#temptingtuesday – October

What the heck is #temptingtuesday I hear you say? (well, in my head you do). It’s combining my love affair with Twitter, the fun of chatting with great people and my eternal affection for beer. The mechanics are simple, just like its author, where on the first Tuesday of each month I ask the big wide Twitterverse a beer related question. I get inspired and blog the results.

Christmas decorations, wrapping paper and silly little trinkets have made their way into Coles and Woolworths supermarkets which means we must be in October.

October’s #temptingtuesday was …

What’s your favourite beer that’s under 4% abv?

“Small Beer” is a ye olde type of English beer, very low in booze and common until the 19th century. It was a beer for anyone regardless of age or class. It was also considered a good alternative to water since water quality could be very poor. Health advice has certainly changed …

This question was inspired by two things –

1) I recently discovered the wonderfulness that is Brewdog Dead Pony Club, a 3.8% California Pale Ale from Scotland.

2) Last week Margaret River’s Colonial Brewing introduced their recent limited release Small Ale into the permanent line up. The Small Ale is a reduced alcohol IPA clocking in at 3.5% abv.

I recently wrote a post about my new found love for Brewdog Dead Pony Club and the lower alcohol beers I’ve enjoyed so far but thanks to #temptingtuesday I’ve now got a long list to seek out!

Colonial’s Small Ale is now available at all good Colonial outlets and is, as Brewery Manager Richard Moroney describes it, “deliciously responsible”

It feels like low booze beers are hard to come across in the craft beer world, a world in which demand for things to be “bigger” seems to grow. I think about low ABV (alcohol by volume) beers when I know I’ll have to drive but with more and more extremely tasty options available it’s time to remember they are no longer just for times of responsibility.

So, what were people’s favourite beers under 4% abv? Prepare to copy and paste these into your beer shopping lists folks!

Feral Brewing (WA) Watermelon Warhead

Cheeky Monkey (WA) Travelling Monk

Birbeck’s Brewing (SA) The Captain

Brewdog (SCOT) Dead Pony Club

Emerson’s (UK) Bookbinder

Mornington’s (VIC) Little Irish Red Ale

Murray’s (NSW) Punch & Judy’s Ale

The Monk (WA) Mild

Old Coast Road (WA) Bitter

Moor (UK) Revival

Colonial Brewing (WA) Small Ale

Redemption (UK) Trinity

And special mention to my friend Scott Bennett and his homebrew The Postman that cracked a mention or two!