{"id":4189,"date":"2012-06-15T00:45:44","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T12:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=4189"},"modified":"2012-06-16T17:51:09","modified_gmt":"2012-06-16T05:51:09","slug":"gabs-glass-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/06\/15\/gabs-glass-4\/","title":{"rendered":"GABS Glass #4: Moo Brew ‘Belgo’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Moo<\/a>
Moo Brew 'Belgo'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reading the Big Book while waiting for my Food Coma to subside<\/a> and my brain to ramp back up to some semblance of walking-and-talking ability, I noticed that I’d missed out a sessionable beer from what I thought<\/em>\u00a0was an exhaustive set of five<\/a>. Shamefully so, since it was from Moo Brew, who’ve made any number of worthy things \u2014 including beers that comprised the bulk of a huge<\/em>\u00a0shipment which made its way over to the Malthouse and gave me my as-yet Greatest Ever Kegtris Challenge.<\/p>\n

So<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 no better way to say Sorry than to buy a glass of beer, I suppose. ‘Belgo’ turned out to be a genuinely charming little bugger; deliciously quaffable at the magic four-point-five mark, and a perfectly endearing little mongrel1<\/sup> from mixed American Pale Ale and Lightly-Funky Belgian parentage. Hoppy-x<\/em>\u00a0is a still-ascendant trend, in new-beer-style terms, and most “hoppy Belgians” seem, to me, to’ve leapt to the higher ends of booze and flavour intensity \u2014 big fat Belgian meets overblown and brash American. But not this. This is just quietly doing its thing, doing it well, and not making a fuss; the contrast was truly welcome and appealing.<\/p>\n

\"Moo<\/a>
Moo Brew's non-Belgian Pale Ale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was so<\/em>\u00a0calmly done, in fact, that the skeptical circuits of my brain (of which there are many<\/em>) were fired up and beeping and buzzing. Together with the weirdly understated and underexplained tasting note in the Big Book \u2014 “Moo Brew simply asked us to let the punters be the judge of this…” \u2014 and the existence of their similarly-pitched (but non-Belgian) Pale Ale, this seemed to be one of those Happy Accidents with which the craft beer industry is not-infrequently blessed but rarely comfortable openly talking about (for no properly worthy reason).<\/p>\n

Rescued mistakes \u2014 of pitching the wrong yeast, or slightly buggering-up the recipe, or of unexpected brew-to-brew sequence effects \u2014 have given us Yeastie Boys ‘Red Rackham’ (essentially a Belgianised ‘Hud-a-wa”<\/a>), Invercargill ‘Men’n Skurrts’ (a slightly smoky scotch-ale-esque thing of pure joy inadvertently caused by the Rex Attitude<\/a> brewed before it on the same gear), Liberty Brewing’s ‘Alpha Dogg’ (a mildly mangled brew of ‘C!tra’), and West Coast’s Amber Ale (a contracted beer that wasn’t quite what the contract-ee intended) \u2014 purely to name my favourites and the ones that leap most-readily from my broken memory. This happens a lot<\/em>, and there is literally no point in dumping a drinkable-but-different beer entirely down the drain. Making beer is expensive<\/em>, and there are many<\/em> ways to non-fatally fuck it up.<\/p>\n

‘Belgo’ has<\/em>, post-GABS, joined the official Moo Brew range<\/a> and been given its own little piece of that utterly-gorgeous label art that its definitely-non-bastard siblings possess<\/a>, so I’m entirely happy to take Moo at their word that this is<\/em>\u00a0something entirely intentional and a stroke of genius rather than of luck. But fundamentally, I don’t mind. Whether ‘Belgo’ has its origins in one or not,2<\/sup> I like<\/em>\u00a0these Happy Accidents; craft beer is ripe for occasional doses of evolution-by-grand-mutation<\/a> rather than over-cautious design \u2014 I just wish we were more open in talking about them when they happen.<\/p>\n

Original Diary entry:<\/strong>\u00a0GABS Glass #4: Moo Brew ‘Belgo’ 13\/5\/12, with sincere apologies for missing it off Paddle #1. ($8, 4.5%, 380ml) Rich golden colour, surprisingly. Nice easy funk, great quaffing mongrel1<\/sup> ale. Weirdly understated tasting note in the book — late sub-in? Not what they planned? No idea, but the result is unarguably just kinda nice. After-work Belgian. Can’t shake the suspicion it’s a rescued mistake.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Moo<\/a>
Moo Brew 'Belgo', looming large under the Big Dome<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Moo<\/a>
The Big Book's tasting note for Moo Brew 'Belgo'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Diary<\/a>
Diary II entry # 217, GABS Glass #3: Moo Brew 'Belgo'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

1:<\/strong> It’s probably obvious, but perhaps worth underscoring,a<\/sup> that I only ever use the word “mongrel” in a positive way. I am very much a Cosmopolitan, in political-philosophy terms<\/a>,b<\/sup> and a big fan of anything that causes a happy breakdown in overly-defended boundaries.<\/span>
\n\u2014 a:<\/strong>\u00a0Hence the two footnote anchors pointing to the same clarification (above).<\/span>
\n\u2014 b:<\/strong>\u00a0That Wikipedia article is totally worth a read, not-least because it starts from an Apollo Program photograph of Planet Earth and winds up talking about Art Deco architecture and thereby nicely encapsulates just the kind of Mongrelism I’m talking about.<\/span>
\n2:<\/strong>\u00a0[Swooping in with a late-breaking footnote mere minutes later to add:] Through the magic of the Twitters, I’ve since heard from Moo Brew that this was indeed an completely-intentional piece of cleverness (in my praising terms, not their own) rather than the Happy Accident I wondered about at the time and above. I really should’ve asked<\/em>, in hindsight, but the idle ponderings were in my original Diary<\/em>\u00a0and I do like to keep these write-ups firmly in its spirit. (He says, partially attempting to excuse the journalistic failure, but also completely sincerely.)<\/span>
\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading the Big Book while waiting for my Food Coma to subside and my brain to ramp back up to some semblance of walking-and-talking ability, I noticed that I’d missed out a sessionable beer from what I thought\u00a0was an exhaustive set of five. Shamefully so, since it was from Moo Brew, who’ve made any number … Continue reading GABS Glass #4: Moo Brew ‘Belgo’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[26,6,15,12,48],"class_list":["post-4189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-belgian","tag-pages","tag-australia","tag-pale-ale","tag-2012-05"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":858,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/30\/white-rabbit-dark-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":4189,"position":0},"title":"White Rabbit ‘Dark Ale’","author":"Phil","date":"September 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I have to explain to people sometimes, at work, that if I compare something to Little Creatures Pale Ale, then I think that thing is a very good thing indeed. So I was curious to try something from White Rabbit, a new-ish operation outside of my beloved Melbourne, and sort\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"White Rabbit 'Dark Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/White-Rabbit-Dark-Ale-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4895,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/24\/rigor-mortis-skurrts\/","url_meta":{"origin":4189,"position":1},"title":"Dieu du Ciel! ‘Rigor Mortis’ Abt and Invercargill ‘Men’n Skurrts’","author":"Phil","date":"July 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Back when I was less\u00a0behind in my posting of Diary\u00a0entries \u2014 before I reached a full-calendar-year transcendental state of lateness \u2014 there were frequent strange moments of sitting in the sun writing about a moody winter beer, or vice versa.1\u00a0But not right now. Here I sit, drinking a rather-charming Fuller's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Dieu du Ciel! 'Rigor Mortis' Abt","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Dieu-du-Ciel-Rigor-Mortis-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":767,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/16\/brew-moon-hophead-ipa\/","url_meta":{"origin":4189,"position":2},"title":"Brew Moon ‘Hophead’ IPA","author":"Phil","date":"September 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm still kicking myself that me and my friends didn't know about the Brew Moon Cafe when we were on our South Island roadtrip a few years ago. They're in the charming-enough little town of Amberly, in North Canterbury, and we stopped there (we stop a lot, on our roadtrips)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Brew Moon 'Hophead' IPA","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Brew-Moon-Hophead-IPA-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4051,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/05\/20\/gabs-paddle-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":4189,"position":3},"title":"GABS Paddle #1: Everything \u2264 4.5% ABV","author":"Phil","date":"May 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"As I've mentioned a few times when talking about GABS, my Friday was very\u00a0sleep-deprived; I only had two hours sleep on Thursday night -- my nocturnal nature meshes not at all\u00a0with early-morning flights -- and wound up awake for some twenty-six hours. 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It's only very subtly hopped, leaving loads of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"BrewDog 'The Physics'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/BrewDog-The-Physics-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4189"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4370,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4189\/revisions\/4370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}