If the only category you have for beer is “beer” – then you’ve got a lot of learning to do.
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There is a crazy amount of different sorts – or styles – of beer. We're not talking ales and lager, which are more two overarching categories.
Nope, we're talking hefeweizen, IPA, stout, barley wine, kellerbier, gose, geuze, lambic, pale ale and heaps of others.
Some of those – like IPA – even have style subsets based on where it comes from (eg is it a US style of IPA?) or what ingredients were used (eg black IPA or “Cascadian Dark Ale” as the uber geeks like to call it).
The list is a long one – and brewers keep adding to it. Which brings us to this beer, which is an XPA.
It surfaced a few years ago and caused a bit of confusion, with a lot of people asking “so, just what the hell is an XPA?”.
To be honest, I'm still not entirely sure what it is. It’s said to be a beer that fills in the gap between a pale ale and an IPA; but there is already a few other beers plugging that gap.
So let’s just forget about exactly what an “Extra Pale Ale" is, or where it fits and focus on the Philter version.
It comes from head brewer Samara Fuss, who had previously brewed at Young Henrys and True South among others.
This beer, which comes in a cool retro-themed can, throws some nice pear flavours and has a strong backbone of bitterness to it.
They advertise the beer as easy drinking, and it is that. But I think it’s a description that sells the beer a bit short.
For me, an easy drinker is a beer you can throw down your throat without there being too much on to distract your taste buds.
That’s not the case here – there’s more than enough going on in the palate here to keep your interest.
Glen Humphries is the 2016 AIBA Australian Beer Writer of the Year and author of The Slab.