Moa Blanc

Boutique bottle shop 'The Local' in Balaclava had a closing down sale on Saturday, and while most of the carcass had been picked clean I did manage to snaffle a few cheap beers I hadn't tried before.  I also snared some Jalapeno peanuts which were on some serious next level shit.  It is distressing to know that it will be the first and only time I will ever get to sample such a delicacy.  One minute of silence please, for the nuts.

I remember liking the Moa range when I went through a few of them last year, notably the Lager, Pale Ale and Pilsner.  I have now also perused their Witbier, otherwise known as 'Blanc'.  Moa have managed to develop a signature feel to their range, which is something admirable given how flooded the world is with different beers nowadays.  Both a blessing and a curse, the winds of trade have brought us some delectable ales, but also a cavalcade of fizzy yellow piss in the same gust.  Moa brew spicy, clean, thirst quenching beers that don't pretend to try and wow the hop headed snobs, just demolish their parched mouths.

The beer pours an orangey straw yellow, without much head, and looks pretty much like every other witbier you've ever drunk.  Which is to be expected.  The feel of the Blanc is light and crisp, but weighted just enough to not feel watery.  Pepper and zesty citrus dominate the forefront, the finish resembling some sort of a malty lemon.  It's all very familiar, and by no means a stand out witbier, but there is something so damn refreshing about Moa's beers...  it's like stumbling upon a glistening oasis after a six hour trek through the Kalahari, where you had nothing to eat in your backpack but a stick of beef jerky wrapped in sandpaper.

Nothing groundbreaking or out of the ordinary.  Very safe in terms of ingredients, flavours and style, but nevertheless, a very tasty and refreshing take on the wheat beer genre.  Only a wanker would really try and sit there and poke gaping holes in a beer like this.  It isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, because it doesn't have to.

7/10

Dundee India Pale Ale

The cheap imported IPA.  A glimmering beacon when it first catches the eye, that can soon turn in to a running of the gauntlet once you pass the checkout.  Craft IPAs are almost never conservatively priced.  I often paid 8 or 9 dollars for a single IPA during my 365 day challenge, a transaction that under normal circumstances would have been harder to justify than Vanilla Ice's career.  Astonishingly at the time, this six pack only asked but 15 dollars for it's purchase, a price so low that I nearly moved past it out of pure disbelief that a solid IPA could be had at that rate.

Dundee is an American brewery, based in New York, of which I know absolutely nothing about and had never heard of prior to drinking this beer.  The beer pours an orangey copper colour, clearer than your run of the mill IPA, with little head retention.  The colour is nice, but does look a little light on the 'oompf' at a glance, but this would not be the first time my eyes hath deceived me.  This could be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The feel of the beer is interesting, as it has a crispness to it that I expected due to the clear body, but there is still enough depth there to solidify it's place in the genre.  The flavours however are akin to a tornado that has just ripped through a farm.  There are citrus tones, bitter hops, biscuits and bread, but rather than working together in stages it feels almost like your mouth is hosting a Royal Rumble, and the referee is currently knocked out after a stray swing of a chair.

While not as clinical as a title fight, the royal rumble still has it's place.  Order can, at times, come from chaos and given the moderate price I can't be too judgmental here.  One gripe I will raise though is with the bitterness factor.  Yes, IPAs are often bitter, but there are degrees and variances to be had.  The finish to this beer sour and bitter, and cheap and metallic in quality.  It comes on so quickly that you cannot even compute the core ingredients of the beer.  The whole experience ends up a bit like Grant Hackett's apartment after a day at the track.

If you're a hop head and love an IPA, and none of your multis came through, then this is an affordable drop.

6/10