OTHERSIDE BREWING CO SOCIAL
Dust off the shaker, pick a few limes, track down some Glacé cherries and grab this cold craft – it’s perfect for cocktail hour conversations.
Origin – Myaree, Western Australia
ABV- 4.7%
Size- 375mL can
Style- Lager
It was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius just over half a century ago, as Baby Boomers in the prime of their life hit the road in their VW bugs with nothing but a tent and some hash cookies. They were bound for a festival which billed itself as three days of peace and music. Somewhere around half a million turned up to the remote dairy farm in upstate New York on August 15, 1969. Some made love, others made money, and together they made a little history. There was nothing to compare with Woodstock in Australia until the arrival of the Sunbury rock festival, held on a farm north of Melbourne in 1972. It was 18 hours a day of music and mayhem that would get things rolling for many of today's local jam jamborees such as Spender In The Grass.
Though plenty of grand plans have been hatched at such festivals over the years, few come to fruition once the 'induced inspiration' has worn off. Fewer still come to life to anything like the extent of that envisaged by Dave Chitty and James Legge, the two mates who decided to 'bottle this feeling’ at their own music festival a little more than three years ago. Yet since inception, Otherside Brewing Co. has grown from a one-off beer brewed for a music festival to a brand with two breweries and a reputation for crafting some of the WA's most creative and experimental drops. Opening their first brewery and taproom in a warehouse at Myaree in 2016, sales boomed, with much of the range now readily available across WA, and increasingly so on the East Coast.
But it's at their new digs at Freo.Social that the magic is really happening. It's there in the new 550-capacity concert hall, which includes the Otherside microbrew, where head brewer Rhys Lopez has fulfilled Dave and James' original vision – a one-off beer brewed every week for festival-goers catching the likes of Gomez or Alex Lloyd. While there's plenty of demand for the experimental, the masses not surprisingly continue to reach for this Social Lager. Made precisely for sharing great experiences with others and not letting the beer get in the way, the Social is just that - Social by name and nature! A classic Helles lager, it pours bright straw in colour and is perfectly packed with German Perle hops that provide a little spice and grassy character. The sweet malt is balanced by a firm bitterness that never overpowers and a fine, drying carbonation.
With festival beers this good, who needs hash cookies!