Beef Latest Br(ew)dings

Well, winter is a good time for drinking for me as i get to savour my chewy ales. I went to slowbeer the other day to pick up a few more and had a couple last night while watching the wallabies lackluster win over ireland at Joel's place (yay foxtel). out of the latest mountain goat sweet stout (rare breed surefoot), a oak aged robust porter and a new zealand Clydesdale stout, I have to say i probably enjoyed the New Zealand one the most (bad work Oz!). i was quite basic, but inoffensive and went down very easy. the mountain goat had some roasted notes on the back palate but had this over-riding cleaning fluid mid palate flavour that lost it for me. not only that but it could have then ruined the robust porter by making it taste sweeter than normal. that is weird, the so called sweet stout, making the oak aged porter taste sweeter?

Still, at slowbeer i also found a gluten free belgium beer so got one for my cus Kristy to try out. It was a the day Juilia Gillard became our first female prime minister, and luckily Kristy had just done a trip to a gluten free store and found the O'brien's brown ale. we also had an O'brien's lager with them. I have to say i was surprised to see how dark the brown ale was and how much of a malt-ish flavour actually came from it. i was left wondering what they did to give it that. of course the lager wasn't good, so that came last, for the fact that the brown ale tasted like a brown ale, that came first, but where the brown ale lacked a little for me, the Glutener Pilsner came through. it was quite smooth in texture and had a nice roundness in flavour. i guess using hops to mask the flavours that come through in a gluten free beer steadies the taste. If i could combine the flavours of the brown ale with the structure of the pilsner, it would be a great beer. still, at least it was good to find some decent gluten free beers on the market.

So, looking forward, today Mick and I are going for a winter warmer weekend jaunt out to Woodend to get some of Holgate's great ales into us, then the coming week will have bottles of the latest Moo Brew vintage stout arriving at my door (YES!!!). I also hope to get together with Stass to open another raspberry stout and even try a couple more belgian beers i got while i was at slowbeer (another Sint Bernardus and also my first lambic beer to get may taste buds rocking). keep an eye out for more winter beer adventures, and please give us any good winter beers recommendations for us to try out.

Cheers,

Beefy