3 Ravens English Ale

After almost 3 months of blogging silence, I’m temporarily reverting to an old format to quickly record my thoughts on 3 Ravens English Ale which I am sampling for the first time tonight.

Three Troupers Amber Ale

Back in October last year I tried the Three Troupers brews available at the time (Pilsner and pale ale). They were pleasant enough but a little disappointing after some of the other local beers I had been trying. I’m pleased to say that their Amber Ale, released earlier this year, is a great improvement.

A fine-looking amber in the glass with a healthy white head, it has plenty of malt and caramel flavours and a smooth mouth feel.

See if you can get your hands on some and let me know what you think

Cheers

Yarra Valley Gold

I’ve had a few people recommend the beers from Grand Ridge Brewery and have enjoyed a few pots of Gippsland Gold on tap so I thought I’d see what else they have to offer. First up was Yarra Vally Gold and I’m pretty impressed!

I’ll have a ‘bland’ please

Having spent so long trying to educate my palate and seek out interesting, varied and complex beers, I now find myself looking around for a less  interesting locally brewed beer. I have a friend whose beer taste was formed while living in Germany. I would have thought this would mean he expects flavour and variety. In reality, it has resulted in a distaste for anything other than Warsteiner (although he can cope with Carlton Draught).

I had never heard of Warsteiner so I gave it a go.

It seems to me to be a very thin, bland beer with almost no complexity or real flavour. Perfect for slamming down on stinking hot days but otherwise fairly pointless. For some reason, I now feel I should introduce him to a locally brewed beer that will satisfy his expectations. This will be a challenge as one of the reasons people brew beer is so that they can infuse it with flavour, complexity and their own personalities.

Delving into my previous posts and some recent experiments I have come up with my top 3 ‘refreshing and least likely to offend anyone’ craft beers.

They are:

Cricketers Arms Lager

Three Troupers Pilsener

Mildura brewery Desert Premium Lager (see below)

I will make these suggestions and post my friend’s reaction at some point.

And I’m not the only one

It seems Effen lager (see previous post) has won the Peoples Choice award for best lager at the Microbrewery showcase last month. My tastes must be reasonably close to those of  “the people”. Regardless of the fact that there were very few lagers on show that night, it’s a good beer and the award is well deserved! Sometimes you just need a good, clean, easy to drink lager and this fits the bill nicely.

My favourite Friday night beer this week is 3 Ravens American Pale Ale, I don’t know why it took me so long to discover it.

A great discovery from the Microbrewery showcase

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of spending a few hours at the Microbrewery Showcase at Federation Square. I sampled quite a number of new beers, some of which I enjoyed very much. One that surprised me was Effen lager. The name and marketing style seems a little too slick and even forced. My expectation was that the beer wouldn’t live up to the promise. I was wrong, it’s a good lager that I have tried again since – in fact I’ve enjoying one now.

Warm weather – what to drink?

It’s definitely time to beat the heat and quench the thirst with some lighter refreshing ales. A style that has been recommended for this purpose is Belgian witbier and I can recall having a few of these in the past and quite enjoying them. I am now on a quest to find my favourite locally brewed witbier. My first is very local, being from 3 Ravens in Thornbury.

Three Troupers

Lately there have been a few indications that there may be warmer weather ahead – time to get back into some refreshing ales and lagers. Just as I was thinking that, some Pale Ale and Pilsner from Three Troupers Brewery in Beaufort appeared as if by magic.

Red Hill Imperial Stout

OK Now its getting serious. As detailed previously, I have recently been tasting a few darker beers, mainly porters. Having been tempted by the dark side, I felt the need to go further. My latest was a stout from Red Hill Brewery, one of Victorias best known and acclaimed microbreweries. There may be no going back!

Flying Horse Dirty Angel

After a month’s break – from blogging, not beer tasting – I have a lot to report. I have spent some time in Indonesia where the beer choice was severely limited (although I did find one reasonable craft brew). I have also been to the fantastic Local Taphouse in St. Kilda for a dinner hosted by the Beer Diva. More about these happenings later. I have also sampled a few new beers, including a good porter, Dirty Angel from the Flying Horse brewery in Warnambool.