Sunday, April 18, 2010

My New Favourite Beer...

Actually, it's not the ABSOLUTE favourite, but it's up there.  Mikkeller (Single Hop - Armarillo) IPA (pic on left).  Tasted at The Local Taphouse, East St Kilda.  Now, it's not a beer for everyone - this has a MASSIVE hop start and finish, initially on the nose as very floral, this wonder ends with an amazing crunchy and refreshing bitterness. A superb grainy starter, this one.  It's not too alcohol-ly at 6.9%, and I could have had several of these, but there was more tasting to be done...

One of the superb offers they have at The Local is the tasting paddle (pic on right).  For a measly $13 you get a selection of 5 beers (either of your choice or decided by the barkeep) complimented with a bunch of palate-cleansing water crackers.  The beers are served in tasting glasses and top out to about 150mls per glass. This is the perfect way to sample a variety of the tap beers on offer, and it gave me the chance to discover a couple of real gems.  Chevalier Saison, Hargreaves Hill ESB, and the Franziskaner Hefe Weizen were a few of the stand-outs for me.  My tasting partner and I had two of the paddles each, and still only sampled about half of the beers available on tap.  Also, in true Belgian style, I also had a bowl of mussells to complement my tasting experience - lovely!

Now I would like to say that this is less about a free plug for a pub than it is about expressing my love for the noble drink.  I had the opportunity to go to Germany, Belgium and Holland a couple of years ago and sampled many, many of the local brews off the tap and was blown away by the quality, the flavours and the sheer variety of beer in that region.  As a home craft-brewer I was inspired, and as a consumer I was revelated!  And so, as a brewer, I celebrate this love in my blog...

And on the subject of brewing, my Republican Stout is about 5 days away from being bottled.  I have decided to not rack this one, instead keeping all of the essence of the first fermentation intact to retain as much of those big flavours as possible - and I'm not interested in making this any more complex flavour-wise with dry-hopping.   I'll let you know how it goes!

2 comments:

  1. Have you tried the other Mikkellers too?

    Steve (Taphouse)

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  2. Not yet, but the whole range is on my list! I have had a look at the Mikkeller website and have noticed that there are quite a few to get through. You know what they say, though, it's a tough job but...

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