1) I could have started this post about Newstead Brewing’s new beer by talking about how, a couple of years ago Brisbane was a craft beer desert and now things are booming. But that’s a cliche these days. Besides, it seems nearly every decent-sized city in the country has a craft beer thing going on, so the “wow, hasn’t city XYZ come a long way in a short time” story is a bit out of date if you ask me.

2) Instead, the real story would be about those cities that haven’t got a craft beer scene. For mine, they’re the odd ones out, the weirdoes that are out of step with everyone else. But I don’t actually know if there are any decent-sized craft beer-free cities in the country. I’m an old married man with a kid, I don’t get around this country as much as I’d like.

3) Okay, so here we are at point three and I haven’t even talked about this beer yet. Jeez, I can crap on about some irrelevant crap. Anyway, this beer is The Outpost American Stout from Newstead. I was up in Brisbane in January last year – back before the city’s beers were distributed south of the border – and hit Newstead and a few other places to see what was on offer. The Newstead beers really impressed me – particularly the amber ale and the IPA. Now I see the Two the the Valley IPA here and there and I make sure I grab a six-pack each time.

4) The Outpost is the first small batch from Newstead they’ve bottled and sent around the traps. So, really, it’d have to be a pretty big small batch to do that, if you get my drift. According to the press material, they’ve made 90 different small batches but this is the first one they’ve bottled.

5) Good thing they did too, because it’s a fine beer. Me, I think “American stout” is another way of saying “black IPA”, because this fits very nicely in between the stout and the IPA camps. They’ve thrown lots of hops at this, so there’s notes of pine and melon, but also dark chocolate and coffee. The dark chocolate and coffee flavours come to the fore on the palate – in fact the flavour gave me a mental flashback of the old Cadbury’s dark chocolate wrapper. The one that featured a profile shot of some dude sitting in an armchair and watching TV (I tried finding it on Google but no luck). Why my brain made that connection I’m not entirely sure, I think it might be something to do with thinking as a kid that dark chocolate had some very grown-up flavours. Maybe, But I do know I’m glad I’m a grown-up now, so I could drink The Outpost.

Free or paid for?: This beer was sent to me from Newstead. By a friend of mine. Just so you know. But he didn’t give me the crap photo at the top of this post. Nope, that one’s all my own work.

BTW: While I couldn’t find the image of the dark chocolate wrapper, the name of the beer did bring to mind this one-hit wonder from the Skatt Brothers. Complete with some very embarrassing dancing.