Tag Archives: beer review

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Seven Ways of Looking at a Sparkling Ale Longneck

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#1

This statesmanlike, red-labelled bottle is a narrative.

In the realm of ales, it’s Ulysses. A front bar round of pints is often comic theatre, and a butcher of ale (200ml for the uncertain) is a haiku revealing its buried fortune as you dig into its poetic earth. But the Coopers Sparkling Ale prose is of canonical eminence. Like engaging with longform art, there’s opportunity for immersive delight but also an obligation to contemplate life’s deeper themes. It’s your favourite novel, your Great Gatsby which you re-read on the lounge as an affirming annual indulgence after Boxing Day.

#2

No, this beer isn’t The Beatles. With a heart prone to menace and darkness it’s The Rolling Stones and their farewell letter to the sixties, Let It Bleed. Every glass contains Mick and Keef’s nightfall poetry and gritty realities, deathless swagger and irresolvable tension. We traverse from the ‘apocalyptic dread’ of that first foamy tumbler in ‘Gimme Shelter’ to the psychological ruin sweeping across, ’You Can’t Always Get What You Want.’ Now, the music fades and you drain the dregs into your cherished schooner as the glimmering sun slants in over the back lawn.

#3

My Friday evening ritual is a Sistine Chapel visit. Like many of life’s joys, one is sufficient but two is dastardly excess from which no good can result. Take in the grandeur, and purity of aspiration. Open-mouthed and fizzing of brain, I stare up at Michelangelo’s ceiling. But do it only once. And if you’re tempted, don’t return to the fridge for a second bottle. You’re done. What else can you request from a work of art?

#4

Each frosty longneck comes complete with engaging conversation, original observations, and deep introspection. Listen to its voice and you’re reminded of Richard Burton, all conquest and divine warmth, commencing his narration in Under Milkwood

To begin at the beginning:

It is spring, moonless night in the small town

Starless and bible-black

The cobblestreets silent and the hunched

courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible

down to the sloeblack slow, black, crowblack,

fishingboatbobbing sea.

#5

Old bull: No, let’s walk down and do the lot.

#6

It’s also a maverick. The only beer commonly viewed as being better out of a bottle and not taken from the keg. Why is it so? The scientists could tell us but at play there’s delightful alchemy. Flip the bottle top and shake hands with this twelfth apostle, this preternaturally talented twelfth man cricketer, this Lysithea (the twelfth moon of Jupiter). Another time when the reluctant rebel instructs those of us safely inside the fence line.

#7

Erect of glassed carriage it dominates its alfresco setting. A statement beverage, announcing itself as quietly authoritative. Warning against a flimsy heart but offering steely security of purpose. Depending on the light, it’s a romantic painting by Toulouse-Lautrec, or a Shakespearean sonnet, but ultimately, it’s dynamic and organic like Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural wonder, Falling Water.

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Beer Review: The Rancid, Amoral Horror of Great Northern

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It was almost there and then it was gone.

The faintest suggestion of a promise of a possible future hint of tiny taste and then it disappeared.

Great Northern Original Lager is representative of all that is evil in late-period capitalism.

It was clearly developed around a table by some untreatably dreadful marketing types. Wearing dangerously pointy boots and strategic stubble, I’ll bet it was workshopped (these shameless ones can often be caught turning innocent nouns into vapid verbs) on butcher’s paper, or the slick e-equivalent.

Their website declares that the beer was, ‘brewed with an outdoor lifestyle in mind’ and I remain curious as to what this might look like given the beverage nightmare. ‘Outdoors’ might mean attack from a marauding numbat or vaguely agitated moth, and you could pelt one of these (unopened) beer bottles at them. If you didn’t hit them, at least they’d be terminally offended by your unspeakable taste in lager.

I took another reluctant sip and peered again at the (dis)information on my screen. With a bold face it stated that the ale was, ‘Light golden in colour with a fruity aroma, subtle bitterness and light palate.’ The following then occurred to me: Adelaide water, that universally maligned liquid, has superior aroma, bitterness and palate.

The bottle label also tells me that the Cairns brewery was established in 1927 which might’ve been fortunate for the then good folk of FNQ. Just play around with F and Q and it’s almost onomatopoeic of their attitude towards us, the customers. Happily, the Great Depression struck in 1929 and the local public may have found themselves unable to afford this depraved slop.

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My inattention then turned towards the Great Northern Super Crisp Lager which comes in at a non-descript 3.5%. 3.5 is widely acknowledged as the most bland of all numerals. Italian mathematician (and slashing middle-order bat) Fibonacci hated it.

This lager is also allegedly brewed with, ‘an outdoor lifestyle in mind.’ Is there something offensive to these people about drinking a beer indoors? In fact, I reckon this might be for the best. I’d go one step further, just in case someone you knew was walking past and saw what you were voluntarily doing, and pull down all the blinds.

I’m now thinking about the ‘Super Crisp’ qualifiers. I think this might be a fair claim, but only if you’re comparing this sorry muck to week-old lettuce. And given the price of lettuce I’d gobble that up as soon as you left the supermarket checkout, before a Leaf Vegetable Gang mugs you in the carpark.

Further investigation uncovers that our marketing funsters refer to this as the, ‘ultimate refreshment for the Great Northern conditions.’ Remember that scene in Shawshank Redemption when Andy Dufresne convinces Captain Hadley to buy beer for him and his co-workers? They then drink it on the roof and Andy is celebrated as a hero. If it had been Great Northern Super Crisp Lager that scene might’ve been unmatchably gruesome. Andy would never have peeled back the Raquel Welsh poster and dug his way out of prison. They’d have hoicked him off that roof.