Matilda Bay Fat Yak Pale Ale

Brewed by Matilda Bay Brewing Co. (CUB)
Style: American Pale Ale
North Fremantle, Australia

Bottle. From the advertising I expectedto dislike this, it didn’t shout out quality beer. I was wrong. Whilst it’s not a great beer, it’s pretty decent. It’s clear gold with a passable off white head. The aroma is a pleasant mix of honey, caramel and flowery hops. The palate is unusual as the body is medium whilst the carbonation gives it a creamy mouthfeel. The taste is where it gets diffilcult. The initial taste is great; sweet malty foretaste, with some fruitiness making a nice transition to a reasonable hoppy bitterness, but then it all disappears. The taste collapses in your mouth when you expect the hoppy bitterness to give a long finish. I guess this may be a good idea for a session beer, but it left me a little disappointed.

Damn it, I like this more than I should. Yes, it’s a crappy, watered down version of their Alpha Pale Ale. Yes, it’s probably aimed at punters who think Little Creatures is too bitter but they’re really into beer all the same and hey, this is still pretty out there. But it’s like every sixth Kylie Minogue single - daggy and dumb but you can’t help going along with it. That’s the best excuse I can come up with. Pathetic. It poured scrumpy-orange with a loose head and smelled of faint caramel, passionfruit and tinned peaches. The mouthfeel is harsh and over-fizzy. It’s only marginally more flavourful than Coopers Pale Ale. Watery lemon barley water flavours, doughy malts and Seltzer notes before a finish so gentle it could appear on a Lambchop album. It’s really not very good. (330ml bottle)

This beer smelt like the weaker version of honey. It tasted like a weaker version of honey for 0.5 of a second. After that it started to taste like an oyster, this lasts for about another second. After this, an after taste of grass was left over for the duration of 3seconds. Because of this, for about a minute, every 2 to 5 seconds, the after taste of grass comes back with occasional burping back up of the flavour of oyster. Dark brown tone makes the beer look heavy. Nice White head indicates that the beer was a) made excellently or b) the manufacturer added a lot of carbon dioxide. Like cracker barrel cheese, comes to you nicely advertised and humble and once you trust it, it takes a poo in your mouth

330ml bottle. Low carbonation, no head. clear orange color. Caramel aroma. Crisp and clean taste. Unfortunatly, not much flavours. Disappointed...

Stubby. Pale amber with a dense off-white head. Faintly metallic citrus and stone fruit aromas. Thin body with slight early hop bitterness. Modest dry aftertaste. Very lightweight for the style. But I guess a better-than-usual bog-standard Australian session beer was what they were going for here and on that measure, they’ve done well. A gateway beer.

Bottle. Pours golden orange with a small white head. Aroma is quite hoppy and has notes of citrus, honey, barley and lavender. The flavour is pretty similar to the aroma with the graininess standing out. Medium bodied with a little bitterness, this beer isn’t anything too special but is a pleasant enough, thirst quenching pale ale and is better than a lot of the other beers brewed by Matilda Bay.

On tap at Coopers Arms Newtown. May have to try this out of a bottle, or somewhere with a bit more turnover of ale. It was all a bit overpowering for mine; aroma like over ripe peaches, tastes like apricot syrup.

Tasted 01/09/2009. Bottles - 6 pack of 330ml from a BWS in Maroochydore. Amber, bright, disappearing head. Clean, mildly malty, a little thin, with a hint of malt flavour and a dry carbonic (rather than bitter) finish. Improves a little as it warms but it is a shadow of a good beer. At 5%abv I would expect a lot more character in a beer that sells itself as a hoppy pale ale.