Beer - #166 - Mountain Goat - Fancy Pants Amber Ale

Mountain Goat - Rare Breed - in this case the Fancy Pants Amber Ale.m a beer from 'strayer. Brewed by Mountain Goat Beer in the unsurprising style of an Amber Ale and that's in Richmond, Victoria, Australia, (West Island of NZ)

Right, firstly this is an Aussie Beer. Apart from Fosters, XXXX, VB, Carlton and Swan this is the first time I had an Aussie Beer, when not in Australia.

We found some fresh hop flowers down the back of the couch the other day (in their little protective foil bags so they really were fresh), and we all said as one: “Fancy Pants.” Could we do it again? Easy said, only one way to find out. Long story short, its back: Fancy Pants Amber Ale. Stupid name, serious beer. We used Galaxy Flowers through our hop-back to give a full-on tropical fruit/spicey aroma. On top of alot of traditional ale malt we threw a liberal dose of crystal malt, a little wheat and fermented her warm with an American Ale yeast. It’s deep copper/amber with a full, rocky head. 5.2% alc/vol, 35 BU, served in the bar in our fanciest glass.

So 640ml bottle - in itself an odd size, 2.5 standard drink units at 5.3%ABV and with 35IBU this is a low bitter beer. This is part of their "Rare Breed" beers, the one-offs or the as the season takes their fancy.  It appealed because it's label which is far to detailed and in far to small a font to read :-), and because I'm a sucker for packaging.

The opening is promising of a hopiness that made me smile. Dark amber pour and well decent creamy fluffy head, the hopiness aroma in abundance. And it tastes ok. The low bitterness ins't too worried by the malt sweetness that you have.  There's a bunch of floral notes too, all very complimentary.

This is fair dinkum ok. If anything there is too much floral, but the hops and the malts are well balanced and that makes it ok by me.  It's a very good bar beer.

Is it a spectacular beer? Not really. But it rings my bell (at least tonight ) The pdubyah-o-meter says 8.5 but wants to be 9, making it a good evening in my house. I hate to say it but if you were drinking this out you'd be easily persuaded to have another and one for the road, or two. A decent and happy session beer.

You know that thing where if you like Amber Ale and try this and don't like it, I'd probably give you your money back, that. Of it's kind and of this beer it's pretty good.

It's annoying both of high quality, and drinkability. It's a shame that this is a limited edition, I'm sure there is a reason for that that I don't have the inclination to follow.

If I was, in some parallel universe, brewing commercial quantities of beer, that would be a great strategy, but you could only do it from a solid base. Like many commercial craft beers Goat seems to be based around a micro-brewery pub. I'm glad they do enough to get a wider audience. at least to NZ.

A fantastic Aussie beer.And there I was thinking something else. Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi! Oi! Oi!  'nuff said.