Greetings! If you didn’t read part one, please feel free to catch up here: Or don’t! Sometimes you can enjoy just the second half of the story. Anyway, let’s dive straight back into the review of 2023’s Canvent Calendar with…
Wednesday, December 13th – Deeds Brewing Sticky Toff Sticky Toffee Pastry Stout 6%
Smells immediately like butterscotch upon cracking the can (usually not such a good sign) and pours a rich chocolate black with a velvety brown head. Smells like crème brulee. Not overly viscous and oily, tasting like burnt caramel, toffee, chocolate and espresso at the back. There are also some lush vanilla cream notes in there. It is very sweet, but that is kept in balance by the bitterness of the roasted malt, very much bringing to mind a caramel taken right to the edge of burning. It’s delicious. I imagine that a pint may weigh heavy by the end of the glass, but I am about halfway through this can and still enjoying every little bit. It is like a commercial chocolate bar – perhaps a little on the side of too sweet, but kind of perfectly balanced. I’m impressed – this sticky toffee beer (though giving me more of a mocha crème brulee vibe) is one of my favourites so far. Neither too thin nor too thick, it does exactly what it says on the tin and gives you your dessert and nightcap in one. A good brew to share, or just to linger over yourself into the evening.
TL;DR: Delicious mocha crème brulee tasting stout, sweet without being too sweet, delicious and on theme. Another contender for favourite.
Bonus chocolate: Milk chocolate café latte. A once again stonkingly smooth milk and coffee crème in a delicate milk chocolate shell. A chocolate could perhaps not be better paired with a beer – it highlights the sweetness, and underlines those espresso notes, the sweetness of the caramel entwining with the flavours of the coffee, the two working in shockingly close harmony. This may be the most perfect food pairing I have yet experienced. 5 stars.
Thursday, December 14th – Hemingway’s Brewery Tropicool Cold IPA 5.4%
The IPA family representation just keeps on coming with another not-quite-classic IPA. Clear as a lager but with a greater amber colour saturation and a proper little fluffy white head. Smells like apricots and beer with a little bit of white vinousness. Tastes like a crisp, biscuity lager with a light and fruity top note, a delicate floral and tropical mid, and a bready, pleasantly bitter afterpalate, a little like marmite on brown bread. An inoffensive, eminently smashable sessionable beer, but also one that I won’t remember after the can has faded away, it just lacks anything special to distinguish it from better lagers or better IPAs. It isn’t quite crisp and light enough to chase off its lager competitors, nor rich and full-bodied enough to beat off its IPA brethren. Don’t get me wrong, someone brings a sixer of these to the bbq, you’re not going to kick them out. But neither will you fall in love, which, at the end of the day, is the ardent desire that comes of trying new things, neh? Another plain beer win but Christmas inventiveness fail.
TL;DR: A solid beer – no negatives, but ultimately quite middle of the road. Not as clean as a lager, not as dense as an IPA, very sessionable.
Bonus chocolate: Milk chocolate speculoos crumb. We’ve had this one before but it holds up as delicious. The Christmas spice and caramel flavours of speculoos, the hazelnut praline and the fudgy ganache all hang together very nicely. It fits right into this beer too – a sip turns the beer into some kind of nicely spiced carrot cake, maybe one of those dense and chewy gingerbreads. More great synchronicity from this unwitting collab.
Friday, December 15th – Bridge Road Brewers Double Big Red Fat Man Festive Red DIPA 8.1%
Pours a deep and festive ruddy amber, like over-steeped Orange Pekoe tea, slightly muzzy with an off-white, almost light tan head. Smells dank and tropical, more old school than new when it comes to a big IPA, citrus and pine. Tastes like lightly toffeed fruit – strawberries? Melon? – with a big, bitter, grapefruit-pithy finish. Though it has that slightly candied flavour – presumably from crystal malt – and though it looks like a slightly muddy pint of some sort of British bitter or mild*, it really plays like a big, dank, bitter old school WC or DIPA, just like its nose suggested. It has strong malt bones, drily biscuity and sweet on which to hang a frankly powerfully floral hop bouquet that offers an even more bitter finish than you’d imagine, through which is threaded a big boozy kick. A bit too big to call sessionable, in both flavour and booze, it is still a tight and delightful drop. I love a *big* IPA that doesn’t feel like work.
*Or Yarra water
TL;DR: Delicious. Big flowers, rich malt and fruit, solid bitterness – it’s a red version of old-school and a treat for the lover of the big IPA.
Bonus chocolate: A revisit to the milk chocolate almond praline. The Nutella vibe tastes a little more peanut-buttery than previously noted and it’s transmuted to a sort of dry, roasty matcha flavour, partly due to that almond-shaped button of white chocolate and the touch of salt. The beer changes with the chocolate too, losing much of its sweetness, and generally feeling a little more muted. This one has its hop edge blunted by the truffle rather than interestingly enhanced, and while it is certainly no chore to consume together, it lacks the alchemy of prior pairings.
Saturday, December 16th – Slow Lane Brewing Double Secret Doppelsticke Altbier 8.5%
Pours a deep, caramel colour like burnished copper with a thick and fluffy tan head. Smells like spices and raisins and very much like banana bread. Tastes like if you took a toasted, brown-bread vegemite sandwich and put it in a bag with an overripe banana for a while and ate that while you smashed a decent lager. In a good way, of course. Big, biscuity and bready malts with fruity yeast notes, some sweetness and a light burn of booze running through the whole thing like electricity. Strong and rich like an ale, quite woolly and with just a little floral hint of berries and great lashings of banana, maybe even a little apricot jam in there with a big, lush mouthfeel and a crisp, bitter lager finish. Just a touch of coffee in there also, and a hint of anise at the end. Double secret old beer by name, double secret old beer by nature. Though they aren’t strictly my kind of thing, if you like these Euro styles of beer, it’s certainly worth giving this a try as it echoes all those grand traditions of German and Belgian brewing.
TL;DR: A strong, fluffy sort of traditional European beer, halfway between lager and ale with plenty of spice, banana and bready notes.
Bonus chocolate: Eaten later and thus unpaired, the return of the dark chocolate salted caramel. Fudgy and delicious, with an almost coconutty note. If you’ve been alive over the past ten years, I don’t need to describe salted caramel to you. Sweetness from the caramel, bitterness from the dark chocolate and salt combine to create the perfect storm. Goes very well with a black coffee. No notes.
Sunday, December 17th – Little Bang Schwang Inverter Raspberry Citrus Super Sour 5.5%
Pours a subdued fuchsia colour with a slightly off-white foam that has no desire to stick around. I was expecting lurid pink from the can, but it looks like a regular beer aged on berries – a little muddy, a little pink-in-orange. Smells like lemon peel and raspberries. Tastes delightful. Yes, very tart, but not repellently so. It tastes very fresh, spritzy and acidic. The obvious flavours are lemon and raspberry, but it is a very clean sour with very little yeastiness, funk or vinegar. There is a sweetness and a floral note that make this taste a little like very old-fashioned lollies. There is little to no booze heat, and the whole thing is like drinking a strong mixture of homemade raspberry lemonade in soda. Very refreshing, if puckeringly citric. There is a lingering… not bitterness, but something that runs down your tongue and into the back of the throat that resembles bitterness. Probably just the acid, peeling away the skin of your tongue. It does become just slightly medicinal if you allow it to flatten out and warm up, kinda like a cough-syrup slurpee. If you don’t like challengingly acidic beers, this might not be for you, but it is delightfully revivifying on a summer’s day.
TL;DR: Intense, but not as much as expected, clean, very tart and zingy – perfect for refreshing you on a hot and sunny day.
Bonus chocolate: Rum and raisin again. Still delightful, still super smooth, but how does it react with the beer? Interestingly, it once again makes that roasted matcha and white chocolate flavour as a few of the previous ones did. It mutes the sharpness of the beer significantly, but allows the citrus and raspberry tartness to linger, though it does transmute the lemon into more of a sweet orange sort of a flavour. Not the strongest pairing in terms of complementary flavours, but delicious nonetheless.
Monday, December 18th – Love Shack Sparkling Ale 5.8%
Wonderfully retro can design, looks like it could have been in fridges back in the 70’s and 80’s. I also love the ChatGPT-hallucination-esque word-salad of meaningless advertising verbiage as the can invites you to “Experience the experience”. Pours like a true-blue, dinky-di, full-grown Aussie beer. I regret not having had this at twenty to eight in the f___en morning. Nice and clear, just barely opaque with a large rough-bubbled head. I’m afraid my olfactory senses have deserted me some and all I can really detect is a sort of classic beer smell. Tastes familiar – sort of like if you had a slightly cleaner, slightly more subtle version of a Coopers. It’s crisp and fresh, roughly carbonated for that maximum refreshment. It’s a little sweet, a little lagery, with a little funk and some yeasty esters. It finishes with a subtle – but definite – bitterness. If love shack don’t add this to their lineup, they are probably missing a trick – this’d probably sell pretty well. Has an aftertaste that is classic lager, though the fore holds a little more of the woolly, yeasty interestingness. Would drink again.
TL;DR: Tastes like a lot of the classic beers you may have enjoyed as a youth – Victoria or Melbourne Bitter, Coopers sparkling, but with the rough edges ironed out. Crisp and scouringly fizzy with enough yeast and hop to make it a little more interesting. Commercially viable, I reckon.
Bonus chocolate: Caramelised coconut in white chocolate. Something about the shape of this one just makes me want to put the whole thing in my mouth. The coconut is pleasantly grainy and softly sandy, like old school coconut delight. The flavours are somewhere in the peanut butter/Nutella sort of range, but with a toasty – duh – coconut edge. The white chocolate adds much sweetness, and when taken together with the beer, it really brings out some of the sweetness and fruitiness that you can often only barely detect around the edges in a lager style brew. Not my favourite choccy – it’s white chocolate, how could it be? – but tasty nonetheless, and did wonderful things together with the beer.
Tuesday, December 19th – Sure Brewing Children of the Sun Cali Pale Ale 5.2%
I don’t know this brewery, but it feels like a very Byron Bay sort of an offering. Sets up an expectation for a peachy, fuzzy, hoppy, bitter brew, but also reminds me of fashion when I was 10 years old. Pours pale amber and opaque, with a large bubbled white head. Smells dank. Smells like almost straight hop pellets. Big nose of tropicals with a slight onioniness (yep, there’s the mosaic). Tastes like straight hops too. Pleasantly crispy and bitter finish but has some nice tropical fruit in there. This has that big but crisp and quaffable, thirst-quenching sort of vibe that an IPA used to go for, but in this constant game of escalation, seems to only rank as a west coast/California Pale now. Has that resinous quality, feels like a beer you want to both just smash but also linger over a little and try to tease out the details of. Perhaps a touch much mosaic – the allium characteristic is a little punchier than the stonefruit or citrus, but it has a lot of those lovely characteristics of a hoppy pale or an IPA – dank and bitter, resinous but fresh, interesting but sessionable. It is another one that I will probably forget among the throng – there’s nothing that puts this outside the usual experience of a hoppy pale or XPA or light IPA or really sets this apart from its contemporaries. Which might seem like a harsh judgement for a beer I enjoyed and would drink again, but like previous entries, it just lacks any sort of characteristic that makes it special or memorable, either as a Christmas offering or even just as a brew. It’s far from the worst expression of this stripe of thing that I’ve ever had, but also not the best. I enjoy it, but I’d drink other things first.
TL;DR: Very competent brew. Would once probably have ranked as an IPA – hoppy, fresh, crisp yet fruity. Very drinkable but also sits right in the middle of the spectrum. Enjoyed while drinking, but knew I’d ultimately forget it.
Bonus chocolate: eaten later and as such unpaired. Whipped caramel mousse. Texturally delightful with an old-fashioned swirly shape, and the caramel in the milk chocolate ganache is sweet and works well with the mild milk chocolate. Not complex, but greatly enjoyable. Another winner.
Wednesday, December 20th – Pikes Beer Co. Merry Cherry Bourbon Barrel Aged Cherry Sour 9.2%
I’m always a little wary of a sour with a super high ABV. I don’t know why, precisely, they just tend to not be great. The best and most complex, delicious sours have bacteria eat half their fermentable sugars over years and tend not to be all that boozy. Or the best young ones are fresh and light. So big and fuckin’ boozy drops… well, jury’s out. Anyway, it pours out pale fuchsia but somehow gathers in the glass with a deep crimson hue to the amber; coppery, less vibrant than I assumed. It tastes boozy and medicinal, like some kind of cheap wine. There’s honey and spice, liquorice and something like lemon peel, and the effect is like one of those sparkling red wines that I don’t love. It does taste like cherry, and raspberry in there also a bit. The sour mash bourbon notes are strong also, but it’s much more butyric Jim Beam than smooth and luscious top shelf stuff. Big forepalate flavours, lingering afterpalate, but kind of a hole in the middle. It kinda tastes like hobo grade fortified red wine, a little sweetness, a little sourness, some vomit, and Jaegermeisteresque spices. You may be able to tell that I don’t love this one. Bloody mindedness would have me finish it, but, y’know. Not order another one.
TL;DR: Just… not great. There is cherry. And there is sour, and there is bourbon, but not in any sort of enjoyable configuration.
Bonus chocolate: Eaten later and thus unpaired. Mango and vanilla wrapped in dark chocolate. Tastes oddly alcoholic – I don’t know if it is made with a liqueur, or if the vanilla bean and the bitter dark chocolate combine to create a sort of sourness that echoes booze. I can’t say that I love this – it seems to have all the lesser elements of its being, the mango in it feels bruised, the vanilla is overpowering, the dark chocolate too bitter. For all that, it isn’t bad, per se. Just less delightful than all the others thus far.
Thursday, December 21st Moondog Cantales Chocolate and Caramel Stout 8%
Well, obviously I love this can. It promises a lot, but then, that is Moondog’s MO. Pours deep, dark brown, with a nice chocolatey head. The smell that comes from the can as it pours is – though slightly artificial – pure caramel. With a little more investigation, there is also a mocha aroma in amongst all the burnt toffee sweetness. Thick and velvety, viscous and not as cloying as you’d expect on the first sip. Has an artificial sweetness and a very bitter back to it, without a tonne of flavour of chocolate or caramel. Like, there is a kandi sort of sweetness, and a touch of choccy but not a lot else. I wonder if I’m getting a cold, because it feels unlikely that this beer has neither caramel nor chocolate flavours at the fore. Like, they’re there, but… Additional to this, the bitterness is unpleasantly acrid and lingers like a fart in an elevator. The booze is unbalanced and hot. I am concerned that I maybe have COVID, because I do have a little tickle in my throat and I can taste surprisingly little of what I feel like I’m supposed to in this beer. Much less anything notably pleasant. I mean, I wouldn’t resent a friend for getting me a pint of this. Well, not much. Probably a little.
TL;DR: Typical Moondog brew – promises a lot, gets me all excited for it, delivers very little.
Bonus chocolate: Mandarin and yuzu revisit. Dark chocolate wrapped around white chocolate ganache with citrus puree. I’ve already stated that it is like an elegant, dialled up version of something like the orange chocolate from a snack block, but let’s see how it goes with this beer.
It’s so good. This is absolutely a chocolate for me. The smoothness of the centre is shockingly luscious, different bites giving different fruits, and the sharpness and deliciousness of that citrus bounce of that bitter, wonderful dark chocolate. The beer actually tastes excellent after a bite of this – the chocolate and the citrus really turn the meh brew into something delightful, like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange Braü. This chocolate saves this beer. Full marks.
Friday, December 22nd – Reckless Brewing Cherry Cola IPA 6%
Pours on the ruby side of amber with no head to speak of. Smells agrodolce, sweet and sour, and yes, like a cherry cola. Sits somewhere between all of its components: lightly flavoured cherry, not too sour, not too sweet, not too IPA-y, and without a great deal of fizz. It does have a slightly medicinal quality, but that too is not overly strong. Leaves a dryness on the tongue at the back. The effect it is ultimately of something diminished – a version of something, a melted icypole or an overlong opened bottle, or a glass of something where the ice-cubes have melted in. Something muted. Ultimately, very drinkable, but… eh.
TL;DR: It’s fine. It has flavours. I sort of enjoyed it, sort of didn’t. And honestly, I’d probably drink it again. Just a bit of a meh.
Bonus chocolate: Strawberry selene crème. More subtle than, say, Snack or Quality Street versions, more of a chocolate crème with strawberry flavour rather than a strawberry crème inside a chocolate. Smooth and flowing, this is a sweet but elegant version of a childhood favourite. However, it makes the beer sharper and more medicinal, much more bitter and just a bit… unpleasant. Not a great pairing, but great on its own.
Saturday, December 23rd – Kicks Brewing Bird of Prey West Coast Double IPA 8.5%
Pours like an IPA – I’ve described this enough times over this canvent. It’s largely clear, amber, with a fluffy white head. The aroma overflows the can as it pours, that of dank tropicals and citrus. Tastes wonderful. Dankly bitter and biscuity back behind some delightful fruitiness – all the favourites, orange and grapefruit, passionfruit and papaya, with a very strongly bitter pithy finish. It’s not for amateurs – it is big on its bitterness, the booze heat hums throughout, but the fruit and flowers up the front meld into and sit well with the rich, very lightly sweet malt that turns into that delightfully resinous chinotto/bitter orange that builds and lengthens. There is something like spice or pepperiness at the end of the aroma/flavour/bitterness arc. It feels like it is maybe the slightest bit out of balance, I can’t quite tell. I know I like it, and perhaps I’ve just become so used to these dank tropical fruit flavours in all the hazies and NEIPA’s that have gone before this one. This one has all the juiciness of a hazy but it leans very firmly and exclusively into the resin and pine and pith of the classic West Coast IPA.
TL;DR: Classic look, aroma and flavour of a clean but B-I-G IPA, but the finishing bitterness is dialled upwards – potentially to the point of imbalance. I could drink this again and again.
Bonus chocolate: Milk chocolate hazelnut cluster revisit. Smooth milk chocolate, crunchy roasted hazelnuts and shards of crisp toffee. Delicious. But how does it go with the beer? The fruitiness and the milk chocolate go quite well together, the roasty nature of the hazelnuts clashes somewhat though, turning the beer savoury. Interestingly, it mollifies the bitterness right out. Not the greatest pairing, but two delicious things together nonetheless.
December 24th – Hawkers Bourbon Barrel Aged Black Barleywine 11.2%
Rad ‘Ghost of Christmas Future’ can, really helped me get into the spirit* of watching A Muppet’s Christmas Carol later that night. Smells like dried fruit and spices as well as gingerbread, ginger snap or Anzac biscuits. Also a roasty coffee note. Who doesn’t want to drink something that has already put them in mind of coffee and biscuits? It tastes surprisingly clean for such a big and complex beer that has spent time on oak. Lashings of that bourbon vanilla characteristic, oaky dryness and something like cola, but I’m not sure if I just imagined that because it looks so much like the stuff. It has quite a sweet dried fruit characteristic, like port, but it isn’t so cloying what with the complexity of flavour, the malt roastiness and oak barrel dryness that seems to wick away the sweetness. Rich mouthfeel and a very full, but also curiously light body. There is an element of chocolate in there, and the bourbon really comes through as it opens up, leaving a brew that is big and very present, but with a flavour and ABV that isn’t too much. Good final drop for this years Canvent.
*Ha! Geddit?
TL;DR: Someone should have been doing black barleywine for years. All the good stuff – port, spice, raisins, bourbon vanilla, mellowness, sweetness and richness, but with a little more roastiness and chocolate to balance it all out. Excellent beer.
Bonus chocolate: The return of milk chocolate salted caramel. I don’t need to tell you what this is like. Its delicious. Its sweet and salty and rich and smooth – the caramel lacks the graininess of the dark chocolate ones. I think they may have over or undercooked that last batch, if this is how it was supposed to be. Tastes like a better version of Mates, if you’re old enough, or Fantales, if you’re old enough, or like every dessert since about 2006 if you aren’t. Delicious, and a great accompaniment to an afternoon espresso.
Bonus beer: Monday, December 25th – Two Metres Tall Sour Cherry and Wild Sloe Ale – 6%
Having opted for the magnum add-on this year, this brew pours a ruddy plum colour with no head. Smells a little like all the negative stereotypes of a wild ale, a bit butyric and a strong bret funk. Which, in the vernacular, might be a little vomity, a little farty. Additional to this, there is a strong sour note, vinegar and red fruits coming from the sour cherry and the sloe which manifests in an intense acidity. Tastes oddly like cheese and onions. To be more specific, it has some strong saline notes which lend to both of those characteristics: the bret funk takes that saline and really makes it taste like blue cheese, while that vinegar note takes it up and gives pickled onion. Unfortunately, there is also an acetone kind of quality of which I’m afraid I just can’t say anything positive. It is a very big brew – literally and figuratively, and I’m afraid it just doesn’t work for me. Perhaps this would benefit from being laid down for a year or two but wasn’t quite up to snuff for drinking this time around. It was a perfume and medicine concoction of jangling discordance.
TL;DR: Blue cheese, pickled onions, vinegar, sour fruit, perfume, medicine, nail polish, farts and vomit. Not quite as bad as that sounds, but yeah. Not great, alas.
Bonus chocolate: Christmas pudding praline. As an added bonus, this one comes with a free hot chocolate from the store if you present its little card, which is a nice little treat for Christmas. Dark chocolate around spiced ganache. Delicious. Tastes like a mouthful of pudding and mince tarts and Christmas cake, but impossibly smooth and rich and unctuous. A solid way to round out the festive season. I wish I had been able to pair this with the black barleywine, I feel like it would have been a stupendous combination.
Props to Deeds, Little Bang, Bridge Road, Love Shack and Hawkers for their contributions. Through their attempts to do something a little different, or in at least one case, something very familiar done very well, they really contributed to the enjoyment of the second half of this Canvent for me. On the other hand, the only admonishments I’d hand out would be to Pikes and Moondog. There’s always next year!.
So, final thoughts. Would I recommend this to everyone? In a word: absolutely. Yes. No doubt. Not every beer in this box sparked joy, even though most of them did. Not every beer showed me something new, though some of them certainly did. I don’t think I have a new favourite brewery as a result of it.
But even so, the whole experience was wonderful. It caused me to carve out a space just for me each day, a place where I could exercise mindfulness, presence and focus. It gave me something fun and satisfying to do each day and sparked much conversation with my friends, or my partner with whom I shared the experience each evening. I saw some of them learn about breweries that they have already started to patronise, and I have been inspired to seek out some offerings from others. I have learned of new breweries to keep an eye on. I drank some truly delicious beers and ate some exquisite chocolates. The whole experience is one of sheer, unadulterated joy, even when the chocolate is not my favourite, or the beer is, frankly, bad. Even that gives me something to chat about, something to write about. This is for everyone, and I recommend it as such.
Though it was an undertaking; it seems like it would be easy to smash a beer and a chocolate every day. Not so. This was some hedonistic excess. But what the hell. ‘Tis the season. Hope you had a merry Christmas and are having a happy new year!
Exit Pursued by a Beer 