Beer Radar<\/p>\n
By John Kr\u00fcger<\/p>\n
Aussie Sapporo and The Big Dipper (First published in Wine Business Magazine in Nov 2011)<\/p>\n
Beers contract brewed or brewed under license are a big deal at the moment. A search on Twitter for the hash tag #fakeperoni shows a small section of the consumer rage out there and it\u2019s all about label integrity; an issue we\u2019ll look into closely in a future Beer Radar. For now though, let\u2019s look at an interesting beer brewed under license now in Australia, the Japanese classic Sapporo<\/strong>. Sapporo is also brewed under license in Canada, so the origins of the Sapporo you may have tried before here in Australia are anyone\u2019s guess. We tracked down a can of Sapporo that as far as we know was brewed in Japan just to see if the Australian brewery Coopers<\/strong>\u00a0has gotten it right. Our first taste of the locally made version was at the official South Australian launch at the Robin Hood hotel in Norwood. The draught version did taste slightly sweet which is an issue when brewing lagers, not attenuating well enough, but after trying the higher carbonated bottled version, we\u2019re really enjoying Aussie Sapporo. It\u2019s got a light malty sweetness but it\u2019s clean and fresh. Considering this Sapporo was brewed 9 kilometres away from where I\u2019m writing this now, it\u2019d have to be damn fresh. That\u2019s one downfall of drinking the version that\u2019s brewed in Canada (13,800kms) or Japan (7,300kms), is the time it takes to get here. While this is probably the best version of a brewed-under-license beer we\u2019ve tasted, listening to Dr. Tim Cooper\u2019s speech at the launch night revealed that this was no easy task. Just as his speech was listened to intently by a selection of Japanese officials, the trial batches at Coopers had a lot of Japanese attention before it was deemed worthy. Aussie Sapporo is a beer you\u2019ll down many of, easily.<\/p>\n Another beer that\u2019s got us all excited is the new limited release Little Creatures<\/strong> Double India Pale Ale called The Big Dipper. It\u2019s what Little Creatures fans have always wanted, a bigger version of their pale ale. It\u2019s a big beer at 7.8%abv, 55ibu\u2019s of bitterness and has no less than 7 different types of hops in it. It\u2019s remarkably clean and balanced and still reeks of hop goodness. With all Little Creatures beers, it\u2019s refined.\u00a0 The fairly neutral label doesn\u2019t reflect the rock star beer contained within. Unfortunately this limited release beer won\u2019t last long enough to be around for Christmas so we\u2019ll be hunting it down and stockpiling like no tomorrow. It\u2019s that good. The Big Dipper is a beer to covet, to search out while you can and hide away, sharing only with a select few.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Beer Radar By John Kr\u00fcger Aussie Sapporo and The Big Dipper (First published in Wine Business Magazine in Nov 2011) Beers contract brewed or brewed under license are a big deal at the moment. A search on Twitter for the hash tag #fakeperoni shows a small section of the consumer rage out there and it\u2019s … Continue reading Aussie Sapporo and The Big Dipper<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer","category-craft-beer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/64"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}