
8 November 2016 - Best Beer HQ
Yeastie Boys Stairdancer Pacific Ale Review
Cases of dated Yeastie Boys Stairdancer Pacific Ale were heavily reduced on a one-day sale site in New Zealand, so a mate and I pitched in to buy a dozen bottles each for $30.
That’s a heck of a lot cheaper than premium Yeastie Boys beer usually retails at – but was it worth it? You bet your ass it was.
ABV: 4.4%
Blurb on the bottle: A light and breezy ‘lawnmower beer’, where delicate golden malts are intertwined with orange and passionfruit hop notes.
Tastes like: It’s apt that Stairdancer pours the colour of hazy summer sunshine, because it’d make for one hell of a good summertime beer. It’s light and breezy, exactly as its makers describe it on the bottle, but it’s also fairly bright and tasty, medium sweet, dry, and very refreshing.
Even drinking it in the middle of spring, the Stairdancer’s tanginess and subtle notes of orange and lemon put me in the mood for summer barbecues with family and friends, watching cricket, and hanging out at the beach.
The verdict: Yeastie Boys’ Stairdancer Pacific Ale is an easy-drinking, crisp and refreshing brew that won’t exactly be anyone’s favourite beer of all time – but neither will anyone hate it. In fact, I should bring a few of these up to the bach this summer for my Lion Red-drinking dad; I’m sure even he wouldn’t be able to complain that this one is “too hoppy”, “too full on”, or “too complicated”. It’s just a damn good beer.
Beer/video game combination: I’m going to take a break from Best Beer HQ tradition and, instead of recommending a movie to go with this beer, I’m going to recommend an old video game I used to play when I was a kid: Shadow Dancer for the Sega Master System.
Released in 1991, this side-scrolling action game was the sequel better-known arcade game Shinobi, in which a ninja and his faithful attack dog fight to save the city from a terrorist group. Watching the following YouTube clip brings back a lot of memories – mostly of beating the first couple of levels without too much difficulty, and then of throwing down the controller in disgust when the game became too bloody difficult.
Like drinking this beer, playing Shadow Dancer again would be a fun and uncomplicated way to waste a couple of hours.
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