STOCKADE BREW CO OLD MONEY
While I'm not suggesting you should take up smashing eggs over a mates head to get him talking (although it might be funny!!), cracking this tinnie with him might be just the trick to get a conversation started.
Origin – Marrickville, NSW
ABV –14%
Size –330mL can
Style – Stout
We call it different names - cash, dollars, dough - but what we all have in common is the desire to get our hands on as much of it as possible. Although most of us have to work for every cent, some have been born into wealth. Indeed some families have maintained their wealth over multiple generations dating back hundreds of years - the fortunes of the Roosevelts and Rockefellers date back to when their ancestors accumulated fortunes as merchants, slave traders and ship-owners.
Perhaps it is how these families have accumulated their wealth and how it manifests in their attitudes, mainly so the later generations, that creates such negativity towards the term old money. It's a view captured in the American pop-rock duo Hall & Oates' 1977 single Rich Girl, a song about a spoiled girl who can rely on her old man's old money to do whatever she wants.
Yet despite the blinged up grandpa on the front of this can conjuring up themes of privilege and entitlement, the only thing 'rich' about this Old Money is the flavours within. In fact, like most in the craft beer world, the family behind Tribe Breweries - the owners of Stockade - have worked hard and humbly to get to where they are. Having first purchased the then AIB from receivers in 2012, the Szpitalaks family took their hard-earned dollars, and among other things, poured it into creating a brewery in Goulburn. Rivalling that of the largest independent breweries in the Southern Hemisphere, it provides hundreds of jobs for the regional town.
However the one piece that was notably missing was a home that genuinely represented Stockade. That came in 2018 with the opening of the Marrickville Barrel Room. It's a slick venue, as impressive for the indifferent beer drinker to walk into as it is for the enthusiast keen to sniff out beers like this batch of the robust and boozy Royal Russian stout. Having now been aged for three years in the Woodford Reserve Kentucky bourbon barrels that line the walls, the 2021 offering certainly carries the spirit, yet does so with a sense of balance which becomes ever more surefooted as it warms.
Combined with notes of rich coffee, velvety chocolate, dried fruits and smooth vanilla, it's the kind of affordable luxury of which you'll want to grab a fistful!
