Hopping Mad Brewery Wheat

Formerly brewed at Hopping Mad Brewery
Style: Wheat Ale
Orange, NSW, Australia

Serve in Shaker, Weizen

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Not a good looker. Ditch water murkry rust brown orange with a small shortish lasting white head. Faint stale grainy oats malt, with hint of over ripe yeasty fruit aroma. palate is reasonable in fullness medium low carb touch of detergent feel until the wierd medium grainy sweetness, sour mash, bandaid, floral perfume and faint acrid bitterness hits you. The finish is watery and has a strange sour grain grapefruit rind taste.

FIrst person to rate in a while I see. Hazy golden color. Chalky nose with some apple pie. Thin chalky mouth, yet not without merit. Mildly sour.

Slightly cloudy orange with a small short-lived head. Smells quite terrible - with some burnt matches and rotting apricots. The flavour is not too bad, but the alcohol is a bit too stark. I’m glad to see this beer finishing better than it started, however I just don’t know what they were aiming for.

Cloudy golden with a decent head, fruity.. slighty rotting aroma. Sweet mouthfull, not as bad as I had expected after reading the previous reviews. Its a basic beer with a fairly light body and clean finish. Another average Australian micro.

12 Mar 06 - Fruity light malt aroma. Cloudy light brown colour, ordinary head and lacing. Grainy/wheat, light sweet-sour fruit malt flavour. An odd stale/flat/??? hop finish. This beer is a bit of a mess especially in flavour and palate.

Murky amber colour. Hop malt aroma. Spicy malt flavour with sweet floral aftertaste. Fizzy palate.

Bottled. Cloudy amber, rich head. Aroma of spicy hops, bananas and papery malt. Sweet and soft but notable wheat malt character and otes of orange jam. Much better than it’s reputation.

Comfortably the poorest beer I sampled at the Australian Beer Festival. They make great wine at Orange. I’ll be sticking to that. This was an odd murky orange colour. Sour wheat aroma. Watery body and sour banana flavours. Very poor indeed. (Bottle, Australian Beer Festival Oct 05)

NFOB 2004 (BOTTLE) I was expecting a infected disaster after reading the previous ratings. To my surprise this wasn’t as bad as I expected. Had some wheaty aromas, quite watery and had an odd meaty taste in the finish. Not a great beer by any stretch, but I’ve had worse.

Bottle brought to Melbourne by my sister: My sister asked the bottle shop attendant at the Australian whether they had any Hopping Mad beers, and was told they no longer stock them because they were "Sooooo bad." Half an hour later, whilst having a beer out on the street, the guy came up to her and told her that he had found a bottle in the cellar. He told her that he couldn’t in good conscience charge her for it. This story didn’t exactly fill me with confidence but I don’t think it truly prepared me for the experience that was to follow (though the fact that the Australian sells Outback beers without the same concerns should have been an indication.) Pours a very hazy orange colour with pretty decent head retention. Distinct aroma of green olives, only a bit rotten and with some disgusting yeast funk. It took me at least ten minutes to build the courage to raise the glass to my mouth. When I finally did I was greeted by more olives, some salt and something else very wrong. Body is thick and oily with very low carbonation. It pains me to rate Aussie microbrewers so low, but there are flavours in this beer that I have never before tasted in beer, nor can I really figure out how they got there. It doesn’t taste like any infection I have ever come across, and it has nothing at all resembling a wheat beer with the exception of good head retention. I don’t believe I have ever tasted the perfect beer but I think I now have a benchmark at the opposite end of the scale.