Hunter Draught

Brewed by Bluetongue Brewery (SABMiller / Coca-Cola Amatil)
Style: Pale Lager
Cameron Park (Hunter Valley),NSW, Australia

Serve in Dimpled mug, English pint, Lager glass, Shaker

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Picked up a 6 pack of 375ml at my local Dan Murphys. Soapy corn aroma, skunky like you standard low-end Aussie ’draft’ beer. Pale gold body with some white foam. Thin bodied, corn flavours, slight hop flavour with a metallic dry finish. Unremarkable, dime-a-dozen sort of beer.

Spicy hop malt aroma. Clear amber colour with good head and lacing. Bitter hop malt flavour with stale after-taste. Fizzy palate.

Bottle (375ml). Poured a pale yellow with a frothy white head which was mostly diminishing. Aroma was of honey, some hay and wet cardboard. Taste was a typical commercial pale larger with wet cardboard and some honey. Body was light with a watery texture and a non existent finish.

Yuck. VB. Nasty. Vile. Foul. This beer belongs in hallowed halls of GTSAFM right next to the Schoff! As soon as I poured this filth the aromas of VB jumped out and punched me in the face and I knew I was in for a treat! Smells kind of like dried corn mixed with a little sweat and vomit. The vomit part I am assuming was from my younger stupid days when I though VB was ok and drank enormous quantities that revisited me shortly thereafter. Very clear beer with a small white head that quickly disappeared and reminded me of soap scum. The flavour was slightly smokey and hangs around for far too long after swallowing (which was hard enough). Dry and watery on the palate with a fizz like soft drink, leaves the mouth feeling defiled and chalky. Avoid like the plague!

No discernable aroma at all. Poured a cheap and nasty headless stench. Worse than most of the Aust macros. What are Blue Tongue doing with this? Tastes of corn with a nasty sweetness. Dire.

Smells terrible, corny, metallic and generally offensive. Just your typical Australian lager really. On tasting it doesn’t prove to be as sweet as expected, and although there is nothing there to make it worthy of a drain pour. However, I am following the bottle’s advice and drinking it quite cold, because I’m very afraid of what would emerge at warmer temperatures. Actually, I do know because this is the second time I’ve had this beer and the other time I had it warmer (and did indeed drain-pour it)! Frankly this is nothing more than a VB clone aimed at claiming the loyalty of the parochial Hunter folk - I hope it doesn’t succeed and fades off into history.

not as bad as i expected, cardboard nose, corn flavours, slight bitterness. Very low carbonation so it is definitely aimed at Guzzler territory. What i don’t mind is that it is low on sweetness and uses restrained hopping which means that there is little to dislike. Problem is not a lot to explicitly like either.

Bit cheeky of Blue Tongue to nick the "Hunter" appellation for this new lager when junior local rival Potters uses it for its range. I guess there’s no trademark on regions of origin, but I can’t see that the confusion does either party any favours. Blue Tongue positions its standard lager as a "premium" product, so this must be pitched at a lower price bracket for the local market. Certainly that’s what the cheap and old fashioned label, replete with the Australian flag, seems to indicate. It’s a fairly sorry looking lager, clear gold with a budget-sized scattering of suds. The aroma confirms that we’re in VB/Carlton Draught territory here - cardboardy malt, sweetcorn and sour uric notes. It’s thin and sweet, with strange chalky flavours, before finishing with a familiar POR metallic ring. Grippy carbonation. "Serve ice cold", it says on the label, and you’d want to because you wouldn’t want these aromas and flavours to develop any further. No worse than VB or Tooheys New but certainly no better. (330ml bottle from Liquor on Parade, Kingsford.)