1) I’ve never met Renn Blackman from Blackman’s Brewery but I know he’s a helpful chap. See a couple of years ago he brewed a kolsch with Killer Pythons for GABS and I absolutely loved it. So much so that I wanted to make a home brew version of it. But not having much of an idea how to start (beer ingredients aren’t usually “water, malt, hops, yeast and lolly snakes”) I initially put it off.

2) But then I remembered Twitter, that handy invention that allows you to pester just about anyone you want. And so I pestered Renn about how many Killer Pythons to add, when to add them and all sorts of other things. Except the one thing I wish I had asked – “hey, with all that extra sugar in the wort, should I double up on the yeast?” Because that’s why I think my version of that beer ended up a thick, sweet unpalatable syrup – there was so much sugar that the yeast gorged itself and then died like the fat man in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life.

3) Because of Renn’s help, I’d been keen to try his Blackmann’s Brewery beers for a while now but there were no stockists in my neck of the woods. Until recently, when I was up at Thirroul Cellars and spied a cans of the Reginald IPA. But I decided to buy something else. Just kidding, I picked up a four-pack – I’m not stupid.

4) You know how you’re not supposed to drink beer from the can? That you’ve got to pour it into a glass to get the full flavour and aroma thing? That was kind of hard with this beer – I had to force myself to wait the few seconds it took to pour the Reginald into a glass before drinking it, rather than pop the top and throw it down my throat. It’s a sweet, strong mix of pine and citrus with a bitterness that hangs around for a fair bit. It’s tagged as a West Coast IPA but I reckon it definitely has a laidback Australian vibe too, because it’s not crazy bitter like they tend to be. Unless my palate is so acclimatised to hops that I don’t register this as too bitter.

5) Something else I like about the Blackmann beers is they’ve all got blokes’ names. There’s also Bob wit, Ernie golden ale, Arthur smoked porter and Mervyn pale lager. I’m sure there’s some sort of story behind the names – I just don’t know what it is.

Free or paid for?: I bought a four-pack and it was worth every cent.