1) One subject that regularly gets touched on in this blog is the concern that Matilda Bay doesn’t seem to have any idea what the hell it’s doing. In fact I probably need to create a category for it on this blog – maybe called “Hey, Matilda Bay – WTF?” Because, sadly, they don’t show signs of getting a clue any time soon.

2) This is very distinct from their “one-time craft brewery now owned by a monolithic multi-national” rival in Little Creatures. Those guys have hardly put a foot wrong since they got swallowed up by the big guys. I say “hardly” because I still consider it a grievous error on their part not to have brought back The Big Dipper. Come on guys, it’s got “Summer Seasonal” written all over it.

3) Anyway, the way Matilda Bay handle Dogbolter is another example of how they don’t get it. It is the best beer Matilda Bay has – better than Redback and better than the critics’ darling that is Alpha pale. It’s just so frigging delicious. But can you find it easily? Christ no. It’s so hard to find that my local bottle shop made a big deal of pointing it out to me and saying – and I’m paraphrasing here – “look, we got some Dogbolter. It might be 20 years before we get some more, so you should buy some now”.

4) And of course I bought some. And revelled in the flavours of chocolate and caramel. I also wished I had some sort of chocolate dessert to eat it with because I figure that would be a sublime pairing. Still, it’s a fine, fine beer on its own. Dear God, why is Matilda Bay fapping around with the Lazy Yak stuff when they’ve got this exceptional beer in their catalogue/ Because, they don’t get it, that’s why.

5) In closing, some random stuff I found on the Matilda Bay website, this is one of the first two beers they ever made. It got it’s name after they had to throw out an extra-strong batch of the stuff. The brewery dog was just hanging around and he got into it. He then flipped out and did the bolt – hence the name.

Free or paid for?: I bought this beer from a bottle shop with my own cash money.