Here are the last eight beers for you to drool over…
December 21
Stillwater Artisinal Vacuum Readymade/ Stillwater
A boring looking beer and an overly strong taste at 8% and
made in America, not one of my favourites. Why have an iron on a label? I don’t
like it that much.
Murray’s Fred IPA
Murray’s are right when they say they don’t make boring
beer, this good beer is late hopped using us pacific north west hops. Best
paired with smoky and spicy food, I like the sound of that.
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| December 21 |
December 22
Feral Karma Citra
First of all there are two rabbits going at it on the label.
This India black ale is a ‘sexed-up’ IPA, using citra hops with dark malts to
create a pleasant and unique tasting beer.
Mikkeller Hello Ich Bin Berliner Weisse
For the last can in the beer adventure I was a bit uncomfortable with this one, it smelt bad and upon taste it was hard to drink. A strange tasting beer for a peculiar market, not mine apparently. A Belgian beer brewed with peaches, try it if you like fruity beer.
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| December 22 |
December 23
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| Food match with Tempura Fairy Wings |
Bridge Road Magical Christmas Unicorn Vanilla Icecream Ale
I wish you could have seen the smile on my face when I found
this in the carton. Highly sought after and hard to find. Bridge Road have put
their heads together and come up with probably the most peculiar beer I’ve ever
heard of but I’ll give them 10/10 for creativity. This vanilla ice cream beer
is beer don’t forget but has a vanilla ice cream taste – you’ll probably have
to try it to believe me. To the right is a picture of the side of the label, I like their
description of the beer. I highly recommend this if you can find them around
this time of the year.
Bridge Road Fat Man Red Suit Big Sack
I’ve hit the jackpot. I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting this
from Saint John but they have bounced back and put a Christmas beer in the
carton, this was one I was hoping to find in the Bridge Road carton since its
one of theirs. Unlike the amazing Vanilla Icecream Ale this one is an
Australian Christmas Beer, using a combination of Australian hops to create an
amazing red ale.
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| December 23 |
December 24
Bridge Road Fat Man Red Suit Big Sack
Bridge Road Magical Christmas Unicorn Vanilla Icecream Ale
This made me chuckle as the calendars have had the same
attack for the finish line but just crossed over. I’ve already said what I
think about these beers so I will share with you my final verdict, then you can
get back to your Christmas drinking.
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| December 24 |
Both advent calendars had a very different approach and were presented in different ways. They had pros and cons for each.
Bridge Road and Friends:
A real advent calendar with doors to peel back each day
A properly designed carton
A lot of nice beers with a perfect Christmas finish
Supporting Australian brewers
Saint John:
The beers are individually wrapped meaning you can chill
them and not get the surprise until you are ready to drink.
More access to the insane and bizarre, a fermented sour
fruit beer, cans
A perfect Christmas finish.
The verdict.
I loved working through both of these cartons, but this year
I will award the best to the Bridge Road and Friends Advent Calendar, they
ticked more boxes and performed better overall. I believe that this is a fixed
carton and will be identical every year, by all means, I highly recommend you
get one of these next year, it is very much worth the $100 if you love beer.
Having said that back to back Saint John cartons were completely different
which means next year will hopefully be different again and therein lies the
fun, not knowing what is coming next.
I’ve had 48 beers in the 24 days leading up to Christmas,
there have been many interesting and some scary beers, I’ve recommended quite a
few if you want to try something new and hopefully helped you to avoid some
scary ones.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to my readers, thank
you for your support this year which has been beyond fantastic.
Stay tuned next year as there will be many more exciting
blog posts to see and many more crazy stories to share.
Beerfest in Launceston is on January 13 and 14, I hope to
see you there.
In the meantime,
Cheers,
Dave
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