So Casella Wines – the people responsible for the outstandingly ordinary Yellowtail wines – have decided to get into the beer game.Their offering is the terribly-named Arvo Lager, which the bottle suggests is “the perfect Australian lager”. That could be true – if every other lager in this country magically disappeared.
After months of market research the result is two beers – brew 34 and brew 51 – which come in a six-pack (three beers of each variety make up the sixer). The deal is that the punter tries the beers and then visits the website to vote on their favourite. Then, the winner is the beer they leave on the market.
If these are the two selections then I’d got for option C: none of the above. I just cannot believe that they had more than 50 attempts at making a beer (as evidenced by the existence of a “brew 51”) and these are the best two they had.
Both beers look very much the colour of urine, which hardly makes you want to drink them. Brew 34 is easily the worst of the two – it’s so thin it tastes like malty water. Brew 51 is better, which wouldn’t be a hard thing to achieve. With no detectable aroma it has a slightly stronger malt flavour but is still quite uninspiring. It’s the sort of beer you’d give to someone you didn’t like very much.
Would I drink them again?: Oh Christ no. The pair of beers are relentlessly unimpressive. I now have to work out what to do with the other four beers in the six-pack I bought.
Categories: lager