It was my partners birthday on the weekend, which is difficult to celebrate as we can't exactly go out anywhere at the moment. Melbourne, Australia where I live is currently in the middle of the second wave of COVID19 so all restaurants and pubs are closed to dine in patrons and in fact we need to be home by 8pm every night as for the first time ever the city is under curfew.
So a weird birthday it was always going to be - but that wasn't going to let us stop celebrating we ordered up some excellent Italian food from at local restaurant and wandered down there to pick it up, and even more importantly we had a couple of special beers and even more special, each of them came with a matching spirit for so it was going to be a boilermaker night.
Both beers came from a local Melbourne brewery called Boatrocker, who are one of the top 5 or so breweries in Melbourne (by quality of beer, not size) and we had selected one of their classics and one I had not tried before but had high hopes for.
Oh and if you don't know what a boilermaker is it is a beer with a accompanying shot of whiskey. So let's get down to business.
First up is Boatrocker Oakey Dokey Stout which is a 8% stout aged in oak barrels paired with Boatrocker's spiced Rum.
So you now say Rum is not whiskey, so that's not a boilermaker, and I'll say - shut up I'll do what I like (Rum makes people angry).
Takeaway antipasti was amazing
There was a dense blackness to the beer, surprisingly there wasn't a huge aroma. It is a pleasant gentle beer, full and silky with a hint of sweetness and vanilla and then just a little hint of boozy in the back end - a very nice brew but really could be just a little bigger.
I don't drink a lot of straight dark rum, in fact I don't drink much dark rum at all, not since I was a teenager and we all drank Bundy and Coke. But after drinking this I think I should. It is sweet and smokey and like boozey sugarcane.
Oh and the spice - it's not what you are thinking it would be it's vanilla, and apple and smoke rather than spice and cinnamon - it's just so good.
Ramjet 2019
This is a Imperial Stout that they bring out once a year - the 2019 version is an 11.5% monster that has been aged in Whiskey barrels, Whiskey from Melbourne distiller Starward and we will be pairing with Starward Whiskey of course.
The beer is big and syrupy and boozy it has a savoury syrupness if that is a thing. It has similar tastes to the Starward, but toned down. Over a few sips it's gets gentler or it might be the whiskey working on me.
*This went so well with the florentines that the Mother in law made. *
Anyway it was a lovely birthday - we did have plans to head to New York for my partner's birthday next year - hopefully this thing might be over by then and we can get back on a plane.
Oh and beer saturday check it out for more beery stories.
