Beer - #653 - Sawmill - IIPA

Mystery beer, mystery mix, mystery number, and mystery guest

a bit of nonsense here from the brewers notes

A keg only beer from the FYO station this works out to  285 calories a serve size, being 9.5% ABV and  70 IBU things, this would make it 7.5 standard drink units

Brewed by Sawmill Brewing Company in the style Imperial IPA and they are in Leigh, New Zealand

Usually I'd have a bit of nonsense here from the brewers notes or cribbed from other sources, but guess what?, nothing on the webs, nothing on the websites, nothing on the twitter, the instagram and all the other places I thought of looking and some I didn't. 

So I'm flying blind as it were, and then what follows is usually a load of nonsense plucked from the pretty word ensemble to make a pretty sentence. Seriously.... 

... what could possibly go wrong?

Beer - #648 - Sawmill - Coffee Porter

A long time between drinks for me and this brewer, but they appear to be quite strong at the moment, and I haven't been wilfully avoiding them. So Long Gaps, Long Songs, Long Division and Long nights out.

 ...beer that is clean and flavoursome and straight up.

Brewed by Sawmill Brewing Company this on is styled as a Porter and that's North of Auckland in Leigh, New Zealand

This from the FYO station is a 5.2% ABV beer,  156 calories a serving size, and this bottle would be 4.1 standard drink units.

[caption id="attachment_11646" align="alignright" width="300"] Friday Evening is looking up[/caption]

A moderately strong brown beer that explores roasted malt flavors of chocolate and caramel.

So what could possibly go wrong?

The coffee aroma that I built myself up for, it's not there. It's there but it's not THERE! it's soft and quiet. It is however the only aroma from the bottle after I slip the flip top.

Pour is dark brown and the head looks like chocolate milkshake, I thought it would be a noise beer, it isn't. That head subsides a little to a more manageable size, still looks great though.

Aroma in the glass? That raw cold coffee aroma.

Taste? Well the coffee is there and present in the drinking of this. Very coffee.

Nicely lightly bitter and a flat neutral finish, a small persistence of coffee linger.

This might be better warmer, which is a hope more than a fact. At the moment it is 'thin' drinking, there doesn't appear anything to support or to carry the coffee in this, might be nice if there was some hop roughness, and a sharper finish, perhaps. I have patience, I can wait. Not f or long but I can wait.

I left it as long as I could, not long really, and the aroma that filled the glass was gorgeous. That is all, I'm leaving it some more.

[ a short while passed ]

The pour is much the same, but without the lovely head, the aroma still coffee, but slightly more bitter. Not a lot changed in the glass either, no pickup in the body, no addition to the finish. Much the same.

It is though a nice drinking beer, easy drinking, nothing that you might get upset with, but it's not a big hitter, more a go-to comfort beer, for me missing a big of body, some chewiness, and I'd have liked a finish that was something other than neutral.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 7 of its things from the thing. Nothing to write home about here, nothing to set the word afire. If though I was visiting Leigh, I'd be happy to order this and sit in their bar with a pizza and enjoy myself, it is interesting enough, neutral enough to have a wider appeal, I don't think it ever set out to be a flag-bearer or bench-mark setter.

The double dip review

• Am I enjoying it? I sort of am, it's a nice time waster of a beer, supping away without thinking about it really.


• Would I have another? I probably would if I was visiting, I don't think I'd go out of my way though.


• Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? This would pass muster as a share beer because of the loud coffee note, but that might be the whole conversation because there isn't much else to talk about.

Music for this:  " Have Gun will Travel " is an alternative folk-rock band, They have an album " Science from an easy chair "  of course you can listen on Spotify.  Get a bit of the ' Spirit of Discovery ' in you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdtEYv_xSmI

PORTER

Black or chocolate malt gives the porter its dark brown color. Porters are well hopped and heavily malted. This is a medium-bodied beer. Porters can be sweet. Hoppiness can range from bitter to mild. Porters are often confused with stouts.

Beer – #56 – Sawmill Brewing Company - Crystal Wheat Beer

Sawmill Brewing Company - Crystal Wheat Beer. Brewed by Leigh Sawmill Brewing Company in Leigh, New Zealand ,and they style it as a Wheat Ale.

A beer with a flip top lid,  500mls of 4.5% ABV craftiness. As usual it's buy first think about it later with me and having read about it later I have the trepidation.

Named "Crystal" because of its unique qualities, this beer is made to one of our own special recipes using 50% pilsner and 50% wheat malts. Light amber in appearance with a foaming white head, this beer has unique citrus fruit flavours. There is a hint of spice and a mild bitterness coupled with a medium hoppy aroma. This is a refreshing summer drink that can be enjoyed with a squeeze of lime juice. 4.3 to 4.5% abv

And I'm thinking "what have I done?" It could be a Frankensteins monster of a beer. It doesn't seem to be what it wants to be.

But it does come with a flip top lid.

So it's clear like a lager, it has the citrus lemon of an aroma- fleetingly. It even has a a head. And it had a magnificent poppage when I opened it- like it should.

yeah, the confusion of tastes, there is hoppiness, there is a lemonade shandy ness, a confusion of carbonation and a long mouthfeel taste of none of those things. I get an aftertaste of hops, it's not good.

I am a fan of the wheat beer genre, there should be no mistake on that, and I've had a wide range of them. This is down the wrong end of the range. I'd be happy to put it at the end of a firing range and take pot-shots at it, this isn't a beer that you could straight-face describe as a wheat beer. Or perhaps you can, in New Zealand, the same way you can trademark Radler I assume.

Arbitrarily then I can't even give this an arbitrary out of some number rating.But I will being 3 from 10 arbitrary things. I might have found another beer that I'll struggle to finish, and the frugal in me hates that.

The Leigh Sawmill company can do, and do have better beer than this. "The Doctor" for example - not a wheat beer. I'm in doubt about how this beer came into being, I'm not convinced it started as one thing, someone made a mistake and they had to sell it as something with a "special recipe"  and they do tell you to add lime juice to give it flavour. Enough said.

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