Recently
I came across an interesting promotion. Boundary Road Brewery decided
that they’d get a group of lucky people to be beer tasters to decide on
which of three lagers should be the flagship in their new range of ales.
Despite warning signs from their equating lager to ale on their
website, I figured that I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to potentially
get some free beer, and figured that perhaps I have appropriate
credentials to be helpful for the tasting. Entering the competition involved a ludicrously easy quiz (hops are definitely not a rabbit extract) and then it was just up to hoping that I would be one of the 999 lucky tasters. Sadly, I was not selected, but a good friend and fellow beer enthusiast, Julian, was. So on a Friday night, after enjoying a range of good NZ craft beers with some homemade pizza, Julian, Gareth (another friend and beer enthusiast) and myself set ourselves to the task of trying the three beers that had been sent. It’s quite apparent that Boundary Road went to great lengths with the design and marketing of these new beers, very much trying to latch on to a market moving towards better quality beers. As such, the three beers were very nicely packaged with a well written blurb to go with them. However, another warning sign arose, with there being a nice bottle opener provided as tasting equipment – to go with screw top bottles. Regardless, we moved on to begin tasting them, in a random order. Now when it comes to beer quality, there are a number of categories beers fall in for me. There are beers that I would happily pay $20 for a single bottle, albeit as a special treat. There are beers that I’ll happily buy on a regular basis. There are beers that I’ll buy when there’s nothing better available. There are beers that I’ll only drink if they’re cold and free. And then there are beers that I can’t finish a single bottle, even if they’re free. The three beers on offer fell into this category. The first we tried (beer B, I believe) had almost no flavour aside from a slight taste of corn, which we related to the taste of corn kernels picked from faeces. The other two beers had bad chemical flavours reminiscent of homebrew that hasn’t matured long enough. None of the three bottles were finished, despite there being three of us sharing them. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a beer this truly abysmal. The sad thing is, it is marketed as a boutique beer, so I’m afraid that people will buy it thinking it’s a craft beer and then write off all craft beer based on how terrible it is. So I urge you, avoid this beer, there are so many better options. While of course I would like to see all my fellow students enjoying the wonderful craft beer on offer in New Zealand, I’d rather see people drinking Double Brown than these Boundary Road beers. – Stephen 18 July 2011 |
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