The beer: Stone’s Enjoy By 2.14.15

Where did it come from?: Slowbeer in Melbourne, I think. See it was bought for me by Luke from Ale of a Time and mailed up to me to repay a favour I did for him in Wollongong. What a tops guy, aye?

What’s it like?: It’s pretty good. I got a great tropical fruit aroma as soon as I popped off the cap. And there are lots of bitterness in the beer but it is quite nicely balanced by the fruit notes. With all the grey import brouhaha, it would have been nice to have an ‘‘illegal’’ one to try and see if going grey really makes that much of a difference.

Why do you like it?: I guess more for the hype that anything. I’m a sucker for hype – the geek world in Australia has been going berko for this beer so when Luke asked if I wanted one I said yep (because Wollongong isn’t going to be getting any of it)

Okay, now you can tell the story you think is funny/interesting?: After all those blog posts about Stone asking for money, I think I may have decided to boycott their beers. I reckon I have a bit of wiggle room here because I didn’t buy the beer, Luke did.

Anyway, I had a bit of an epiphany just after I opened the beer. I thought, ‘‘there are plenty of great Australian beers that I can get really easy. Why am I all hyped up about this one beer from the US? Yeah, they’re a good brewery but we’ve got heaps of them here too’’.

I’d read and heard before about people bigging up our own brewers, which can be overlooked in favour of beers from other countries. But I think it’s now sunken in.

Anything else?: Yeah, Luke also sent me a bottle of his own homebrew. It was a Baltic Porter called Footscray Porter – and it was gooooood.