This is another Kiwi brewer who I've only just discovered. So far I'd probably rate the sheepshaggers' brewing abilities in general, as I've had more good than bad beers from the land of the long white cloud.
There were three beers in the lineup, entitled Gold, Amber and Dark. In hindsight I maybe should have worked my way up or down the chain, but instead I've started right in the middle. Sometimes you need to just be extreme, and live on the edge. Chicks dig rogues.
The marketing speel on the bottle rabbits on about this and that before coming to this interesting claim. The beer is brewed with 14,000 year old 'Paleo™' water. No you are not seeing things... they have actual trademarked this term. Paleo water. No doubt this was a shrewd idea as it firmly blocks out rival antique stores selling Paleo™ Chairs, and has actually rendered the practice of Anthropology illegal.
Fuck me dead. This beer is about as refined as the general conversation each Saturday night on the last train to Frankston. Your are immediately belted black and blue by a two pronged assault of crude malts and bitter hops. There is no structure here, no plan of action, almost like they just grabbed a bag of ingredients and tipped it in a vat and hoped for the best. Give a criminally insane schizophrenic some finger paints and you'll get the picture.
If you squint like George Costanza though... you can start to make some order out of the chaos. There are some sweet toffee flavours in there, reminiscent of an English style Ale, that slowly burn out as the hops invade like a Mongol hoard. It becomes the calm within the storm as you struggle to cling on to it for dear life, before being washed away in a tsunami of malty daggers in a hop hurricane.
It probably needs to grow on me, alas, I only have time for one.
4/10
Watch out! If Emma McCashin hears of this, she'll give you an ear-bashing...
ReplyDeletehaha!
ReplyDeleteYou say "No doubt this was a shrewd idea as it firmly blocks out rival antique stores selling Paleo™ Chairs, and has actually rendered the practice of Anthropology illegal." ...
ReplyDeleteWhen you lodge a trademark, you are required to specify the category you wish to trademark it in i.e. water, beer etc.- therefore if Paleo is trademarked for water then this won't stop someone calling an antique chair by that term - just like when apple computers trademarked the term "apple" it didn't stop people calling apples "apples" as their trademark only relates to computers, phones etc.
Mate if you find the Stoke range too much for your apparently delicate palate, then I think you're way out of your depth writing a beer column!!
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteThankyou for your informative response on the fascinating legal framework of trademarks. While I thought it blatantly obvious, given the fact I mentioned that it rendered 'the practice of anthropology illegal', that the comment was made in jest. Perhaps this link may help you to understand.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sense_of_humour
In reference to your second comment, I never said that this beer was 'too much' for my palette. I simply said that the beers were unrefined. Which they are. However upon reading again it seems that I did this in, an attempt at least, a comical manner. Once again this link may serve you to understand better.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sense_of_humour