Verbatim: Young’s Special London Ale. 500ml, $5, 6.4%, 14/5/06. Bottle conditioned, and it shows; gorgeous bubbles. Dark amber color, big round taste, malty + with hops for, well, England. All-around wonderfully beery. Brilliant, but definately not for everyone.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: Everybody ready? We’re about to fall off another cliff of Ridiculous Slackness…
Verbatim: Founder’s Organic Long Black. $5, 4.2%, 11/5/06, 500ml. Schwartzbier; black lager. Nice dark, with lingering bubbles. You can taste the coffee / choc of the malt. But it’s none too bitter, so accessible. I’d prefer more punch, of course. But very tasty.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: Huzzah, I’ve definitively broken free of the gold = lager / non-gold = non-lager nonsense of my earlier days. Black lagers are bloody marvelous things, great for bending peoples’ boundaries and for their easy refreshingness during colder weather. But what’s this “of course” about the preference for punchier flavours? I almost seem like I’m being blokey. Which is horrifying. Let me be quite plain; I do love a good mild beer, these days. Everything in its right place.
Verbatim: Emerson’s Weissbier. $5, 5%, 7/5/06, 500ml. Not too shabby a wheat at all. As you’d expect. Nicely cloudy, a little bit of fruitiness, but none too strong. So: everyone’s wheat beer, really.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: See what I mean by patchiness? A six-week gap, then a new entry the very next day. Weird that I seem so nonplussed and half-hearted in my praise, though; I was fairly sure I loved this stuff. Must have another…
Verbatim: Matson’s Strong Ale. $16/6, 7.5%, 6/5/2006. It’s a bock, and I’m at Fatty’s. Lots of people, lots of Jamie’s Italian Food. All good. Anyway, beer is very good. From Chch, very beery. Can’t quite taste the extra punch. Tanglefooty.
Afterthoughts, October 2010: Six months without a note? This thing is seriously patchy, in its early days. And things are about to get worse… (Meanwhile, the pen from this page is being seriously out-done by the pen from the page before, isn’t it?)
Matson’s have gone through quite a few reshuffles of their range and their branding (landing, currently, on a logo alarmingly reminiscent of that for the Malthouse…), but I do see they’re also fond of that line-blurring nonsense that DB are so fond of — calling a doppelbock a “strong ale”, and all.