2019
Autumn’s arrival marks the harvest for many crops, not least hops. Nowhereman’s team took this opportunity to work with Preston Valley Hops, two hours South of Perth, and hand-picked 25kg of Cascade and 7kg of Victoria hops to celebrate the lupulin magic of the female flower. While Cascade is well known and considered to have played a pivotal role in launching the modern craft beer movement in the US, Victoria is a relatively unknown breed that was abandoned by Hop Products Australia only to… Read more
Red
- Style
- Fresh Hop Red Ale
- ABV
- 5.0%
- Stockists
-
Nowhereman Brewery
The Standard
Old Faithful Bar & BBQ
Rodneys' Bait & Tackle
The Sandbar
Petition Beer Corner
More stockists...And more to come...
Nail Brewing NBT v1: Cashmere
Tapped April 3rd, 2019
Twenty years after John Stallwood’s original Nail Brewing Test (NBT) development series coalesced into his brewery’s eponymous debut, Nail Ale, he's still playing in the brew shed. Sure, the "shed" is now considerably different to the place where the test brews conducted at the University of Ballarat took place, yet the creative sensibility remains. NBT Cashmere is a series opener, which aims to explore New World hops and pale ale recipe development each month before culminating in… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Pale Ale
- ABV
- 4.7%
- Stockists
-
Launching April 5 in WA, with the East Coast to follow.
Fixation Brewing Dew Respect & Max Volume IIIPA
Tapped April 2nd, 2019
The new beers (well, IPAs) continue to hit the taps at Fixation's Incubator home thick (well, often hazy, at least) and fast, so much so it can be hard to keep tabs. Newcomers for spring 2019 include a melon milkshake IPA and the brewery's biggest beer to date, an 11 percent-plus triple IPA. The first of those is the punsome Dew Respect, brewed with new German hop variety Huell Melon, lactose, juiced honeydew and rockmelon, and Lallemand's New England yeast strain. While it might sound like a recipe… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Milkshake IPA & Triple IPA
- ABV
- 7.0% & 11.2%
Otherside Brewing Co Imperial Harvest
Tapped April 2nd, 2019
This Experimental Series release from Otherside is a big brother to the brewery’s popular Harvest Red, which itself started life as a limited release back in 2016. The beer quickly earned a second limited run before making itself an essential part of the brewery's core range. Craft beer has long had a habit of taking something great and then making it bigger and bolder and it’s not always easy to achieve balance when the flavours and alcohol are given a significant adrenaline shot. Thankfully,… Read more
Red
- Style
- Imperial Red Ale
- ABV
- 7.5%
Beerland Brewing Juice Willis 2: Juice Harder
Tapped April 2nd, 2019
Juice Willis is back in town and this time he's bigger, badder and more bitter, at least according to director (or should that be chief brewer) Ken Arrowsmith. Guy Southern covered the original release for us back in February last year and made mention of the potential for a sequel called Juice Harder; turns out he was on the money. This time around, Bruce isn't throwing Europeans off buildings, instead he's teamed up with them in the form of German Saphir and Slovenian Cardinal hops, a rarely seen… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- NEIPA
- ABV
- 6.7%
- Stockists
-
And select WA venues and growler stations
More stockists...
Barossa Valley Brewing Hazy Heaven Wet Hop NEIPA 2019
Tapped April 1st, 2019
For the past couple of years, come harvest time, the Barossa Valley Brewing team has ventured to the Hills Hop farm to pick hops fresh from the bine. This time around, they got their families involved and managed to get their hands on close to 60kgs of mainly Cascade flowers. These were rushed back to Tanunda where the brewers had already begun work on the 2019 Wet Hop NEIPA. Less than an hour after being picked, the hops were added to the beer, ready to allowing resinous oils work their magic.… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Wet Hop NEIPA
- ABV
- 6.5%
Little Bang Brewing Schwang Tangerine Sour
Tapped April 1st, 2019
Little Bang love to embark on a series with their beers and have a couple on rotation that focus on two of the styles du jour: the SNEIPAs (sour NEIPA) and the Schwangs. Both favour fruity, sour compositions but are very different stylistically. The first Schwang to make it into a can is the original tangerine Schwang (with stablemates Schwangcherry and Schwangberry no doubt to follow), a 3 percent ABV Berliner Weisse featuring a hearty serving of tangerines. The citrus fruit and zingy acidity combine… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- Tangerine Berliner Weisse
- ABV
- 3.0%
Five Barrel Brewing Brut Rosé IPA
Tapped March 31st, 2019
Sometimes inspiration can strike from the most unusual places. For a while, Five Barrel founder Phil O'Shea had been trying to get a change approves at the brewery bar to allow him to serve proper glasses of beer rather than “tasters”, and start selling wine as well. He finally got his wish not long before the brewery’s third birthday. One of the wines he chose to stock was a rosé from a Canberra area winery, which he thought was exceptional and inspired him to make a beer version as a birthday… Read more
Red
- Style
- Brut IPA with Hibuscus
- ABV
- 6.0%
Black Brewing & Old Faithful Faithfully Yours
Tapped March 31st, 2019
What better way to show beer how much you love it than showering it in rose petals? That's what happened when Tim "Gunslinger" Hoskins from Black Brewing and Amos "The Beer Walrus" from Old Faithful in Perth's CBD got together to create their latest collaboration, Faithfully Yours. The idea was to create a unique rose water sour you could share with your significant other. Tim even features on the decal in a reference to the movie American Beauty (Amos has appeared on decals… Read more
Red
- Style
- Rose Water Sour
- ABV
- 4.3%
Batch Brewing Co Vapor Trails
Tapped March 30th, 2019
Batch’s Sydenham home has the dubious honour of being right underneath the final approach to Sydney Airport. As a consequence, conversation is often interrupted as a jumbo jet flies overhead, rumbling deeply and temporarily blocking out the sun, casting an eerie shadow over the brewery for just a second. At the same time, according to a popular conspiracy theory, the jet produces white condensation trails from its wingtips, secretly containing biological and chemical reagents to ensure the citizens… Read more
Red
- Style
- Cherry & Vanilla American Wheat
- ABV
- 4.6%
Staves Brewery Vienna Lager & Brut IPA
Tapped March 30th, 2019
Staves installed a couple of double-sized fermenters in summer 2018/19, which doubled the brewpub's capacity. Since these bigger tanks can now take some of the pressure off the core range, the other fermenters have been freed up for more rotating of styles, old and new, across the taps. If you’re after a more traditional beer, the Vienna Lager is a fine example of the style. You can tell everything you need to know about it just by looking at it: when you see the dark gold brew shot through with… Read more
Golden
- Style
- Vienna Lager & Brut IPA
- ABV
- 4.3% & 5.5%
Old Wives Ales & Wizard Sommar Sour
Tapped March 29th, 2019
Sommar Sour isn't the first fruit sour Melbourne gypsies Old Wives Ales have released. But it is the fruitiest – at least in terms of the amount of fruit that's gone into the brew: no less than 400kg of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries. And that's down to their collaborator, Nikola from Sweden's Wizard Brewing – better known as the frontman of punk band Millencolin. You can read the full story of how they came to brew together. Or you can head out and grab a can to see how 400kg of fruit… Read more
Red
- Style
- Fruit Sour
- ABV
- 4.5%
Wheaty Brewing Corps & Bridge Road Footloose
Tapped March 29th, 2019
After playing around with Wildflower's mixed culture when creating Mildflower, WBC head brewer Jade Flavell wanted to take things up a level with her next table beer. So, when Ben Kraus from Bridge Road called in for another collaboration, he brought the Brett C culture from his Mayday Hills range to be combined with blackberries and raspberries, Jade's French saison strain and Topher’s Wildflower bag of tricks. The result is a 4.5 percent table beer that oozes berries, one in which a pinkish… Read more
Red
- Style
- Berry Table Beer
- ABV
- 4.5%
- Stockists
Wheaty Brewing Corps & Fixation Funky Menace
Tapped March 29th, 2019
So, who is the Funky Menace? Many, many things it turns out – most of them microscopic. On the surface, the beer is an India saison brewed by the Wheaty Brewing Corps and Fixation, one that combines the former's fondness for funkier styles with the latter's obsession with all things hops. But scratch the surface and you'll find quite the tale. The mixed culture with which the beer was brewed is one that has many parts, a combination of the Wheaty Brewing Corps' French saison-based house culture,… Read more
Golden Yellow
- Style
- India Saison
- ABV
- 6.0%
- Bitterness
- 30 IBU
- Stockists
