Beer Radar
By John Krüger
Aussie Sapporo and The Big Dipper (First published in Wine Business Magazine in Nov 2011)
Beers contract brewed or brewed under license are a big deal at the moment. A search on Twitter for the hash tag #fakeperoni shows a small section of the consumer rage out there and it’s all about label integrity; an issue we’ll look into closely in a future Beer Radar. For now though, let’s look at an interesting beer brewed under license now in Australia, the Japanese classic Sapporo. Sapporo is also brewed under license in Canada, so the origins of the Sapporo you may have tried before here in Australia are anyone’s guess. We tracked down a can of Sapporo that as far as we know was brewed in Japan just to see if the Australian brewery Coopers has gotten it right. Our first taste of the locally made version was at the official South Australian launch at the Robin Hood hotel in Norwood. The draught version did taste slightly sweet which is an issue when brewing lagers, not attenuating well enough, but after trying the higher carbonated bottled version, we’re really enjoying Aussie Sapporo. It’s got a light malty sweetness but it’s clean and fresh. Considering this Sapporo was brewed 9 kilometres away from where I’m writing this now, it’d have to be damn fresh. That’s one downfall of drinking the version that’s brewed in Canada (13,800kms) or Japan (7,300kms), is the time it takes to get here. While this is probably the best version of a brewed-under-license beer we’ve tasted, listening to Dr. Tim Cooper’s speech at the launch night revealed that this was no easy task. Just as his speech was listened to intently by a selection of Japanese officials, the trial batches at Coopers had a lot of Japanese attention before it was deemed worthy. Aussie Sapporo is a beer you’ll down many of, easily.
Another beer that’s got us all excited is the new limited release Little Creatures Double India Pale Ale called The Big Dipper. It’s what Little Creatures fans have always wanted, a bigger version of their pale ale. It’s a big beer at 7.8%abv, 55ibu’s of bitterness and has no less than 7 different types of hops in it. It’s remarkably clean and balanced and still reeks of hop goodness. With all Little Creatures beers, it’s refined. The fairly neutral label doesn’t reflect the rock star beer contained within. Unfortunately this limited release beer won’t last long enough to be around for Christmas so we’ll be hunting it down and stockpiling like no tomorrow. It’s that good. The Big Dipper is a beer to covet, to search out while you can and hide away, sharing only with a select few.
