Hottest 100 Beers - My Votes, Discussed
So it's that time of year again when the Local Taphouse asks Australia to vote on their favourite five beers of the previous year. What this entails is that while 99% of the country's craft beer population vote the perennial favourites to the top of the poll again, the craft beer elite take to the Twittersphere and elsewhere to agree with each other's favourite obscure flavour bombs in an enormous, nation-wide circlejerk. Pathetic, in its way. *shakes head disappointedly*
On a related note, here's a write-up of my favourite beers of the year! Agree with and love me!
So a brief preamble about my personal method for selecting my votes, and it's quite simple and mathematical. As you know (since you're reading my blog I assume you're my mother), I quite enjoy reviewing beers on the website BeerAdvocate.com. When it comes time to select my top five beers of the year, it's simply a case of going through all the beers that I reviewed for the first time in that year, and selecting only the five top-ranked Australian ones from the list. Yes, it's as simple as that and nothing else necessarily factors into it (or does it).
So without further ado, I'll begin my discussion with:
5) Barrique O'Karma (Barrel-Aged Black IPA) - Feral Brewing Company, Western Australia
It wouldn't be a top 5 list from an Australian craft beer lover without a mention of Feral Brewing. This time last year, Feral earned my #1 vote for 2012 for their sour beer Watermelon Warhead, brewed for the 2012 GABS festival in Melbourne. This year, they sadly only managed to get #5 with this offering, brewed, by stark contrast, for the 2013 GABS festival in Melbourne. This, despite the fact that for the second year in a row they brewed my #1 top ranked beer at that particular festival.
Barrique O'Karma certainly doesn't have the striking singularity of the Warhead, but what it does have is an astonishingly smooth palate full of surprises. I tweeted at the time, "Wow, comes from nowhere and smacks you with deliciousness." From an unassuming starting point of a mild black IPA, it blossoms into huge complex notes from its barrel-ageing process that are at times spicy, sweet and creamy, with a pleasant hop balance to smooth it all out.
It still seems on the surface like such a basic brewing concept: put something on oak and let it speak for itself. But there's such an artisanal magic that Brendan Varis brings to his beers. Somehow he just seems to 'get' how much time to leave it on the oak, or just how big that malt base needs to be, or what hops and in what quantity to use them to balance it out. This was just a smooth, beautiful drop.
4) Maple Coffee Stout (Maple Coffee Stout) - Bacchus Brewing, Queensland
A debutante on my top 5 beer lists, but certainly not a surprising inclusion to those in the know, Bacchus Brewing have had quite a stellar breakout year in 2013 on the craft beer scene. Gaining a large cult following with their hugely off-the-wall offerings at Good Beer Week in Melbourne, they followed it up by taking out the people's choice award at GABS for their White Chocolate/Raspberry Pilsener, which was my first and, for a while, only taste of their work.
Fortunately, Bacchus sent a great many of their beers to Sydney for Sydney Craft Beer Week in October, which is where I tried this offering. I described this at the time as like "dessert and coffee in one", a money-saver for fine-dining restaurants. But what I really loved about this beer was how it managed to incorporate the robust taste of good, well-roasted coffee while softening it out for the finish. Most coffee beers tend to strike me as tasting a little too much like just coffee, so this was not only a welcome surprise but an amazing new flavour combination. Maple and coffee? Yes, it works. It's obviously a sweet beer overall, but being served on hand pull by the Quarrymans Hotel meant that this all came together as a smooth, creamy-textured package: a really beautiful, sexy stout.
Just a sidenote that Bacchus would almost certainly have entered my top 5 again with their "Baby Bender" ribs ale they made for SCBW's Beer Mimicks Food event, only for some reason I lost all my review notes on that beer. Hopefully (we live in hope) they will make it again and I'll be able to share my adoration for that beer with the world.
3) Two Knuckles Deep (Flanders Red Ale) - Wig & Pen Tavern and Brewery, ACT
Easily the most obscure of my five picks, since the Wig & Pen is such a small-scale operation that extremely rarely, if ever, gets distributed outside Canberra, or even off-site. Luckily for me I happened to be down in Canberra for an evening a couple of months ago and was able to sample this knockout sour beer.
The Wig & Pen and its (for now, and possibly not even current) head brewer Richard Watkins, has a reputation among the learned as one of the, if not the, pioneers of sour beer in Australia, and that reputation was cemented for me with this offering.
Starting with a lot of fresh, crisp fruit notes on the aroma and start of the palate, the beer moves into genuinely tart, funky, acidic territory - that strange flavour country that repels so many newcomers but ensnares you for life once you enter. What really capped this off, though, was how soft and restrained the finish was. Sometimes I find the classic examples of this style lean a little too heavily on natural funky notes that can get quite astringent and even medicinal. This had nothing of the sort, and finished crisp, tart and surprisingly refreshing. I will never have any idea how Richard does it, but he is a true craftsman of the sour ale.
2) Aurora Borealis (Oak-Aged Belgian Quadrupel) - Bridge Road Brewers, Victoria (Collaboration with Nøgne Ø Brewery, Norway)
Speaking of previous winners. This time two years ago, my #1 vote for 2011 went to a collaboration between Beechworth's Bridge Rd Brewers and Norway's Nøgne Ø, the India Saison, so when I chanced upon this latest cooperative work at the Local Taphouse, expectations were high.
Expectations are not the only thing high about this beer: at nearly 15% ABV it packs a ridiculous punch to the senses. However, unlike so many other beers pushing that alcohol envelope, this one doesn't assume that lots of booze necessarily equals lots of flavour. I mean, obviously it does, but the trap many beers fall into (for me) is letting the hot, whiskey-like booziness on the finish speak for itself, without complementing or balancing it with sweetness, hop bitterness, or something else. They end up tasting and/or feeling, like shotting vodka, and the big flavours early are spoiled by the dominance of ethanol on the back.
With Aurora Borealis, Ben Kraus and Kjetil Jikiun (and/or their teams) proved equal to the task of tempering that hot booze with something palatable. There's a huge amount of Belgian-style complexity, giving dark fruit notes like figs, plums and dates, all of which is complemented by the oak barrel ageing which gives a smooth, rich sweetness on the finish.
The Quadrupel is, to my mind, by far the most difficult beer style to get right - it's both huge and, in its purest examples, steeped in centuries of brewing tradition. That the two breweries were able not only to hit the style bang on the head, but also make it a wonderfully tasty and drinkable beer is an astonishing achievement. How could you possibly top that?
1) Seventy-Seven India Pale Ale (American IPA) - Riverside Brewing Company, New South Wales
Full disclosure: I'd decided before compiling my votes that, even if the 77 IPA didn't come out at the top of my score rankings, I would probably slot it in at number one anyway. Such subterfuge didn't prove necessary, though because this just happened to be my highest rated Aussie brew of the year.
I had most certainly tried this beer in samplers at various times during 2012, but didn't properly sit down and spend some time with it until February 2013 (if you browse my list of beer reviews there is a discrepancy between when some reviews were written and when they were posted - Riverside 44 looks like it should be on this list but it was technically reviewed in 2012 and hence was my #2 beer of last year).
What an experience this was. Being as I am the brother of someone whose work flies him to California on an at-least-annual basis, I've had far more than my fair share of exposure to west coast IPAs which are practically a dime-a-dozen over there. I can safely say that Riverside's 77 belongs up there with the best of them. A brash and unapologetic flavour bomb, this brings out all the best tangy, piney, resinous and spicey notes of American hops, but with the good sense to back it all up with a smooth and thick toffee-style malt base that counterbalances and complements it every step of the way. As trite as the idea of rating an American IPA as my #1 beer is, when a beer in such a ubiquitous style really manages to grab your attention, it's definitely got something.
But more than just being a stellar example of the style, the 77 IPA is the beer I've come back to time and time again this year. Largely due to its convenient location, I've spent many a half-hour on a Friday afternoon in Spooning Goats in 2013 waiting for Bec to finish work, and my companion-in-waiting is invariably a glass of 77. It's the perfect knockoff beer - bold, arrogant and giving a gigantic middle finger to 'the system', whichever particular system happens to be pissing you off at the time. The amount of time I spent with this beer proves it's not only my favourite beer of the year but the beer that will always define 2013 for me.
So those are the five beers that received my votes. Honorable mentions go to the following beers, which all rated 4 or higher and in any other year could easily have cracked my top five (in descending order):
13 Hours on a Bus - Bridge Road Brewers, Victoria (Collaboration with Local Taphouse bar staff)
Charlie's Pitbull - Thirsty Crow Brewery, New South Wales (Collaboration with William Bull Brewery)
Oaked Tom's Amber Ale - Bootleg Brewery, Western Australia
The Horror - Murray's Craft Brewing, New South Wales
Can't Fight the Funk - Brew Cult, Victoria
Rocket Science Mad Hatter IPA - Dennis Beer Co, New South Wales
And a special honorable mention to my friends at the new-in-2013 Six String Brewing Company in Erina, who brew three beers in their regular range scoring 4 or higher for me: their Dark Red IPA, Pale Ale and Blonde Ale.
That's enough ranting about beer for me now. Up next I will write a Jungian interpretation of Plato's analogy of the cave. Stay tuned.
On a related note, here's a write-up of my favourite beers of the year! Agree with and love me!
So a brief preamble about my personal method for selecting my votes, and it's quite simple and mathematical. As you know (since you're reading my blog I assume you're my mother), I quite enjoy reviewing beers on the website BeerAdvocate.com. When it comes time to select my top five beers of the year, it's simply a case of going through all the beers that I reviewed for the first time in that year, and selecting only the five top-ranked Australian ones from the list. Yes, it's as simple as that and nothing else necessarily factors into it (or does it).
So without further ado, I'll begin my discussion with:
5) Barrique O'Karma (Barrel-Aged Black IPA) - Feral Brewing Company, Western Australia
It wouldn't be a top 5 list from an Australian craft beer lover without a mention of Feral Brewing. This time last year, Feral earned my #1 vote for 2012 for their sour beer Watermelon Warhead, brewed for the 2012 GABS festival in Melbourne. This year, they sadly only managed to get #5 with this offering, brewed, by stark contrast, for the 2013 GABS festival in Melbourne. This, despite the fact that for the second year in a row they brewed my #1 top ranked beer at that particular festival.
Barrique O'Karma certainly doesn't have the striking singularity of the Warhead, but what it does have is an astonishingly smooth palate full of surprises. I tweeted at the time, "Wow, comes from nowhere and smacks you with deliciousness." From an unassuming starting point of a mild black IPA, it blossoms into huge complex notes from its barrel-ageing process that are at times spicy, sweet and creamy, with a pleasant hop balance to smooth it all out.
It still seems on the surface like such a basic brewing concept: put something on oak and let it speak for itself. But there's such an artisanal magic that Brendan Varis brings to his beers. Somehow he just seems to 'get' how much time to leave it on the oak, or just how big that malt base needs to be, or what hops and in what quantity to use them to balance it out. This was just a smooth, beautiful drop.
4) Maple Coffee Stout (Maple Coffee Stout) - Bacchus Brewing, Queensland
A debutante on my top 5 beer lists, but certainly not a surprising inclusion to those in the know, Bacchus Brewing have had quite a stellar breakout year in 2013 on the craft beer scene. Gaining a large cult following with their hugely off-the-wall offerings at Good Beer Week in Melbourne, they followed it up by taking out the people's choice award at GABS for their White Chocolate/Raspberry Pilsener, which was my first and, for a while, only taste of their work.
Fortunately, Bacchus sent a great many of their beers to Sydney for Sydney Craft Beer Week in October, which is where I tried this offering. I described this at the time as like "dessert and coffee in one", a money-saver for fine-dining restaurants. But what I really loved about this beer was how it managed to incorporate the robust taste of good, well-roasted coffee while softening it out for the finish. Most coffee beers tend to strike me as tasting a little too much like just coffee, so this was not only a welcome surprise but an amazing new flavour combination. Maple and coffee? Yes, it works. It's obviously a sweet beer overall, but being served on hand pull by the Quarrymans Hotel meant that this all came together as a smooth, creamy-textured package: a really beautiful, sexy stout.
Just a sidenote that Bacchus would almost certainly have entered my top 5 again with their "Baby Bender" ribs ale they made for SCBW's Beer Mimicks Food event, only for some reason I lost all my review notes on that beer. Hopefully (we live in hope) they will make it again and I'll be able to share my adoration for that beer with the world.
3) Two Knuckles Deep (Flanders Red Ale) - Wig & Pen Tavern and Brewery, ACT
Easily the most obscure of my five picks, since the Wig & Pen is such a small-scale operation that extremely rarely, if ever, gets distributed outside Canberra, or even off-site. Luckily for me I happened to be down in Canberra for an evening a couple of months ago and was able to sample this knockout sour beer.
The Wig & Pen and its (for now, and possibly not even current) head brewer Richard Watkins, has a reputation among the learned as one of the, if not the, pioneers of sour beer in Australia, and that reputation was cemented for me with this offering.
Starting with a lot of fresh, crisp fruit notes on the aroma and start of the palate, the beer moves into genuinely tart, funky, acidic territory - that strange flavour country that repels so many newcomers but ensnares you for life once you enter. What really capped this off, though, was how soft and restrained the finish was. Sometimes I find the classic examples of this style lean a little too heavily on natural funky notes that can get quite astringent and even medicinal. This had nothing of the sort, and finished crisp, tart and surprisingly refreshing. I will never have any idea how Richard does it, but he is a true craftsman of the sour ale.
2) Aurora Borealis (Oak-Aged Belgian Quadrupel) - Bridge Road Brewers, Victoria (Collaboration with Nøgne Ø Brewery, Norway)
Speaking of previous winners. This time two years ago, my #1 vote for 2011 went to a collaboration between Beechworth's Bridge Rd Brewers and Norway's Nøgne Ø, the India Saison, so when I chanced upon this latest cooperative work at the Local Taphouse, expectations were high.
Expectations are not the only thing high about this beer: at nearly 15% ABV it packs a ridiculous punch to the senses. However, unlike so many other beers pushing that alcohol envelope, this one doesn't assume that lots of booze necessarily equals lots of flavour. I mean, obviously it does, but the trap many beers fall into (for me) is letting the hot, whiskey-like booziness on the finish speak for itself, without complementing or balancing it with sweetness, hop bitterness, or something else. They end up tasting and/or feeling, like shotting vodka, and the big flavours early are spoiled by the dominance of ethanol on the back.
With Aurora Borealis, Ben Kraus and Kjetil Jikiun (and/or their teams) proved equal to the task of tempering that hot booze with something palatable. There's a huge amount of Belgian-style complexity, giving dark fruit notes like figs, plums and dates, all of which is complemented by the oak barrel ageing which gives a smooth, rich sweetness on the finish.
The Quadrupel is, to my mind, by far the most difficult beer style to get right - it's both huge and, in its purest examples, steeped in centuries of brewing tradition. That the two breweries were able not only to hit the style bang on the head, but also make it a wonderfully tasty and drinkable beer is an astonishing achievement. How could you possibly top that?
1) Seventy-Seven India Pale Ale (American IPA) - Riverside Brewing Company, New South Wales
Full disclosure: I'd decided before compiling my votes that, even if the 77 IPA didn't come out at the top of my score rankings, I would probably slot it in at number one anyway. Such subterfuge didn't prove necessary, though because this just happened to be my highest rated Aussie brew of the year.
I had most certainly tried this beer in samplers at various times during 2012, but didn't properly sit down and spend some time with it until February 2013 (if you browse my list of beer reviews there is a discrepancy between when some reviews were written and when they were posted - Riverside 44 looks like it should be on this list but it was technically reviewed in 2012 and hence was my #2 beer of last year).
What an experience this was. Being as I am the brother of someone whose work flies him to California on an at-least-annual basis, I've had far more than my fair share of exposure to west coast IPAs which are practically a dime-a-dozen over there. I can safely say that Riverside's 77 belongs up there with the best of them. A brash and unapologetic flavour bomb, this brings out all the best tangy, piney, resinous and spicey notes of American hops, but with the good sense to back it all up with a smooth and thick toffee-style malt base that counterbalances and complements it every step of the way. As trite as the idea of rating an American IPA as my #1 beer is, when a beer in such a ubiquitous style really manages to grab your attention, it's definitely got something.
But more than just being a stellar example of the style, the 77 IPA is the beer I've come back to time and time again this year. Largely due to its convenient location, I've spent many a half-hour on a Friday afternoon in Spooning Goats in 2013 waiting for Bec to finish work, and my companion-in-waiting is invariably a glass of 77. It's the perfect knockoff beer - bold, arrogant and giving a gigantic middle finger to 'the system', whichever particular system happens to be pissing you off at the time. The amount of time I spent with this beer proves it's not only my favourite beer of the year but the beer that will always define 2013 for me.
So those are the five beers that received my votes. Honorable mentions go to the following beers, which all rated 4 or higher and in any other year could easily have cracked my top five (in descending order):
13 Hours on a Bus - Bridge Road Brewers, Victoria (Collaboration with Local Taphouse bar staff)
Charlie's Pitbull - Thirsty Crow Brewery, New South Wales (Collaboration with William Bull Brewery)
Oaked Tom's Amber Ale - Bootleg Brewery, Western Australia
The Horror - Murray's Craft Brewing, New South Wales
Can't Fight the Funk - Brew Cult, Victoria
Rocket Science Mad Hatter IPA - Dennis Beer Co, New South Wales
And a special honorable mention to my friends at the new-in-2013 Six String Brewing Company in Erina, who brew three beers in their regular range scoring 4 or higher for me: their Dark Red IPA, Pale Ale and Blonde Ale.
That's enough ranting about beer for me now. Up next I will write a Jungian interpretation of Plato's analogy of the cave. Stay tuned.
posted by Sean's Beard at 7:49 PM
2 Comments:
Your #2 beer wasn't brewed in Australia.
Next time your brother goes to California for work, ask him to bring you back some fresh Alpine.
Fair point, but co-brewed by an Aussie brewer for Australian consumption. Regardless, it's a valid option in the poll and will almost certainly crack the top 100.
Cheers for the rec, haven't had any Alpine.
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