Mornington Pale

Mornington Peninsula Brewery is another Victorian micro that has been making a bit of noise lately, with this Pale Ale in particular gathering some favourable reviews around the traps. 

The logo on the bottle has a bit of a cheeky history to go with it.  The symbol is derived from 16th Century alchemy, and signifies 'drinkable gold'.  Apparently 'drinkable gold' at one point was sold as a fail safe remedy to 'cure all illness'.  Medieval times were fascinating in this regard, as mankind had managed to escalate the advancement of death dealing weaponry and disease, yet hadn't succeeded in keeping medicine anywhere as nearly up to scratch.  Whereas now you might leave the doctor's office with some antihistamines, back in the day you likely would have been carrying two raven feathers and an eye of newt for the same ailment.  Nevertheless, you can't argue with a beer brewer using such a symbol to hawk their wares.

The Mornington Pale pours a crisp orange colour, and stands up to it's billing as an American style Pale Ale in appearance at least.  It looks similar to a Little Creature's Pale Ale, with a touch less cloudiness blurring the atmosphere.  Immediately as you raise the glass, a striking waft of fruity aromas spear your nostrils like a blade forged by Hattori Hanzo himself.  The significance of which I struggle to accentuate through words, but it resembles a party at Tony Montana's house after all the coke has run out, and everyone has resorted to chopping up passion fruits and mandarins out of sheer desperation.

The taste of the beer is an exact replica of it's nose.  The blend of light citrus and passion fruit is absolutely seamless.  To be honest I wouldn't have bothered trying to muscle in on the American Pale Ale crowd because this deserves it's own genre.  Like the Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, this is a tropical paradise in a bottle.  It should be drunk under an umbrella on the beach while a lovely lady massages your beautiful brake foot.  I doubt as to whether even Katut could bring you a drink as delicious as this.  The body is light and refreshing, and there are marginal hints of resin and sweet malt, but the assemblage of the tropical style fruits is the sure fire party stealer.

I've drunk a few fruit powered beers that don't always get the balance right.  Mornington Peninsula Brewery have hit the nail square on the head.  It isn't a beer for all occasions, and doesn't quite boast the versatility of other Pale Ales, but what it does do is execute with the enthusiasm of a Texan judge.  Fantastic summer beer, and one that I will look out for when the scorching sun finally returns to Melbourne.

Cheers.

8/10

Karl Strauss Tower 10 IPA

After spending the last while drinking standard ales and lagers, I started getting that itching feeling.  My skin felt like it was burning, my eyes were twitching uncontrollably...  I couldn't sleep...  I couldn't concentrate.  I needed another hit of hops.  It was time for a fix.

HOOK IT TO MY VEIN.

I picked up this at the same time as the Dundee IPA, this number was only $17 for a six pack and is an imported IPA from San Diego, California.  The story goes that in the 1980s, under Lifeguard 'Tower 10', two college grads and an old brew master drew up plans to start the first craft brewhouse in the area.  This West Coast style IPA pays homage to this moment of grandeur, so lets hope that it delivers truly.

The Tower pours an amber colour with tones of copper, bearing a lovely orange hue bursting through it with some light in the room.  It looks pretty good, a bit thin, but West Coast IPAs are generally a few kilos lighter than those from the Eastern Conference.  The first impression this beer leaves is deeper than the Chicxulub Crater.  The word bitter does not even cut the mustard.  Once it really lays the boot in, the bitterness factor of this beer is more assertive than Joseph Stalin's dominatrix.   The feel has that slick oily resin element, but it is extremely subtle for a powerful IPA.  The balance between meaty flavours and refreshing texture is quite astounding, and is something that has to be experienced.

I recommend this beer.  It does come with a warning however.  If you have never tinkered with this genre of beer before, then you may walk out of this experience looking somewhat like a napalm victim.  There are some subtle citrus fruits and sweet tones, but above all it's a gatling gun full of pine needles coated in a residue so bitter it may have been sourced from Eddie McGuire's tears after last year's Grand Final.

A solid, refreshing IPA at an affordable price.  Definitely not amongst my favourite beers, but I still give a nod of acknowledgement in it's general direction.

7.5/10

BrewBoys GT Lager

This lonely lager was sitting by itself in the corner of a fridge at The Local when it was being cleared out, during it's closing down sale.  While I was particularly on the lookout for some unique ales, I thought what the hey?  Sometimes you just want a nice, clean, refreshing beer instead of the liquid version of a Dali painting.  I'll readily admit that at times I am guilty of being a beer snob and refusing to drink anything that doesn't taste like diving head first into a barrel of hops, while wearing Steven Tyler's mouth and Charlie Sheen's nostrils.

The 'GT' Lager presents itself like a 70's V8.  The GT stripes and badging, and '35.1 bitterness units' being presented as an advertisement of cubic inches - 351.  Otherwise known as 5.8 litres in our language.  I'm a bit of a petrol head, so I 'get' what they are trying to do here, but even to me it still comes off as sitting somewhere between straight to DVD sequels and Christmas sweaters on the tackiness scale.  I likely never would have bought this on presentation, if it wasn't 40% off and one of the last bottles on the shelf.

The GT pours a surprisingly rich amber colour.  There is no head to be seen, as is to be expected, but apart from that you could be mistaken for thinking this is an amber ale, albeit a soft one.  The feeling is crisp and refreshing and sharply carbonated.  The depth is found in the flavour, a trait not commonly found in the bottom fermented version of our favourite beverage.  Nuts, caramel, malt, hops...  it has all the traits of an amber, but just wears a skimpier outfit.  It takes the bolder tastes of the beer world and makes them exceptionally easier to pound down.  Kind of like the British economy.  Get it?  Pound down?  The pound... ah forget it.

6.5/10

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

Gage Roads Atomic Pale Ale

Reasonably priced handcrafted Pale Ales. The curvy brunettes of beer, in my humble opinion. The newest beer that I have sampled is from a Western Australian brewery, Gage Roads. I picked up a sixer of these for a very acceptable sounding $16, under the premise that I was about to willingly unleash Hiroshima on my tastebuds. Branding your Pale Ale, 'Atomic', is really sticking your neck out. Given the competition in this space nowadays, you'd better resemble a great big fuck off diplodocus.

The Atomic Ale pours a darkish orange colour with some slight copper tones. Somewhere in between midlife crisis Brighton mother and Snooki. An attention seeking head of bubbles appears only momentarily before quickly receding back from whence it came, not unlike the career of Chumbawumba. The body and feel is quite light, with a fleeting sting to it's carbonation. The flavours are dark malts and citrus, with the main lives of the party being orange and citrus. The hops are present, but not nearly enough. There's a slight tease, and a moment of allure, but you never quite leave the friendzone.

 In an Australian summer this would be a smashingly drinkable ale. The citrus and the soft biting carbonation would work an absolute treat. However when lining up the 'Atomic' Ale against all the other Pale Ales out there, and in this country in particular, it proves itself to be a beer of Cold War proportions. Chests are puffed, claims are made, but when push comes to shove not a single shot is fired. It's a good beer. This is by no means a negative review. I was just hoping for a little bit more from what I would call an ambitously titled beer. False flags are flown to divert attention, and in this case, the mission was a success. My eye was caught.

6/10

Wingwalker American Pale Ale

After completing the challenge I took a break from tirelessly searching for strange beers, and spent some time just drinking whatever I felt like drinking at the time. Recently though after a trip to Dan Murphy's to pick up some bottles of liquor, I wandered past the beer aisle to see if there was a not-too-expensive six pack of something interesting. I saw a label that I'd never seen before (with a tempting $17 price tag), depicting a dude hanging upside down from an old school plane on some next level aeronautical acrobatics. Somewhat reminiscent of a scene from a Michael Bay movie, had he been born in 1875. It turned out to be a New York brewery called Wingwalker, there were a couple of varieties but I picked up the American Pale Ale. The beer pours as an APA does... but does have a bit of a 'watered down' appearance to it. Without casting too strong a judgement, as some soft looking ales still conceal a weapon in the belt. The appearance is a light copper colour, deep in tone but clear through. The body is also fairly light and spritely, but thirst quenchingly refreshing. The initial flavours are bready and biscuity, with a moderately sweet caramel tone trailed by a soft, but not insignificant, hopped finish. It's all there. All the stock standard elements are present for a run of the mill American Pale Ale. The execution... is not bad, but it's just not at all that exciting. It just doesn't feel sturdy. It's almost like the grade A tools were given to the unlicensed builder. That being said, for an imported $17 Pale Ale six pack it's not that bad of a purchase. American style Pale Ales are right up there amongst my favourite beers, and while this far from being earth shattering, it was a refreshing and affordable drop. 6/10