John Krüger – Page 2

A Nation of Young Sugar Ants?

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

A nation of young sugar ants?

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2008)

With all the talk about alcopops, binge drinking and healthy living, it looks like there’s never been a better time to hit the 18-35yr old market with a new alternative. Something modern, something cool, something new, something with substance. Fusion Brewing is attempting a new angle with good old beer. Their Bluebottle beer is designed to match seafood, and the Firefly beer made for spicy food. We tried both beers and were impressed with the amount and quality of hop flavour and aroma. If Little Creatures have proved anything with their fabulous Pale Ale, it’s the fact that Aussie drinkers aren’t scared of bitterness, hop flavour, and aroma in their beers. Fusion Brewing have taken the next step by mentioning the fact that their beers have an “understated” sweetness. We admit that even Stella Artois is a little too sweet for our tastes, but we’d replace the word “understated” with “damn”. It’s too sweet for us to handle any more than one of the dinky 300ml bottles, but let’s face it, going by the pre-tax-hike sales of RTD’s, the younger portion of the Australian population seem to have a palate akin to insects. Huge 440ml cans of cheap perfumy Bourbon and sickly cola line most of the shelves of the bottlo’s now days which is surely an indication that although maybe not our preferred pint, Fusion could be onto a winner and take modern brewing to the next scary step. Has Beer Radar just coined the phrase “beerpops”?

We Met in a Bar

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

We met in a bar.

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2010)

With some fantastic stories about the beer that changed people’s lives under our belt, it’s about time that I recounted my own experiences. There are three distinct beer moments that have happened in my life. They weren’t biblical in nature but they broadened my horizons further than any advertising campaign could dream of.

The first was when I was a longhaired eighteen-year-old living in the country with not much more on my mind than working on cars, moving to a place with women and playing pinball. My drink of choice was passed down to me from my older brother, American whiskey, but in those seasonal employment days, unemployment benefits didn’t stretch far enough for American whiskey. My father was an ex-home brewer and he decided to share the knowledge of “dump & stir”; the process of brewing extract tins of Coopers stout. We were brewing a batch every weekend, and during the coldest months, Dad’s “paint shed” was transformed into a walk in cool room chock full of big Henry’s, all full of stout.

The second moment was when a small Scottish home brewer gave me a taste of all-grain beer. It tasted like real commercial quality beer instead of dodgy extract beer. The first sip of his beer sitting in his little kitchen rocked my world and I’ll never forget him explaining in a strong Scottish accent about his “total control” over the beer. It was a Scotch ale, a style I’m still none too fond of but the quality of the beer surpassed the few imported versions that were available to us at the time.

The third was with a friend of mine called Sam, an ex-country bloke like myself who also had a passion for all-grain home brewing. He’d design a uranium processing plant during the week, then knock out the most amazing beers on the weekend. For a while he was my home brew guru, discussing the finer points of decoction mashing and it’s relation to alpha and beta amylase reactions with starches. One afternoon we sat in the Thebarton Wheatsheaf hotel’s front bar working our way through the taps. A mutual decision was made to order a couple of bottles of hefeweizen since we’re both wheat beer aficionado’s. We were served two bottles of Schneider Organic Edelweiss that were served in tall Schneider branded glasses. As we coaxed the last of the yeast from the bottles into the glasses, we could hear other patrons enquiring about our unusual 500ml bottles and tall glasses. The beer was sublime. Fresh German and American hops in perfect unison. German precision and balance. Loads of esters jumping from the glass, bananas, yeasty fruit and funk galore. Smooth flavourful complexity that gave me goosebumps. I was in love.

Sam waited until I’ve almost finished the 500ml glass and enquired “Can you taste the baked beans?”

I laughed, hesitated and took another sip. “Baked beans?” I thought, “surely not”…. “Oh you bastard.” I replied as I picked up on the background flavour of tinned baked beans. My beer rapture had been turned out into the street. It was a moment akin to when you realize the pretty girl at school you’d been doting over will never go out with you, but she seems to have the beginnings of a gnarly set of side burns and you don’t really like her anymore anyway. The flavour had been hovering around in the background before I could put my finger on it, and now 50% of the hefeweizens I taste have an element of tinned baked beans in tomato sauce. Most respected beer writers I’ve asked guess at a fermentation issue but my own brewing experiments leave it all down to the brand of malted wheat. Either way, it was a starry-eyed love affair that was short lived, even if I do still lust after a fresh Schneider Organic Edelweiss on occasion.

Yes, but have you actually tasted this?

Beer Radar

By John Kruger

“Yes, but have you actually tasted this?”

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2012)

…is a question I almost blurt out quite often, but I stifle it and nod. It’s the first response after tasting a very occasional new commercial beer that’s pretty damn rough around the edges. It’s usually a beer from a new small time operation but not always. I know tasting is all very individual and one man’s Champagne is another man’s low-carb light beer. Unfortunately there’s always a shocker waiting in that bottle shop beer fridge for me. Sometimes it’s a fermentation issue, or a sparge issue, sometimes I wonder if some brewers think that using old hops will be fine, but the oxidised cheesy character isn’t always complimentary to the style. Sadly, it’s the hop driven beers that sometimes get the stale hops instead of fresh sappy aromatic hops. If the beer is supposed to be conditioned; before adding another 3 big-screen TV’s to the bar area, please at least consider if that money would be better spent on longer conditioning for the beer. It seems as if the quality of the product slips down the list of priorities for some brewers, where I’d consider it to be permanently number one and well above the live band nights and Facebook campaign.

I find it hard to give people a response to their beer because some people in the brewing business just want to share the beer love, not get a critical response to a friendly gesture. That’s why some people prefer the anonymous feedback from a competition rather that a razor sharp critique from a friend or loved one.

I can understand how the occasional dodgy beer slips through into the market in the heat of running a small brewery passionately. You love your beer so much, that’s all you drink and your blinkers go on, but tunnel vision doesn’t give a very helpful view of uncharted terrain. Good brewers constantly get feedback from as many people as possible and I’ve also noticed that successful brewers, sometimes surreptitiously, drink a lot of other people’s beers. It’s not just for market research; it also keeps the palate stimulated. Unfortunately the newly commercial brewers often seem to be asking the wrong questions. Instead of pouring a good friend another free beer and asking him or her, “Hey, what do you think of this?” Where the answer is an amazingly enthusiastic and positive response like “Oh this is amazing, it’s so good. Would you mind pouring me another free beer please? You really should start selling this after I’ve left.”

A more realistic question you should be asking is “Hey, would you pay eight bucks for a glass of this? If you did, how many do you think you’d buy?” Then the answers come back from a very different angle. All of a sudden it’s not an ego stroking, free beer inducing response, but the kind of answer a business owner should be hearing.

“Well actually, this beer has a funny medicinal background taste and there’s also a dry husky harshness going on, but it’s cold and drinkable.” might be a more realistic response when the weight of a person’s wallet is thrown into the mix.

One SA brewer changed one of his beer recipes directly in response to some fairly minor comments left by an anonymous beer judge in a large competition for commercial beers. The next year the brewer entered the resulting beer from the new recipe and won gold. The same brewer is also known to religiously work the taps at night. Not because he’s too tight to hire more bar staff, but because he listens to every comment every customer makes about the beers. He’s not trying to turn the brewery into the biggest business ever, he just wants to be known for damn good beer, and it’s working.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s what we lovers of a pint of ale or a crisp lager want; damn good beers. The promotions, the hats and cheap sunglasses, the sporting and events sponsorships are all secondary and very short term in the memory compared to the primary thing of importance, the beer. Get that right and when you do, please let me know about it.

Stone & Wood 2010

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

Stone & Wood

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2010)

This month we’re having a closer look at Stone & Wood from Byron Bay. A while back we looked at their Pale Lager, which is a very light, very soft quaffable Munich Helles style lager. We’ve recently had the chance to try two more of their beers fresh on tap recently and can totally understand why there’s so much excitement in the Aussie beer scene at the moment.

Apart from being a great bloke, Brad Rogers the chief brewer for Stone & Wood has a great attitude to making beer; it has to be drinkable. That doesn’t sound like rocket science but so many modern brewers are getting carried away with mega imperial India Pale Ales and the like, they’re hopped beyond belief and are verging on undrinkable. Sure they’re different and powerful, but here in the Beer Radar office we like to have more than one beer before our taste buds have been paralysed and the enamel stripped from our teeth. Quite a few beers in succession over a yarn in a hospitable hotel is still one of life’s simple luxuries.

This is where Stone & Wood have done things just right. Their simple draught ale has a wonderful prominent hop presence, but you could drink it for hours. In fact, we did! It’s a wonderfully fruity ale with Galaxy hops bursting out of the glass thanks to some generous dry hopping. It’s a beer with a delicious hop character and a cleansing dry finish. Perfect balance, yet still a bold modern beer.

The second beer we tried was their Stone Beer. We’ve tried the bottled version before, which we loved, but draught beer is like meeting the movie star in person instead of just seeing them on a screen. Stone beer is a unique project where Brad and his crew go old-school in the beer making process, building a fire and getting appropriate rocks scalding hot before adding them to the unfermented beer wort. In the old days, it was a way of getting it to boil without having to heat a kettle. It sounds like a lot of hassle instead of just lighting a gas burner or turning on a heating element, but the wort caramelises around the hot rock, creating extra toffee flavours and complexity. It’s another very drinkable beer.

The Stone & Wood beers are available at a surprising amount of locations around Australia. Check out their website for an ever growing list of pubs with their beers on tap. They’re great in the bottle, but for us, nothing beats a fresh pint or three.

http://www.stoneandwood.com.au

Real Beer Fans Prefer Brunettes

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2008)

Real beer fans prefer brunettes.

If we had a visiting team of beer marketers in our office, we’d smack them on the noses with rolled up newspapers and rub their noses in their directionless campaigns and misinformation. One of many irritants in recent beer marketing to us is the label ‘blonde.’ For about a century, ‘blonde’ has been used to describe a lighter coloured beer, and all was well. Now ‘blonde’ is somehow associated with a low carbohydrate content. We’re still to work out the connection.

Doctor Trent Watson from the Australian Institute of Accredited Dieticians says the low-carb option is far from the ideal choice for those consumers watching their energy intake. “Carbohydrates should be 40-50% of our total energy intake, and that the average full strength beer has about as many carbohydrates as half a slice of bread (~7gms)” he says. So it’s like ordering a diet soft-drink to go with a bucket of fried chicken. It’s not the carbo’s in beer that’s the nutritional problem. Most beers are low in residual sugar but it’s the alcohol that’s really the culprit. If you’re like us, you’d prefer to think of alcohol as a handy solvent that happens to make us happy on it’s otherwise ineffectual trip through the body. Unfortunately we’re very much deluded when it comes to nutrition. Our bodies happen to be damn good at metabolising the depressant alcohol which is almost immediately stored as fat in our livers.

A healthier alternative is low or mid strength beers, or our favourite: drink less, but drink well. Considering our preference for bar stools over bicycles, the scariest thing we learned from Dr. Trent is that each full strength beer holds around 600 kilojoules, which takes about 30 minutes of walking to burn off. That’s right, it’d take 3 hours of walking to burn off a 6 pack of beer, or around 2 hours for a 6 pack of light. There’s no way in hell a 6 pack of light beer is ever going to be worth 2 hours of walking in our minds. Maybe it’s time to get a carton of Coopers Birell (0.5%abv) before my WiiFit instructor starts calling me fat again.

Big Brown Creatures and Little White Rabbits

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

Big brown Creatures and little White Rabbits

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2010)

When a large cardboard box arrived at the Beer Radar office recently we were all in a tizzy. Especially when we realised it was from Little Creatures and White Rabbit. It’s not every day that we get a few beers in the post from Australia’s brewing rock stars. They’re not the kind of breweries that knock out a new beer every week, so we guess that these beers will be well thought out and executed.

First up, a big brown bottle of limited release Brown Ale from Little Creatures. It’ll be a solid, yet hoppy beer, we know that before we’ve chilled and opened it. What we got was power, balance and restraint. Powerful aromas in an American style but not in an ‘old-ladies’ perfume’ kind of powerful. There’s a solid blend of malts including a hint of spicy rye. Rye is rarely seen in Australian brewed beers and it adds a unique nutty spice and a little oilyness that suits darker beers. Each malt in the Little Creatures brown ale stands out instead of a forming a mish-mash of flavours and we’re guessing this beer has been through as much refining as a race-car does before it’s been released because it’s spot on. Kegs and open fires please.

White Rabbit had sent us a little potion sized bottle of their White Ale. We’d also tried it recently on tap at our local and while the draught version seemed a little light-on for us, the bottled version, maybe because of the small amount of yeast in each bottle, seems to have a lot more oomph for what’s still a pretty light kind of beer. There’s a hint of spice, the classic orange peel and coriander but again, very restrained. Belgian Wit is a fantastic style and so well suited to our hot summers, here’s hoping some venues cotton on to a little White Rabbit this coming summer.

*Mentioned beers were supplied by the breweries

Weizens 2012

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

“Weetbeers – Like Weetbix, but breakfast for grownups.” (First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2012)

OK, that may not get past the officials, and Moa got in trouble with the NZ officials after they released a cherry wheat beer and suggested it’d make an awesome breakfast beer; and it does. For those of you who aren’t too seedy on a Sunday morning, wheat beers with a pan-fried breakfast are perfect matches. Gentle acidity, a little soft sweetness, carbonation and refreshment, all go with bacon and eggs on sourdough toast. Try a half litre of fresh Schöfferhofer Hefeweizen, swirled so the yeast is incorporated into the correct tall weizen glass. Add a slice of lemon if it’s stinking hot weather. Serve next to a barbequed slice of Jagerbraten with all of the trimmings, it’s wunderbar!

Ground breaking Spanish chef Ferran Adrià teamed up with Estrella to produce Estrella Inedit. It’s a Belgian style wheat beer that includes the usual coriander and orange zest, but also a hint of liquorice. It’s subtle enough to add complexity without tasting like Liquorice All-Sorts. It’s a stunningly packaged 750ml beer, which can be purchased around the $10 mark, surprisingly. It’s more of a dinner party wheat rather than a breakfast beer. Ferran is known for pioneering amazing molecular gastronomic creations, so many fans were surprised that this beer is so restrained.

For an Aussie option, the classic – bacon, origin-unknown snag, baked beans and egg goes well with a variety of local wheat beers. Here’s some Aussie options:

Cascade Blonde – The Germans would call it a Kristalweizen because there’s no yeast so it’s clear. It’s a good entry level wheat beer. Nothing too offensive, which is what Cascade does best. It’s clean and clear while still having a sweet wheat aroma.

McLaren Vale has a bubbling collection of craft brewers at the moment and there’s a handful of good wheat beers to be found there too.

Swell Wheat Beer –Swell Beer Company co-founder Dan Wright also loves a good wheat beer. His version has a lean towards a Belgian style with a hint of orange peel and delivers aromatic esters while still being an easy drinker. You’ve got to love the 500ml bottles too.

Goodieson’s Wheat Beer – It’s had a brewer’s loving touch for ester production. Head brewer Jeff Goodieson has the passion and know-how to really make German wheat beer yeasts sing, and it shows. It also picked up the Ecolab Trophy for Champion Wheat Beer at the 2012 Royal Adelaide Beer Awards in a close competition.

McLaren Vale Beer Company Wit – Another Belgian style wheat beer. Limited production means that it’s only occasionally available in kegs. This beer reminds me of a young crowd at the Vale Inn Taphouse on a sunny day, lamb on the spit and large plastic cups of cold beer. Head brewer Jeff Wright says there should be some fresh Wit pouring at the Taphouse around Christmas time.

Wahoo?

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

Wahoo? (First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2011)

We’ve recently seen the only significant difference in beer packaging since we spotted aluminium Heineken bottles during a pub crawl through Lan Kwai Fong in Hong Kong back in 2004. Gage Roads have released its Wahoo Ale in a new Vortex bottle made by the high profile American owned glass company O-I in Sydney. The inside of the bottle neck has large smooth grooves twisting around almost like rifling in a gun barrel, while the outside of the bottle remains normal. Miller Lite in the States has been doing the same thing for a while. Not surprisingly, everyone has asked “why?” and the only reason we can think of is chugging a beer could possibly happen ever so slightly faster, not that there’s any mention of accelerated consumption in the Miller Lite or Gage Roads press-releases and marketing. So it’s basically a point of difference in the glass packaging that Gage Roads are hoping will give them an edge in a very crowded market. We couldn’t tell any difference to the flow of the beer from the bottle but we swear the Wahoo tasted hoppier than it did the last time we tried it, even though Gage Roads assured us that the recipe hasn’t changed since its first release.

A family lunch at the Adelaide German Club recently was even better than usual when we realised that Hofbräu Maibock was on tap. Traditionally, in Munich, the first barrel of Maibock is tapped in the last week of April in readiness for the month of May. Hofbräu Maibock is Munich’s oldest bock (strong beer), which dates all the way back to 1614. Now that’s brewing heritage! The Maibock is darker than the Hofbräu Original and has a very rich malt flavour with a high alcohol level of 7.2%. After three or four 500ml steins, you certainly realise that this is no ordinary beer. Hofbräu 500ml bottles are available at most good bottle shops. We rate their beers highly.

Transitional Beers

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

Transitional Beers. (First published in Wine Business Magazine in 2010)

We’ve covered some of the darker beers a few months ago in Beer Radar, and we’re leaving the stouts until they’re really needed. This month we look at a selection we hope could be transitional beers. The ones you could feed to your your Dad in the hope that at last he’ll give up his nasty generic beer in a can.

Matilda Bay – Fat Yak: Reeking of hops. Truck full of citrus crashes into a cheap perfume stall. Might smell too scary for Dad. Background aromas of malty goodness. Resiny bitterness backed up with a light malt sweetness and thin body. Almost a little watery at the end, fading away.

Coopers – Sparkling Ale: classic Aussie Pride of Ringwood hop flavour so Dad will recognise something familiar, but also bready yeast complexity and toffee. We’d call it Mother’s Milk but milk has never been this good. Like a good radio station, the hits we love but also something a bit different.

Mildura Brewery – Mallee Bull Heavy: A malty amber style ale. Loads of dense malty goodness without being overly sweet. Subtle bitterness and all round well balanced beer. Good soft intro into decent drinking. Could have a few of these.

Barons Brewing – Black Wattle Original Ale: Sweet, nutty and rich but it’s not as heavy as it smells, so you can drink more than one. Creeping bitterness. A gutsy amber ale with roasted black wattle seeds giving a seedy nutty twist to the usual chocolate and coffee flavours associated with winter ales. Looks too good to drink from the bottle, should be in longnecks or growlers.

Cascade – First Harvest 2010: Malty for a Cascade, still bright and clear but with a hint of colour. The bitterness units might be up there but the Fat Yak slayed this beer in regards to hop presence. Dad friendly beer. The bitterness might start Dad up on the old Southwark Bitter “green death” rant again so better not risk it.

A Cidery Start and a Hidden Beer Finish.

Beer Radar

By John Krüger

A cidery start and a hidden beer finish.

(First published by Wine Business Magazine in 2011)

It doesn’t take a short fuzzy mandolin player to tell you that cider is a big thing at the moment. Even Perry is making its way back onto the shelves. We’ve braved the meagre 4 days of heat during the recent summer and have downed a few great ciders including Adelaide Hills Cider on tap which has been a revelation. It’s all that we love about artisan cider; a hint of natural spontaneous ferment sourness, real apple flavour, and no nasty saccharine or other artificial flavours. Lobo Cider from Lobethal, also in the Adelaide Hills was a bridge-too-far for my sister-in-law who pronounced “this is off!” and left the rest for us to down faster than a dog eats dropped snags at a BBQ. Some people prefer their cider without the rustic charm and a little more 20^th century. One cider we’ve sampled recently from our other favourite spot in the world, the Yarra Valley, is Coldstream Cider. It’s made by brewers so it doesn’t have any funk, but it does taste like real apples and is a damn site better than the artificial ciders popular with the alcho-pop brigade. It’s also thankfully lacking in the massive hit of sulpher that’s prominent in some of the imported ciders and sits somewhere between sweet and dry on the residual sugar. We copped a lot of flak from the UK expats about adding ice to our cider but we’re not in cardigan and long socks country anymore are we? We’re that impressed with the cider, we’re keen to try what else Coldstream are doing.

Our favourite surfy brewers from Byron Bay, Stone and Wood, have intelligently renamed their deliciously fruity ale. Previously called Draught Ale (Draught means “drawn from the tap” a fresh beer) certainly makes sense on tap, but the term “draught” in relation to packaged beer has always irritated us. It’s like bottled water, but in a can. Anyway, their beer is still great fresh from the tap or bottle as we’ve reported before, but now to avoid more confusion (we’re looking at you West End and Carlton) Stone and Wood have renamed their excellent beer “Pacific Ale”. Why “Pacific”? Buggered if we know but it makes more sense.

As the nights cool down, it’s time to work out which sock drawer you’ve stashed the Coopers Vintage Ale. Initially we couldn’t stand the previous vintage fresh from the brewery. It seemed all marshmallow weed and cheap lollies, but given time to mature the 2009 has really come up a treat. We’ve even stashed bottles in various locations so we don’t knock them off all in one go. Young and foolish beer nerds dismiss the ale quoting the term “oxidised” and go back to their Fat Yacks, but hey “dudes”, great matured bevvies that have a bit of oxygen under their belts flourish with new and complex flavours. Don’t ask us for proof, ask Seppelts 100 year old port for example. The 2009 Coopers Vintage Ale will be our sneaky brandy balloon tipple during the coming colder months until we stop finding all of the hidden stubbies.