Mid Week Beer Geek Brewery Battle at The Mill

For the second time in two months The Mill on Constance Street held their Mid Week Beer Geek Battle. While I wasn't able to get to the first event (which pitted Jared 'The Beard' Palu representing Pirate Life against Gillian 'The Calamity' Letham representing Modus Operandi) I was luck enough to get to second event. The combatants this time around were two of  Brisbane craft beer scene brothers, Adam 'The Big Twin" Pollard representing Boatrocker against Matthew 'The Old Twin" Pollard representing Mornington Peninsula.

How does the challenge work? Each time you order a beer you're given a bottle cap, that bottle cap goes into one of the two jars marked with each breweries name. To make things easier it's possible to buy double tasters at a time with a little discount for getting two. Makes it really easy to buy two beers and work ones way through the tap list.

On Wednesday this week we had the following beers on tap.

Mornington Peninsula Brewery
Little Irish Red - Red Ale 3.5%
Pale Ale - American 4.7%
White IPA - IPA 6.3%
'The Beast' ( 2015) - Double Imperial Stout 11.3%

Boatrocker Brewing Company
Miss Pinky - Berliner Weisse 3.3%
Big Love Suburban Pale - Golden Ale 4.4%
Hop Bomb IPA - IPA 6.5%
Braeside Crown Cola - Scotch Ale 8.5%

Boatrocker is a brewery from Victoria that we don't really see all that often up here, and with the addition of The Beast from Mornington there was no way I was going to miss this.

Not being into sour beers I skipped the first from Boatrocker (and the first from MP) and started with the Pale Ale and the Big Love.

Here's a picture of my ugly face between them.

For what it's worth, this picture was taken as another attempt to win Brews and Bacon's current competition.

Both beers were tasty, but MP Pale is something I've had many times before and pushes no boundaries (not that that's a bad thing, it's excellent). The Big Love was different and interesting and not something I've had before, so my first vote went to Boatrocker.

Second round was the two IPA's. No pictures were taken as I'd had the White IPA from Mornington the night before at Newstead. The Hop Bomb from Boatrocker was the quintessential West Coast IPA. big bitterness and piney citrus flavours. Round two went to Boatrocker.

Round three, which is what I was most excited being a fan of the bigger percentage beers, didn't disappoint at all. By all accounts, The Beast from Mornington wasn't brewed on purpose but an accident. Too much of something, or too long doing something else in the brewing process created a beer much higher in percentage than was expected. So glad it was sent up to Brisbane as it was phenomenal

11.3% of RIS goodness.

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Braeside Crown Cola was also pretty amazing. Sweet like cola, with a smooth vanilla backbone. Hid it's alcohol really well.

Mmmmm

Being a sucker though, my token for that round went to Mornington.

After the three rounds of beers I finished the evening with two more glasses of the Braeside Crown Cola, getting a token for each and putting them into the Boatrocker Jar.

Final tally was four to Boatrocker, one to Mornington Penisula. And another massive token to The Mill and having a good time (that's not code for me leaving a poop un-flushed either).

I highly recommend (if you're not already) that you follow The Mill on Facebook. No doubt the March Mid Week Beer Geek Battle will be just as good and just as fun.

And sorry to Matt Pollard who's now drinking XXXX Gold in craft beer venues around Brisbane as punishment. Poor fella....

Thanks for reading, and as always, drink well.
-BeerFoodBrisbane