Agreed. Visited them a few months ago. We can get a couple of their beers here in Bathurst.
We got an allocation of this a few weeks ago. Middle shelf, middle fridge and not a single can has moved. The giant pregnancy warning on the front takes up more of the eye than the rest of the labelling.
True but Sunly Seltzer, Two Birds, Fixation & Forest For The Trees are about 1% of the brand.
Two Birds were going under, I doubt they really care.
Good shout. I had a work function there a few months back, great afternoon.
Oh damn not Two Birds too? That sucks.
Has anyone got on to some of Bracket’s beers? Small place on Alexandria that is brewing some of the best beers in Sydney IMO, with a particular focus on hazy. They’ve just released a collaboration with Mountain Culture and another with One Drop. I’d be keen to see what the MC one in particular is like.
I don’t think I’ve had a bad beer from Batch Brewing Company yet. They’re coffee stout is probably one of my favourite all time beers.
Also had the Timmothy Tammothy Slamothy from Moon Dog, definitely up there for a dessert beer.
I’m still spewing though, bought myself a four pack of 8 Wired Opium Cake Imperial Stout after waiting an entire year to have stock and it’s stuck in the distribution center for a month so far. If some prick has stolen it…
That’s the only way that beer will disappoint you. Their Gorky Park is also worth tracking down if you can.
Heresy/trigger warning.
After about 10 or so years dabbling in American Pale Ale / IPA style beers, I’m now back to drinking simple German lagers, which is what I used to drink before the craft beer scene in Australia took off.
Most of what I drank were beers available at Dan Murphy’s, and have never really gotten into the genuine microbrewery scene with limited releases or cellar door only type beers. Used to love Sierra Nevada, Goose Island, Feral Hop Hog, Stone & Wood, Lord Nelson, Young Henry’s, 4 Pines. Just the odd few limited releases with milk stouts and the like, when the opportunity arose.
It was a trip to the USA in 2013 that really got me interested in IPA style beers, and later a trip to Austria/Germany/Belgium that changed my opinion of traditionally brewed European beer. Used to thumb my nose at any beer that’s been in existence for more than 20 years, with few exceptions.
Funny how taste changes. The last IPA I drank at the pub last year, I regretted ordering them with the first sip. I think it was Balter XPA from memory. And the last couple of times I bought a six-pack of an IPA it was the same - Pirate Life IPA, and Sierra Nevada Pale.
Now I’m drinking Henninger, a dirt-cheap mass produced Euro lager, which no doubt many on here would equate with piss water 
Anyone else have similar experiences? 
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IPA’s have changed massively in the last couple of years because of the Hazy trend. Most of them are now East Coast/New England in style with a higher “fruitiness” & “juiciness” and lower bitterness as opposed to the “original” West Coast dank and bitter style. While I don’t mind them, particularly on a hot and/or humid day, I much prefer the older style which is becoming harder and harder to find.
What I have found is a few breweries have recently released West Coast IPA’s using the newer hop varieties and they just don’t hit the mark and are quite light on the palate.
The West Coast IPA by Seven Mile absolutely nails the old style WCIPA style and is my go to beer at the moment.
As for Lagers & Pilsners, I find them far too bland for my liking. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the clean crispness but they just lack flavour. If I want something light and refreshing I’d rather go for a fruited sour. Sanctus do some absolute crackers including their recently released Splice of Heaven.
I should add, of the “new style” IPA’s, Wandana’s Double Dry Hopped Hazy IPA is an absolute cracker and lands incredibly cheap for what it is. We sell a 4pk for $22 and I’d have no issue paying up to $30 for it.
Stone & Wood may have sold out but there’s plenty of other breweries up here turning out some great beers. When this Covid nonsense is all done with I highly recommend exploring the breweries of NE NSW & SE Qld. We’re at the point where the Inner West was 7-10 years ago.
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You mean hoppy IPAs aren’t cool anymore? Geez I’ve been out of the loop since I moved north to the 'burbs from the Inner West 3 years ago. What else is passe now, hipster beards and piccolo soy lattes?
When I first moved away from Carlton Draught/ Tooheys New, even James Squire was a boutique brand for me and a case of Squires Pale & Golden Ales used to set me up for a couple of months.
Hoppy IPAs were for me the pinnacle, but the more I sampled them the more of the same it was. Then I paid pilgrimage to the Okotoberfest and learnt a lager can taste awesome, and Belgian monk beers changed my beer preferences for a while.
I still don’t pass up the opportunity to taste a new microbrewery beer, but boring standard lagers have been my go to for weekends at home.
Thanks for the insightful post BTW, learnt lots from it.
You know what’s cool, whatever you like to drink…
I love trying new beers and visiting new breweries, but there are certain beers I’ll always return to.
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This. i’m a sucker for a good IPA/XPA Craft Beer, and I love brewery crawling.
But sometimes a 6 pack of Coopers Pale just hits the spot nicely.
After mowing the lawn/yard work, can’t beat ice-cold generic lagers. I find myself enjoying Reschs a lot these days, could never stand the stuff when I was in my teens and early 20s. Cracking an ice-cold 6 pack of Euro lager after mowing the lawn/yard work hits the spot nicely too. Heineken or Becks, but it’s gotta be the imported Heineken, not the stuff brewed under license, which tastes completely different.
IPA isn’t going anywhere I would say that the vast majority of craft brewers will move more litres in variations of IPA than all their other styles combined.
Early American craft beer (which is basically the sole influence on australina craft) was a response to American light lager that has almost no taste by design. So it was all about flavour, but that dind’t mean it had to be good flavour.
Craft beer trends also tend to go in waves and then over correct. American pales then IPAs started out loaded up with crystal malt and were only moderately hopped. These when oxidised were an overly sweet card boardy mess.
Then the West Coast IPA came to prominance reduced the sweetness and amped up the IBUs by more kettle additions and increased the dry hopping to match and before you knew it 100 IBUs was being exceeded on a regular basis which made them alsmost undrinkable.
NEIPAs wound back that bitterness, focused on late and dry hopping and have over corrected the other way. With beer that ages like milk and is basically just hop juice. If they haven’t been cold shipped then it is basically throwing money away.
Drinking local and drinking fresh is going to give you the best result 9 times out of 10. Having said that I have also had the opportunity to get muled and fully cold chain shipped examples of Other Half and Treehouse beers from the US this year and they have been exceptional.
I will always enjoy a well crafted malty lager over an IPA. A Pilsner can have a very prominant hop character, Pilsner Urquell is a showcase of Saaz for example, but you probably wont detect it when getting a 6 month old euro bottle stored warm at the big box bottle shop.
The problem with the Euro Lagers are that even though they are very well made, most are thouroughly cooked and well past their best by the time they get here.
There are some very good local examples of lager released recently Hop Nation’s Rattenhund is probably the pick of the bunch and is getting another more regluar release from what I have heard, so worth keeping an eye out for them.
Beer has the most variety in flavour profile of any beverage which means you are unlikely to like everything. So drink what you like, there is nothing less cool than drinking what is hyped just because it is hyped.
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Good post, it resinates with me.
There was a time where most pubs would have the standard offerings from CUB and Lion (Carlton Draft, VB, Tooheys New/Old etc.) I’d drink beer from time to time, but was never that impressed. I still remember being blown away when first trying a Coopers Sparkling Ale (red) and later a Redback, I took more notice of beer then, but was usually underwhelmed by the standard stuff.
I really started to enjoy beer though through the (real) euro offerings (i.e. those not brewed under license). Going to the Bavarian Bier Cafe and trying Munich Lagers made me realise that beer can be amazing when well balanced using good hops and malts. I later started to try the Bavarian wheat beers, Czech Pilsners and everything that Belgium has to offer. I fell in love with beer and was always trying to try new euro beers that I hadn’t explored yet; going to Dan Murphys and finding little bottle shops that had good direct imports.
A lot of that coincided with meeting a German girl who later became my wife. I went to Germany and beyond loads of times (even in recent times, every 12-18 months prior to COVID). Each trip to Europe was like a beer pilgrimage, with the Lagers, Weizens, DoppelBocks and Marzens in Germany, the Pilsners in Czech Republic and the amazing array of beers in Belgium. Even just going to the bottle shops in Germany meant I could get access to a lot of beers from the surrounding countries that you can’t get in Australia.
The first time I tried a real local craft beer was a Modus Pale. Fuck. I wasn’t ready for that. Big IBU, big everything. I didn’t really like it in comparison to the lovely delicate and refined lagers and pilsners and really low IBU weizens that I enjoyed at the time. My taste evolved, and I started to love these, and went down a long path of loving (and discovering) loads of IPAs and Pales and Hazys and Stouts and DIPAs etc.
These days though I probably drink more of the pilzners and weizens than anything else. I still drink a lot of craft beers, and like to explore a few here and there, but mix those in with my euro staples. At the moment, the ales I drink are usually the Crankshaft Cranking IPA and the Feral Hop Hog, although they change form time to time.
I regularly buy cases of Budvar for my mostly daily lagers, it’s pretty much my staple. Then add in occasional craft ales and wheat beers (Franziskaner, Weihenstephaner - including the dunkel varieties of these).
I find traditional Munich lagers, which used to be my absolute favourite (Spaten, Hoffbrau, Lowenbrau etc.) a little uninspiring now, they’re just very subtle, and find the Czech varieties are bit sharper, but I still get super excited about going to German restaurants etc. that have real bier.
Henninger isn’t too bad, I used to buy cases of those and still do occasionally. I spend a lot of time in Frankfurt (we have lots of friends there as my wife studied there) and the Henninger brewery is in the area. Most places in Frankfurt will usually offer either Henninger, Binding or Krombacher (one of my faves) as the lagers and the standard wiezen is Schofferhofer (also brewed locally), so Henninger isn’t just a trashy export, but it’s not one of the best beers out there.
Edit: also want to mention that going to the Bavarian Bier Cafe (now just “The Bavarian”) at the EQ pre and post Sydney FC games was always a big highlight. I started going to games around 2010 when I was really in to the German biers!
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Slow Lane in Botany are doing some interesting ranges. Good to see more breweries popping up in the eastern suburbs.
Yeah Slow Lane has a great range of stuff that no one else is doing. They released a really great tripel at some point and their range of European darks is really nice.
So I finally got my Opium Cake stout. Holy crap so good. The foam is thick as anything and the body is just wow… Strong as hell though, but got to drink it on my daughter’s first birthday so made the end of the day amazing!
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I picked one up not long after you posted that you were waiting for yours. What size did you get? Unfortunately all I could get was the 330mL can as opposed to the 440mL/500mL(?) that I got the first time.
Batch Brewing has a new Melon Pale ale. Ordered in for myself and arriving today. Fingers crossed it’s good. I’ve tried everything that have to offer and can’t find a bad beer from the lot.
They’ve done a collab with Malt Shovel. If it’s anything like the one that Bentspoke did with Malt Shovel then I think you’ll find a Batch beer you don’t like.
Just treated myself to two of the Wildflower Waratah 2020 that were just released (named 2020 as it has been aged since). Consistently my favourite beer release every year. I have the previous year’s release every New Years Eve and it never disappoints.
It’s so great to see a beer made wholly with NSW ingredients.
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