What Beer Style Would Be Considered Classic Australian

[Pumpy]

Would it be Coopers Pale ale ?

Is that the only one ?

Pumpy :unsure:?

 

[MVZOOM]

Pale or the Sparkling? Didn't the Sparkling come first?

 

[jonocarroll]

Define "Classic Australian" first.

Do you mean from the classical period, "typical Australian", "typical modern Australian", "iconic Australian", "symbolising Australian"????

No doubt some of these will encompass Coopers, but also VB, Fosters, NT Draught, and even to some extent, Crown.

 

[Pumpy]

Pale or the Sparkling? Didn't the Sparkling come first?

So was it a Cloudy beer hopped with POR called 'sparkling ale' ?

 

[PostModern]

Define "Classic Australian" first.

Do you mean from the classical period, "typical Australian", "typical modern Australian", "iconic Australian", "symbolising Australian"????

No doubt some of these will encompass Coopers, but also VB, Fosters, NT Draught, and even to some extent, Crown.

I agree that the question is ambiguous, but I'd put all of these:

"VB, Fosters, NT Draught"

into the same category, "Pacific Lager". Premium Lager, like Crown is only a bee's dick away, show the kettle an aroma hop sack and lager for an extra week.

The Australian beer styles book is a pretty thin, well thumbed volume really.

So was it a Cloudy beer hopped with POR called 'sparkling ale' ?

Still is.

 

[MVZOOM]

So was it a Cloudy beer hopped with POR called 'sparkling ale' ?

You know what - thats a question I've aways had but never had the balls to ask (feared to be called an idiot! :icon_cheers: ). In essence, what's the diff between the two? Bigger malt bill on the Sparkling?

But I agree - it'd probably be that PoR based, Malt + sugar brew (you choose - VB / Tooths etc)?

Cheers - Mike

 

[Adamt]

Australian brewing has English roots, but has evolved over the years to lighter body and higher carbonation deemed suitable for our climate. Compare Coopers to a proper English Bitter, there are similar elements (the estery yeast profile, spicy, earthy hop character) but its obviously different in the lighter malt profile and higher carbonation. I see this as about as close to a unique style as possible due to its existence here for many generations and evolution over time.

All the Aussie megalagers come under the same category as other megalagers, nothing different there.

 

[Bribie G]

Probably go Crown or Melbourne Bitter. We don't really know much about the beers produced in the Pre War era - Pride of Ringwood wasn't bred till the 1950s and CUB didn't start using isohop until that era so who knows what a schooner of Tooheys or XXXX tasted like in 1938. It would be great if we had more information.

I can remember beers as far back as 1977 when I arrived in Australia and remember that Carlton Draught (brewed at the Bulimba brewery) was a much paler and more bitter beer than the current 'made from beer' product. I have done a couple of trials and brewed something that tastes very similar, to my buds, and seems to have a bit in common with Crownies as well. It's a simple BB Pale Pilsener single malt with 30 percent cane sugar and one addition of Superpride at 90 minutes. I'll bring a few litres to the case swap on Sunday for comments.

I would imagine that for the six o'clock swill the brewers just pumped out a S.M.A.S.H with brewing sugar, lagered for ten days, and whacked it into the drinkers glasses through those old fashioned beer guns as quick as they could get the stuff past their tonsils.

Of course there was a fair range of more 'premium' beers for home consumption such as Reschs Dinner Ale etc. Many are still available but seem to have been watered down over the decades and now sit at a poor 4.4% ABV and are obviously a shadow of their former selves.

Yes on balance I'd go the Crown.

 

[PostModern]

Australian brewing has English roots, but has evolved over the years to lighter body and higher carbonation deemed suitable for our climate. Compare Coopers to a proper English Bitter, there are similar elements (the estery yeast profile, spicy, earthy hop character) but its obviously different in the lighter malt profile and higher carbonation. I see this as about as close to a unique style as possible due to its existence here for many generations and evolution over time.

All the Aussie megalagers come under the same category as other megalagers, nothing different there.

Apart from Coopers and the new micros brewing UK and US styles (mostly) what else is there? The mega brewers all went over to the industrial pale fizzy lager style a long time ago.

 

[tcraig20]

So was it a Cloudy beer hopped with POR called 'sparkling ale' ?

Depends how far back you want to go I guess. POR wasnt about before 1965, so prior to that the bittering hop would have been different (goldings?).

I'd agree with what others said about 'classic style' though: POR bittering and 20%+ sugar.

 

[brettprevans]

classic australian huh? depends on whetehr your asking brewers or the general public. I was talking a person at work about homebrewing and he asked what i like to brew most: draught, lager or bitter. He was suprised when i said there were more styles than that and that draught wasnt a style.

now classic australian: well it could be a working class beer, so something lightly hopped, lager, light-medium body, something like a VB, fosters etc.

as QB said, we need a definition first.

 

[chappo1970]

:icon_offtopic: But relivant IMO. I wonder with all the grains and hops available to the brewer would it not be possible to pioneer a new uniquely Australian style of beer? I wonder if there is an opening between all thestyles to come up with something?

Chappo

 

[tcraig20]

:icon_offtopic: But relivant IMO. I wonder with all the grains and hops available to the brewer would it not be possible to pioneer a new uniquely Australian style of beer? I wonder if there is an opening between all thestyles to come up with something?

Chappo

Inter-galactic ale? 100% BB galaxy, 100% galaxy hops, cooper bottle yeast

 

[marlow_coates]

Beer and Brewer magazine did an article on this topic, and claimed it was the Sparkling Ale, as Coopers was the only one world wide who kept producing it, and kept the style alive. It is now brewed in more places of course.

But that really only means it is a style linked to Australia, and not the Classic Australian.

Pretty hard to answer question, but I doubt many would argue stout, wheat, rye or belgian beers are the answer :icon_cheers:

Although didn't captain Cook toast discovering Australia with a porter?

 

[chappo1970]

I would unfortunately think the likes of XXXX, VB or Toohey's New would be the classic's on shear volume of sales I would suggest. Sorry for Cooper's but it would barely rank outside SA and to a smaller extent Victoria I would think. Don't get me wrong I would consider Coopers uniquely Australia in style but ask the average punter and one of the three mementioned above would be the answer from Mr Joe Public.

Inter-galactic ale? 100% BB galaxy, 100% galaxy hops, cooper bottle yeast

A SMASH you reckon JC?

Sorry Pumpy for the hijack I guess this could be another thread really?

Cheers

Chappo

 

[muckanic]

Apart from Coopers and the new micros brewing UK and US styles (mostly) what else is there? The mega brewers all went over to the industrial pale fizzy lager style a long time ago.

Most of them (more precisely nowadays, both of them) still do a stout, albeit not necessarily using ale yeasts. I believe Tooheys' rendition has a bit of a cult following in the US.

AFAIAA, it is the Coopers Sparkling only that is full of sugar. For my money, whilst the banana profile gives it some commonality with Brit ales, the phenol profile also makes a nod towards a subdued Belgian witbier. This is more apparent in the Pale. I wonder if there is any wheat in there?

A CUB worker provided me with an unpasteurised jug of something or other (Fosters or Carlton) about 30 years ago. Not that I knew a lot about beer at the time, but it sure tasted more flavoursome than the packaged stuff.

 

[Swinging Beef]

It'd be Rum.

Like Marlow said, B&B and more impressively, the american BYO magazine did an article on this same thing.
Coopers Sparkling Ale came out looooong before Coopers Pale Ale.
CPA was released in the mid 1980s, I think.
Coopers Sparkling Ale was so named due to the high carbonation levels in the bottle conditioned bottle, compared to real ale on draft in a hand pulled keg of the time.

Much like English Bitter is mild compared to IPA and Pale Ale is dark compared to Lager, beer names historically do not make much sense except in a very regionalised area.

 

[marlow_coates]

Can't agree with the argument that it should be the most popular.

I would consider the Akubra the classic Australian hat, but only a small percent own or wear one,
The same for the FJ holden as probably one of the most classical Australian cars, but their as rare as hens teeth nowadays,
And I would consider G'day as the classical Australian greeting, but I reckon only a sadly small number use this.

That's my take on something that that is termed 'Classic' though.

 

[bum]

The way I see it is that the difficulty you guys are having trying to decide which is the definitive Aussie style is the actual answer: there isn't one.

This country is much too young. We don't have a unifying culture. We don't have a distinctly Australian architecture. We don't have a definable cuisine. No national dress. Fark, we can't even agree on a code of football for Christ's sake! For the last half of our existence we've been nothing but a collection of borrowed fashions - sometimes with our slight twist imposed. That, if anything, is as close as anyone will get to an answer for generations - the Australian style is to bastardise someone else's style.

 

[Pollux]

James Squire seemed to have a lot to do with the first beers in Australia...