Mate!

It's post two from the 2022 Borefts Beer Festival and today's breweries are all from the English-speaking world, inasmuch as it was represented. There was just one visitor from the UK, namely Manchester's Marble. I try to have at least one beer from each brewery, and my Marble was their Amontillado Barley Wine. And it was one of the best beers I had all weekend. 12.4% ABV, it's copper coloured and really shows off the sherry. There's a warming Christmas pudding effect, full of nuts and brandy with a strongly vinous character, though surprisingly light-bodied, something which only adds to the sherry impression. As such it's a little at risk of losing sight of its beeriness, but is too enjoyable for that to be a worry.

Everything else I have for you today is Australian. We get very little by way of Aussie beer in these latitudes, and the two breweries representing Down Under looked to be doing particularly interesting things. Let's get stuck in.

First up is Good Land in Traralgon, western Victoria. Double Pastel Neon Sour sounded like the sort of thing lots of other breweries make, but unlike lots of other beers with similar names it's not a sticky, cloying mess. Instead, from this dark pink number, I got clean and distinct notes of Parma Violets and cherry-lips candy. It's all rather jolly, even if it's not even slightly sour. My only real complaint is that it's overclocked: I'm sure it's possible to make something very like this at much less than its 7% ABV.

They also had Heaven, a 10.2% ABV bourbon barrel-aged Belgian-style stout. It's a bit of a dual-aspect job, smooth and creamy while also showing a hard and aggressive bitterness. In the aroma you get an invigorating shot of espresso and also a tang of liquorice. Lots of oaky vanilla gives it something in common with modern dessertish imperial pastry stouts, but at heart it's much more traditional and hard-edged. The two sides don't gel together very well and I found it tough going as a result.

It's out with the Brettanomyces next, for 10,000 Miles, a golden beer of indeterminate style though we are informed that all the fermentation was with Brett. It smells perfumey, of lavender and bergamot, which is a good start, but it turns acrid quite quickly. In the foretaste there's some lovely stonefruit and farmyard funk before it switches to become extremely dry, the Brett having gobbled all the sugar and left little of interest behind. This needs to be softened to become more palateable. Some actual fruit or time in a wine barrel might help.

Finally, a chocolate vanilla stout, 5.6% ABV, called Man on the Moon. I did not have a good time with it, beginning with the super-sweet aroma, reminding me of white chocolate in particular. The flavour is more caramel than chocolate, sticky, with an acrid throat-burn in the finish. This beer promises fun but delivers only cruelty.

Good Land, mediocre beers.

Boatrocker is also from Victoria but a more urban part, on the edge of Melbourne. I was extremely impressed by their Plum Lord, badged innocently as a "plum wild ale" but very convincingly lambic-like. There's sufficient fruit to deliver on the promise of the name, and it's a purple emulsion in appearance, but there's also an intense oak and mineral sour spicing, just like you'd find in a quality fruited gueze. It's a superb melding of the sweet and sour elements into a mature and well-integrated 6.5% ABV whole. And from Australia!

I chanced one other from them later: the grape ale called Demi-Jaune. Australia has the grapes so why not do grape ale? It's a hefty 8.2% ABV and smells like a sticky dessert wine with a squirt of vinegar in it. The flavour begins with a Prosecco-like sweetness and fizz, before introducing a luscious peach and plum effect which I'm assuming is Brettanomyces at work, rather than the grapes. Overall it's bright, spritzy and cleansing, ideally suited to a 75cl bottle but a glass from the Lindr tap was no hardship.

So I probably should have spent more time with Boatrocker. Oh well. Tomorrow I'll pick off another couple of countries from the festival line-up.