18 February 2018 - Best Beer HQ
Liberty Uprising West Auckland Pale Ale Review
I haven’t had a bad beer by Auckland’s own Liberty Brewing Co. yet, so I had high hopes when I opened up this extra-large-sized can of its Uprising West Auckland Pale Ale.
ABV: 5.7%
Blurb on the can: Our once grand old public houses now stand filled with flavourless brown froth. A pitiful reward for all our hard-working West Auckland brethren!
The time has come for an uprising against this oppression by scheming central city capitalist corporations who dribble Westies beer made by enslaved machines!
Join the new wave of uprising! Prohopetarians unite! Save West Auckland from mediocrity, follow the true path to rewarding ales my comrades!
Taste test: Fans of crappy beers like Lion Red, Speights, and Tui should look elsewhere, because this is far from the “flavourless brown froth” that Liberty calls out on the back of this can.
Indeed, Liberty Uprising is a malty, citrussy, hoppy pale ale, with a moderately bitter finish. It’s fairly light-bodied for a beer of this strength, I suppose, but that’s okay in this warm weather. I found it very refreshing, but I’ve been drinking a lot of heavy IPAs and APAs this summer, for some reason, so it could be because I’ve become used to heavier beers.
I drank this beer straight from the can, west-Auckland style, so I can’t accurately comment on its aroma or colour. However, I can tell you that it went well with the cheese-and-crackers I was eating, because I’m not actually a bogan.
The verdict: Liberty Uprising West Auckland Pale Ale isn’t quite up there with the brewery’s best beers – Knife Party, Yakima Monster, or Halo – but it’s still shit hot.
Beer/movie combination: Speaking of uprisings, I’m a sucker for the cheesy Planet of the Apes movies from the 1970s. I love the hammy acting, the cheap effects, and the even cheaper-looking monkey masks.
Although the best movies in the series come before this one, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (the fourth of the original five films) is when we finally get to see the beginnings of the ape uprising that’ll usurp mankind as the dominant species on Earth…