First, the Not So Awesome Brew…

Every month, a Not So Awesome Brew is featured as a baseline. After all, what is an Awesome Brew? Awesome compared to what? Compared to something like this:

Fosters’s Lager, 5.0% ABV

G’day mates!  Welcome to the Australian edition of Awesome Brews!  First up, is by far the most famous, most widely known Australian beer, Foster’s Lager!  Named after the brewery, Foster’s Group, this beer is so Australian, all the commercials claim Fosters IS the Australian word for beer!  I mean, look at it… it comes in a mammoth 750ml can, because everything is bigger in Australia… just like Texas apparently, and the can even has a kangaroo on it, which proves it’s from Australia, right?

Except… apparently not a single native Australian has ever heard of it.  I asked Cykhat, I asked Hato… nada.  I mean, what gives?  Are these guys real Australians?  Don’t they wrestle crocodiles and pythons out on walk-a-bout in the Outback and dodge boomerangs thrown by angry aborigines and pissed off koalas?  Don’t they run with the wild wallabies, platypuses and goannas chasing dingos with their fellow ex-convicts?  And why does this damned beer taste like a crappy version of Miller Genuine Draft?!

Oh…. I see…

So, has Foster’s been lying to America this whole time?!  Are they really Australian at all?!  Actually, yes.  Yes they are.  The problem is, the history of Fosters as a company is as convoluted as the royal bloodline in England.  I don’t pretend to understand all the splits, break-offs and mergers and buy-outs, but apparently, Fosters is the original parent company of Carlton & United Breweries, more reknown in Australia for Carlton Draught and Victoria Bitter which are brews every didgeridoo tooting Australian knows.  It all doesn’t matter so much though, because Fosters is apparently owned by SABMiller… ahh… following the chain of clues comes full circle.  Remember how I said Foster’s Lager tastes like Miller Genuine Draft?

Foster’s Lager is, like most crappy American mass-market brews, an AAL, or American Adjunct Lager – a low bitterness, thin malt, cheap mass-produced corn beer that typical Americans seem to guzzle by the gallon.  If there are real Australian ingredients used in Foster’s Lager, they’re totally lost in the crap macro-brewed process.  If you’ve tasted most any Miller product, you’ve tasted Fosters.  Like any of these swills, serve it ice cold or not at all with leftovers from Outback steakhouse and a copy of Paul Hogan’s Crocodile Dundee.

And Now, the Awesome Brews…

Cooper’s, Sparkling Ale, 5.8% ABV

Ok, so Foster’s was a bust.  Certainly, Australia, the REAL Australia has some damned decent brews.  After all, while there’s a lot of fun mythology about Australia in the world, the Aussie’s ability to drink and brew is legendary (ok, maybe that’s not entirely true either).  This brings us to Cooper’s which is pretty legit in the eyes of native Australians, so for the first of the Awesome Brews, I bring you Cooper’s Sparkling Ale.

Like fosters, the bottle has a kangaroo on it.  No additives or preservatives are included which is always a good thing.  Pouring it, it’s like someone shredded a cork in my glass.  I got a zillion floaty things in my beer, that I wasn’t sure were supposed to be there.  After my wife took the feature shot and handed the glass back to me without daring to take her reward sip, I stared at the floaty things in my beer and then at some point decided to read the side of the bottle which said that INDEED, the sediment WAS supposed to be there and was the result of centuries old top-fermentation and natural bottle conditioning.  Relieved and impressed the Aussies were too hardcore to let a little sediment ruin their mood for cold brew, I was delighted to find despite it’s awful appearance, it was too fine to lend any texture to the taste, and the beer was as smooth as any other good light ale.

Cooper’s Sparkling Ale has almost a fruity taste, but nowhere near that of a fruit beer.  It still tastes very much like a typical lager or even an Irish red.  It’s smooth and a little plain, but this makes it a refreshing quick drinker.  Coming from a country where the majority of the population believes the only quick drinking beer is some godawful American Adjunct Lager, this beer a refreshing boomerang to the head and proves you can have a flavorful, quick-drinking beer without being cheap, flavorless piss water.  The beer looks a lot more complex than it is, but all-in-all, it’s a great beer, and at only $1.50 a bottle, it’s hard to go wrong.   Serve cold with a dinner of Aussie meat pies and marinated kangaroo kababs (real Aussie food for real Aussie beer) and a copy of Mad Max: Fury Road.

Epic Brewing Company’s Epic Lager, 5.0% ABV

Epic Lager isn’t from Australia, it’s from Australia’s bastard kid brother, New Zealand – a land mass who several million years ago told Australia “I’ve had enough of all your deadly weird-ass animals, I’m leaving…” and floated off into the rising sun.  Now, we actually have a member or two in Oddysee from the magical land of hobbits and ringwraiths (you know who you are), so since we were exploring brew from that quadrant of the globe, I felt it best to see what they’re actually drinking.

Epic Brewing Company is one of New Zealand’s premier breweries, and are typically more renown for their very hoppy beers such as their IPA and Hop Zombie.  They believe that beer should have flavor, and that flavor shouldn’t come in the form of a random goblin attack, it should come in the form of a full-on onslaught of hell-borne Uruk-hai straight from the burning gates of Mordor.  So it’s interesting to see how they handle a lager; a type of beer, which by definition is typically supposed to be light on color and flavor.  Epic Lager pours light with a slightly frothy head.  Its taste is a lot hoppier than your typical pale lager, more typical of a Pilsner, which (surprise) is just the German name for a hoppy lager.  The taste also has a hint of citrus which seems to cut the extra hoppiness and smooth out the beer making it a fast drinker.

I’m glad I found this Awesome Brew by total happenstance in the 11th hour – from literally about as far away as you can get from my home without leaving the surface of this planet.  It is definitely one of the more Epic lagers I’ve ever drunk and if you find them in your neck of the woods, you won’t be disappointed. The kiwis certainly also know how to brew awesomeness.  Serve ice cold with a Marmite and chip sammie and a copy of the full, unabridged, extended length Lord of the Ring trilogy (about as long as my flight to New Zealand).

Some of the pictures taken for Awesome Brews were done by Diane Schuler of Schuler Photography