Verdict: This is the perfect beer for a cold winters night, if you come across it for sale grab a bottle you will not be disappointed.

Score: 8.8 / 10

Link: http://www.brewboys.com.au/

Where to buy: Platinum Liquor outlets at their North Strathfield or Bellevue Hill locations, or online from the Brew Boys website.

Related: Brew boys Seeing Double

Tasting Notes:
Aroma consists of Vanilla, cocoa, brown sugar, coffee and bruised apple notes. The colour is a dark brown with a ruby tinge very close to black, a medium sized tan coloured creamy head.
On the palate the beer leads with some bitterness, and a mild coffee flavour that seems to build as it progresses toward the back of the tongue. Cocoa, vanilla and burnt sugar notes are plentiful with a solid body and nice creamy mouthfeel.

Food Match:
Chocolate mud cake or a similar rich chocolate desert dish.

The Longshot Vitals:
Alcohol: 6% by volume
Bitterness: 40 IBU
Colour: 80 EBC / 60.9 SRM

Where To Buy:
Matilda Bay Longshot is available from Dan Murphy’s stores with a recommended retail price of $20 per four pack.

Related:
Matilda Bay and Tobys Estate collaborate on winter brew.

Longshot is a spiced, full-flavoured dark ale with notes of coffee and malt balancing to finish with a subtle hop bitterness. Beer drinkers will also enjoy a number of different roasted malts in Longshot. These give the beer wonderful flavours of toffee and chocolate that perfectly complement the coffee notes. Longshot also uses an ale yeast fermented at moderate temperatures which gives it a lift in the ester profile – the fruity character that’s found in some ales. With a coarse grind of the coffee beans and a cold extraction, the coffee was then added to the fermentation process and was carefully managed to keep the beer balanced.

Longshot is a challenging beer for the discerning beer drinker and is an ideal beer for food matching particularly with chocolate dishes and beef. Try Longshot with chargrilled Scotch fillet on a rosti stack with thyme mushrooms and sautéed spinach or 70% Belgian cocoa chocolate (the bitterness balances wonderfully with the coffee notes in the beer) in a decadent dark chocolate and pear tart.

Longshot will be available only from Dan Murphy’s from 1 July 2010 and will be a limited release while stocks last and with only 5,000 cases of Longshot being produced, beer lovers will need to get in quick to sample Matilda Bay’s newest brew.

Burleigh Brewing Co. My Wife’s Bitter.
Pale amber colour. Light toffee, toasted bread aromas follow through on a soft, supple entry to a dryish light-to-medium body with great balance and subtle hops on the chewy malt accented finish. A great interpretation of an English mild with a touch more sweet malt and spot on hops.
Awarded: Gold Medal
Judges Rating: 91 points (Exceptional)

Burleigh Brewing Co. Duke Pale Ale.
Brilliant amber colour. Nicely balanced toast, praline, and citrusy hop aromas and flavours on a crisp medium palate with a long, refreshing lightly piney hop finish. A spot on American style pale ale with seamless balance and an attractive fresh hop character.
Awarded: Gold Medal
Judges Rating: 92 points (Exceptional)

For more info on the complete Burleigh Brewing Co range be sure to check out their website at http://www.burleighbrewing.com/

About The Competition

Founded in 1994 the World Beer Championships is one of America’s oldest international beer competitions and was started by the Beverage Testing Institute (BTI). Beers are rated by judges using blind tastings on a 100 point scale and accolades awarded to brewers using a medal based system.

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My Wifes Bitter

Bluetongue’s Brewmaster, Dermot O’Donnell says, “Starting up the brewery was such an exciting moment for the brewing team today. The 2 years of intense planning, hard work and around the clock commitment from the team seem to have paid dividends and we have had a successful start to the brewing process.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the new Bluetongue Brewery team, which has enormous potential to brew the highest quality beer brands. Pacific Beverages has created a very flexible brewery, which can brew a variety of beers ranging from traditional European lagers to modern American and Australian beer styles. The Brewery has significant brewing expertise with brewers from the original Bluetongue Brewery combining with the international expertise that the SABMiller team bring.”

O’Donnell explains, “The Bluetongue Brewery is unique in its design because it has twin-stream brew houses – a large and a small one under one roof, which allow for brewing flexibility to suit consumer and customer demand.

“You can be assured that the new Bluetongue Brewery has been engineered for taste, quality and flexibility. As an example, no one in Australia is utilising decoction technology to make traditional European lagers. This is a mashing technique that intensively extracts malt flavours to produce fuller flavoured beer.

“We are also using genuine draught sterile filtration, which is a special technique developed to maintain freshness and brightness in beer; the sort of beer that brewers love to drink. The centrifuge technology, which uses centrifugal force to separate the final yeast from beer post fermentation,enables ultimate beer clarity and polishes the beer to perfection. Sterile filling means the beer is not heat pasteurised and results in that wonderful brewery fresh taste that will make our beers unique.”

Pacific Beverages has successfully managed so far to capture 10% of the Australian market since its inception four years ago and their new brewery has been designed around a modular format allowing expansion as the company grows further in Australia.

The new brewery can also boast about being one of the most environmentally sustainable breweries in the world. The sustainability efforts have focused on six main areas namely water and energy consumption, product packaging usage, waste generation (water and solids), atmospheric emissions and considered land use.

The largest investment has been in the water recovery plant, which utilises the most modern technology including an anaerobic methane reactor, aerobic (membrane biological reactor) and reverse osmosis treatments to produce high quality reusable water. This recycled water will be channelled in to the general maintenance of the brewery including wash down and cleaning, boilers, refrigeration, staff amenities and fire water top-up that results in water usages equalling about half the global average. The Brewery has also invested in storm-water harvesting to capture 900,000 litres for later supply to help sustain the much needed water for the future Porters Creek scheme.

Peter McLoughlin further expands on the sustainability credentials, “From an energy perspective, we are in a position to recover the methane from the anaerobic part of the water plant and feed it into a methane boiler. When the boiler is operating at a full head of steam we will get a 15% reduction in energy. Combining this with all the other sustainability measures we have implemented across the brewery, such as flash pasteurisation and dry bottle conveyors, our carbon footprint has been substantially reduced”.

Some Bluetongue History

Bluetongue Brewery was founded in 2003 by four entrepreneurs who set out to create a premium Australian beer with the iconic stamp of their local region. The original Bluetongue Brewery is located in the Hunter region at Cameron Park, where a team of passionate local brewers oversee the creation of the Bluetongue range of beers. After being purchased by Pacific Beverages in 2007, the brand continues to grow in popularity. Pacific Beverages, the joint venture Company formed by Australia’s largest non-alcoholic beverage company Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) and global brewer SABMiller, has invested $120 million into the construction of the new brewery which will be fully operational by mid 2010. The $120 million Bluetongue Brewery, which will have an initial annual capacity of 50 million litres, expandable to 100 million litres over time, will be the State’s second largest brewery.

Fast Fact: The new Bluetongue Brewery can produce up to 1 million bottles per day at full production. When at full capacity each days production of bottles placed end to end would stretch 109km!

Poured a hazy copper colour, a low level of carbonation and a medium sized beige head, with lots of small floaties floating around in the liquid (hops maybe?).

On the nose earthy hop notes are accompanied with a variety of malt driven smells including marmalade, toffee, caramel, bread and toffee.

On the palate the flavour follows very closely the theme set by the aroma, being dominated by malt notes namely caramel, bread, roasted nuts, toffee along with some mild citrus brought to the party by the English style hops.

Verdict: Well balanced, with a great body and mouth feel, a highly drinkable brew in the colder months, and a solid English style Pale Ale.

Score: 8.0 / 10

Link: 3 Ravens

Where to buy: The 3 Ravens Bronze along with the rest of their range can be purchased directly from their website.

Related content: 3 Ravens Blond

Over the last decade people have become more concerned with what they are putting into their bodies and the effect its production had on the planet. Brewing beer is traditionally a very resource hungry process and it has been good to see brewers trying to limit their use of planets resources. Mountain Goat has recently installed water tanks at their brewery for drinking water and solar panels on their roof to help with electricity consumption, and fortunately they are not alone.

The Otway Lager contains only organic certified hops, malt and rainwater captured at the estate and promises the drinker a preservative free experience. In a glass the Lager appears pale gold in colour with a medium level of carbonation and medium size head which didn’t hang around long before dying off completely.

The aroma is very fresh with mint, fresh cut grass, cloves, coriander notes on the nose. On the palate some banana, mango, pepper, bread and coriander notes laid over slightly sweet base. The Otway Lager is well balanced and ends extremely clean lending a lot it to its sessionabilty.

Verdict: Not as crisp as I would have hoped, the beer is still very good though the base malts work beautifully.

Score: 7.6 / 10

Link: Otway Estate

Where to find: Short of heading south of the border to Victoria, you can purchase their range online at the Otway Estate website.

The weather in Sydney of late has been cold and wet to say the least, signalling the time to switch from those easy drinking lagers and light ales that embody summer to the stouts and porters that bring warmth to the cold of winter. Iron House Paddys Head Stout covers the need nicely dark black and hailing from down South in Tasmania, where we assume they know a thing or two about staying warm in the cold.

The Iron House Stout poured from a bottle into a glass with a small tan coloured head, a low level of carbonation and a dark black body. The nose is a real highlight on this brew with plenty of different aromas to intrigue the stand outs being licorice, roasted coffee, cooking chocolate and a hint of vanilla.

On the palate this brew is not lacking in the flavour department chocolate, burnt toast, macadamia nuts, coffee, brown sugar and pepper were very easy to pick up. Considering the amount of flavours present I was extremely surprised how clean this beer ends, not much is left after swallowing except for a moderately sweet caramel aftertaste.

This is not a beer that works when overly cold as some of the flavours come through very one sided and harsh. But its not the sort of style you tend to rush anyhow, allowed to warm the taste becomes alot more rounded and the more subtle flavours really shine.

Verdict: A lovely Winter Stout this is a great brew to unwind with after a cold wet Winters day, I am definitely keen to get my hands on some more.

Score: 8.1/10

Link: Iron House Brewery

Where to buy:Seems Iron House beers don’t make it too far North from their home in Tassie, luckily they can be purchased online from the “Taste of Tassie” website.

In a glass the Humpback Ale appears an orange / amber colour with an above average level of carbonation, and a head around 1cm in height which didn’t hang around for long before subsiding down to nothingness. On the nose this brew is fairly restrained with some slight citrus, caramel and straw aromas coming through.

On the palate malt driven caramel and toffee notes take the lead with the mild english hops kicking in around the halfway mark adding marmalade, tobacco and some citrus notes. Further toward the back a lot of smoke flavours seem to appear before ending slightly sweet with a heavy citrus twang.

Verdict: I wasn’t expecting the smokiness at all and for the first few sips found it a little too aggressive. Further along though my palate seemed to adjust and it added a nice bit of complexity to the flavour. Overall a great English style Pale Ale, which I look forward to enjoying again!

Score: 8.0 / 10

Link:http://www.gulfbrewery.com.au/

Where to buy: This beer is available from the Australian Hotel located in the Rocks.