Carwyn Canvent (Part 3)

Carwyn Cellars is a name that every Australian Craft Beer lover should know. It’s the preeminent bottle shops in the country. For their advent calendar, they’ve partnered with 24 Australian Craft Breweries to make an exclusive canned release for their “Canvent Calendar”.

After the success of last year there was only ever going to be one Advent Calendar I’d buy this year! Once again this year I’ll be cataloging the contents of the Carwyn Canvent Advent Calendar. The Carwyn Canvent Calendar is going to get the full treatment – and with any luck you’ll have updates every 5 days. In the interim, let me know what Advent Calendar you’ve got this year and your initial thoughts on it so far.

Day 11 – Venom Hazy Christmas Snakebite – I really liked the idea behind Venom’s beer in the Canvent; a play off the reason the brewery was named Venom & a traditional Australian pub drink. A snakebite is traditionally a 50:50 mix of lager & cider, however Venom’s has used a truckload of raspberries in a Hazy IPA.

The idea may have been great, but the execution didn’t quite work for me. There was clearly too distinct elements to the beer, with tart raspberry upfront before some tropical hop notes became more apparent. The flavours never quite meshed for me

Day 12 – Black Arts Santa’s Little Helper – Black Arts received a very late call up to the Canvent pack after the sale of Green Beacon to Asahi. Carwyn has a strictly enforced independent only policy. This beer is quite similar to their Biere de Coupage; a blend of fresh Saison with some of their barrel aged stock.

And just like their Biere de Coupage, this beer is fantastic! There’s this lovely bready malt base that combines with light Belgian funk. I pickup touches of wheat as well as plenty of stonefruit on the backend. If these were canned year round, I would drink them year round! Superb! This is a brewery that everyone should be keeping an eye on.

Day 13 – Tallboy & Moose Oat Deer – Tallboy & Moose is the closest brewery to Carwyn Cellars. It’s a small brewpub, which have been releasing cans in the last few months. This is a blended Oatmeal Stout, which is a mix between barrel aged & un-aged stouts.

At 7.4% it’s the biggest beer of the Canvent so far. As a mix of Bourbon Barrel Aged Russian Imperial Stout, Bourbon Barrel Aged Oatwine & an Oatmeal Stout you’d expect the body to be luscious; Oat Deer doesn’t disappoint. There is the vanilla you’d expect from the bourbon barrels as well as licorice & dark chocolate. It’s a lovely beer, but probably not the most appropriate beer for an Australian Summer…

Day 14 – Helios French Oaked New World Pale – This is the first beer that I’ve ever had from Helios. They’re a brewery based in the South Brisbane suburb of Yeerongpilly. I’ve heard little bits about them, although not much about the quality of the beer. I generally don’t like the idea of adding Oak to a Pale Ale, but we’ll see if this offering changes my mind on the idea…

I’m sad to report that it did not. It’s just a Pale Ale, admittedly quite a nice one, that has some oak character. There’s spicy citrus & pine hop aromas which was on top of a creamy cereal malt bill. It finishes with this vanilla character from the oak, but really it was oddly dry & I don’t think it added to what otherwise could’ve been a nice Pale Ale.

Day 15 – Beerfarm Watermelon & Basil Sour – Beerfarm are a farm brewery from the Margaret River region, in the South West corner of Western Australia. Carwyn have been bringing their beers over for the last couple of years & I’ve been impressed with most of the things I’ve tried from them.

Their sour beers are the ones that have really caught my eye, with many utilising native ingredients. This sour uses locally grown basil & watermelon, two flavours that should work well together. The beer was nicely tart, with a touch of sweetness coming from the watermelon. There was just enough basil on the finish to justify its use in the name.

Only one of these 5 was truly exceptional. There were for the most part well executed beers, although some of the ideas behind them were a little flawed. On the most part the beers in this section of the Canvent were good without being exceptional. I was actually a little underwhelmed by these beers, which is one of the reasons I fell behind on this post…

Remember it’s always Beer O’Clock somewhere in the world!