Milk Bar Series – Tropicana
Imperial Cream Sour
Deeds Brewing
Here’s what the Encyclopedia Galactica has to say about beer: it says that beer is a simple fizzy drink made from malt, hops, water and yeast and also notes its intoxicating effects on certain carbon based life forms,
The Deeds’ Guide to Brewing also mentions beer. It says beer can be any damn thing it pleases.
It says beer can be made to taste like a subjective childhood memory of the classic Aussie milkbar. That it pours cloudy – a turbid, golden colour with a rapidly subsiding white head. It also mentions that it smells like a drink from Hawaii – coconut, pineapple, spices. It should be noted that the light bubble lends to the creamy mouthfeel already present from the lactose and vanilla.
And, as pungently it smells like the tropics, so too does it taste – coconutty, pineapple juicy, only very slightly sour and quite sweet. It must be noted that it lacks the zestiness of some of the pina colada brews that have been going around, but neither is it as overly cloying as they are given to being.
But how – you may ask – does it taste like a milkbar? Well, for starters, it tastes like Allens pineapple lollies, and though you may have to cast your memory a fair distance back to find those in the 1 cent lolly drawers of the milkbar, they were certainly there. Also, the vanilla and the sweetness with the fizz give it a creamy soda characteristic, albeit a, yes, pina colada creamy soda.
It’s almost not sour at all. Just, juuuuuust sour enough to negate the sweetness – quite moreish really. Its really pineappley, and coconutty, and vanilla-y, but of the artificial variety. And this mish-mash of characteristics – creamy, sour, sweet – means that it almost negates those characteristics of itself – it doesn’t present too sour, nor too sweet, nor too creamy.
The effect this evokes is of school age kids, pooling their resources to buy 2 glass bottles of Tarax – one Sunshine Pine and one of Creamy Soda, and splitting the drink evenly into two glasses, all the while shovelling coconut ice and pineapple lollies into sticky gobs.
Its not bad, not great. Its balanced, but almost to the point of… pointlessness. Almost. It will certainly slake a thirst, and scratch an itch, but it is hardly worth sacrificing a hyperspatial express route for. Far better to blow the whole planet to smithereens instead – musn’t stand in the way of progress.
Exit Pursued by a Beer 