Great Northern Brewing Co. Super Crisp Lager

[mwd]

CUB launched this beer yesterday in Cairns by bringing some of the bosses to town.

Cannot tell you what it is like because I haven't tried it or even seen it. Looks to be aimed at the young trendsetters with a clear glass bottle. Probably get essence of Cane Toad lime slices to stick in the bottle necks.

G.N.B.C.S.C.Lager try saying that after a gallon in the local.

 

[BrenosBrews]

CUB launched this beer yesterday in Cairns by bringing some of the bosses to town.

Cannot tell you what it is like because I haven't tried it or even seen it. Looks to be aimed at the young trendsetters with a clear glass bottle. Probably get essence of Cane Toad lime slices to stick in the bottle necks.

G.N.B.C.S.C.Lager try saying that after a gallon in the local.

They should have released Resurrection Double Stout instead.

 

[Bribie G]

I see they've resurrectred the marlin logo that used to be on Cairns Draught. I expect this shyte will be just like XXXX summer lager with zero malt, few hops and dry enzyme. Coopers clear anyone?

Now here's something to get a bit more excited about, I wonder how this is progressing.

 

[manticle]

I dislike marketting gimmicks a lot and I hope this one fails: even if it's purely on the basis that they come in 330mL bottles rather than 375 mL cans. I find it irritating that the same bland crap, simply repackaged and remarketted gets foisted on us time and time again.

While I don't consider them good beers, Melbourne Bitter, XXXX (not gold), carlton Draught, VB and others at least have some kind of slight appearance of unpretentious honesty to them. Cheap beer, thirst quenching and refreshing when colder than a nun's tit. As it should be.

Not so crown lager, low carb (sorry lo-carb) VB raw, carlton fusion and all the other same same but different bullshit products large breweries come out with to capture alternative markets.

Hope it fails and XXXX drinkers either stay loyal or develop a more adventurous palate and actually drink something worthwhile (even just coopers or JS).

Try something different my arse. What is it? Dry lager with pride of ringwood hop extract added post fermentation?

Who ever would have thought of that?

If you want to offer a different product then try actually making it different. Chocolate bar manufacturers take note as well (and soft drink manufacturers, fast food joints etc etc). I thought competition was supposed to result in real choice, not variations on the same bland theme with a different logo.

 

[argon]

GOD i want to poke my eyes out after reading this;

"Today's Queensland beer drinkers are far more adventurous than ever. They want to experience different tastes and new styles and are particularly drawn to brands that remind them of home.

FFS... reading the title of the thread made me want to throw my hands in the air!!! Super ******* Crisp ******* Lager... jeesus!!

My tip is... XXXX Gold drinkers will stick with XXXX Gold, Corona drinkers will stick with Corona and some dickhead who has recently tried XXXX Summer Lager will try this and tell me "This stuff's allright"... then i punch them in the neck

 

[Bribie G]

Well let's have a straw poll and suggest what they could bring out that would capture some market share.

Both Carlton and XXXX in the past have come up with some actually reasonable beers in the shape of XXX and VB Original and now and again have a stab at something quite off-the-wall for the megas, for example Thirsty Dog (the only beer that has made me throw up in a car park after only 3 stubbies :blink: )
They have had a stab at the American style C hop market with Fat Yak, doing quite well I think, and LCPA - they've milked the dry / blonde market as far as it can go and even had a go at Radler which believe it or not I don't mind after a lawnmowing session (SWMBO's granddaughter lives on the stuff).

So what would be a good direction to go, something like a real Aussie brewed Pilsener with flavour? I had a few bluetongues with Hersbrucker last night and they went down ok, at least you could taste the product.

Edit: or maybe that's why I've had the runs all day and can't get down to the Brewhouse , too much information <_< <_<

 

[winkle]

Great Northern Carbine Stout , Great Northern XXX Sparkling Ale?

 

[dpadden]

They should have released Resurrection Double Stout instead.

Amen brother. That bottle in my fridge aint gonna last the week...

 

[manticle]

Even most relatively cheap Euro lagers fare a bit better than most aussie mainstream. The fact that everybody in this country drinks beers at <2 degrees means breweries can get away with brewing crap tasting beer because the crap taste is disguised by the cold. Drink a Zywiec or Dab at 7-10 degrees then drink a Carlton at 7-10 degrees and tell me which one is palatable.

I have a theory that it's due to lagers being brewed at high temperatures and that if they dropped temps and used real hops in the kettle and maybe adjusted for consistency with their extracts (as I believe coopers do) they'd have a product which was still marketable to beer drinking punters in the main and that didn't remind beer nerds of their cat's last visit to the lemon tree.

I have some bottles of my first ever infected pilsner still in the back shed. Every so often I drag one out o see if it's changed (and I am an experiemnetal brewer with various brett etc beers on the go).

It's super bright now (very cloudy when I bottled it about 1 year ago) and if it's refrigerated for a couple of days it almost takes like something beer-like. Generally anyone with a palate for beer would find it pretty horrendous but at 1 degree I reckon I could sell it.

I guess my point is that in your poll bribie, I would start by suggesting they simply improve the successful products they have now - even if they replicate some decent euro lagers PROPERLY and market those in gay shampoo bottles, it would grate less with me. Better if they market them in tough man cans though.

I can imagine that many an aussie bloke would down a cold pilsner urquell at a barbie with no complaints if they didn't think it made them look poncy. It's a start.

 

[Bribie G]

They could start by using a different hop extract, maybe with some imported hops in the mix. Some German beers such as Oettinger are nice and aromatic and contain "hopsextract" according to the label so I doubt if they've ever been near a hop flower. I think there is a confusion between isohop and hop extract- not the same - they can make extracts that contain any fraction of the hops they want, which is why I'm always surprised by the definite hop character of Melbourne Bitter, probably because they havent stuffed around with the recipe too much from the old days.

In the 70s in the UK as I've posted several times we had a lot of Aus beer imports because of the huge Australian population in the Barry Mackenzie era. I was an AG brewer even back then and very interested in exotic beers, and regularly had a mix of cans or bottles in the flat such as Pilsener Urquell, Fosters, Cascade, Reschs, Kronenbourg, etc and the Aussie beers could really hold their own with flavour. And we drank them cool, not having a fridge.

I think the downturn in flavour in Aus beers leading to abominations such as TED and Carlton Cold is a product of the last 15 years or so and also very much linked to the gradual downshift in ABV.

 

[manticle]

Quite a few german lagers of my experience use both hop extract and hops - even allowable under that long winded purity law from Barvaria. Nothing wrong with adjusting for consistency when you've that big a market - even coopers do it and they win hands down among Aussie large breweries with most products.

Why doesn't one of the large breweries bring out something that decently competes with coopers ale range if they really have no ideas of their own? I know there's abbotsford stout and carlton black but nothing appproaching ccopers dark, pale or sparkling.

 

[mwd]

And there is more Lager sold out.

Now if they could get even close to Blue Sky Pilsner then that would be something worth shouting about. :icon_drunk:

 

[BrenosBrews]

Amen brother. That bottle in my fridge aint gonna last the week...

Mine was making eyes at me last night. Still cold & rainy in Melbourne, would have been good!