Enterprise Brewery Knappstein Reserve Lager

Brewed by Enterprise Brewery (Knappstein Wines)
Style: Premium Lager
Clare, South Australia, Australia

An amazing lager. Without doubt the best I have ever tasted, so perfectly balanced with a gorgeous fruity bouquet of hops aromas.

Just love it! Just come back from Tasmania where I was determined to search out all local brews. Stumbled across Enterprise lager (yes, I know it’s from South Australia) after trying yet another disappointing Tassie beer and thought well, this is just great! Now trying to buy it locally (Sydney) but can’t get hold of any.

Brilliant packaging, pleasant Sauvin aroma upon opening the bottle. Clear, bright gold colour with small but lacy head. Wine-like flavours with loads of melon, berries and passionfruit. Only gripe I have is I just had to drink the whole 4-pack in one sitting!

Tropical fruit flavours with citrus notes that leap out. Palate finishes long and cleanly. A bavarian style lager by Paul Smith, out of the new Knappstein microbrewery, definately someone i’ll be keeping an eye on. Excellent drop!

As with many others the term premium lager and the winery source had me feeling very sceptical. Add to this the presentation and you can hear the wine drinkers voices waxing lyrically and condescendingly about how good it is to drink a proletariat bevvy once in a while. WRONG, WRONG WRONG. From the moment this is poured there is a feeling that this one has broken the mould. Very pale body and creamy head but the crispness and herbaceousness of the nose are readily present. The slightly higher ABV does seem to give this a degreee of oiliness in the glass which does not disappoint when savoured. The mouthfeel is thicker than the typical premium lager which, together with the muted carbonation, also lends itself to the comparison with a good dry white wine. This is a delightful beer from start to finish. For bulk sales this is marketed in a 16 pack, 4x4 rather than the common 6x4. Perhaps this is due to the price point which allows the carton to retail for around $53. Not cheap but this is not your typical swilling beer anyway. After all, it is a premium lager.

WOW ! Big juicy fat fruit flavours with a well balanced long finish, but its not the finish that I like. Its the intial hit of passionfruit followed by what reminds me riesling grape juice in the middle. Great session beer if you can afford it

I was as skeptical as the next man about this "premium lager" and was more then pleasantly suprised by the resulting beer. Big aroma of blackberry, gooseberry and a pleasant compound that I find easiest to describe as Lantana or Nettle. Fantastic mouthfeel and a long lingering bitterness.

A saggy old pale ale I sup upon typing this, brewed with those good time mates Willamette and Cascade, but it just doesn’t cut right now against a new, more stylish and chic friend I’d love to call my own. I downed a few bottles of this weeks ago - not satisfied at one - and I swear the flavour and bouquet still lingers strongly in my mind.
It pours a pale-yellow gold, not exactly bright but it twinkles lustrously off the lights. Carbonation is fine, very fine, well lagered, well conditioned. Head develops well off the pour, a nice, level, thick pad of white that holds arms and never lets go, daubing well as the beer recedes to empty. Ooooh, exotic is this aroma that wafts, sends me tizzy! All pear drops, grapefruit, rose petals, and a big whack of passionfruit, fresh-pulped. A little wheat softens it (I don’t know if wheat was even used, but I got an inkling?). A wine maker, I swear there is even notes of Riesling in there that tickles on end, a little spice perhaps. All fruit in the mouth, lagering has not reduced this or stricken this of any fruity esteric delight. The palate is light, very creamy and sultry. Passionfruit is dominant again here as does some grapefruit and pine notes play edging at US hop-like characteristics. Quite juicy it oddly seems supple and dry mid-palate before heating up again as it drifts into darkness. Cracked pepper, rose petal bite makes use of the saliva glands, giving a good edge to it, the swallow all fruit, slightly sweet and mildly vinous with a good linger of pine adding more fuel to the furnace. This is just all class, stylish from bottle to glass. Beautifully balanced, bountifully aromatic and equally flavoursome, a truly nice drop. A surprise, so extra points for that!!!
I need me a few pounds of Sauvin. (33cL, The Beer Store Morley)