Richmond Pilsner - Thunder Road Brewing Company

laituegonflable

Australia

2.35/5  rDev +8.8%
look: 3.5 | smell: 3.5 | taste: 1.5 | feel: 2 | overall: 3

Pours a pale golden colour, webbed-out white head that sticks around alright. Steady bead. Looks pilsenery; not bad.

Grain on the nose with a whiff of POR and a touch of green apple. Cereal; fairly bland, but not too bad for the style.

Taste gets a big adjuncty sweetness throughout. Maybe some proper grain upfront but the back tastes all of corn and rice with a sickly POR character to finish up with. Sweet, corny. Not good.

Mouthfeel is thin, with a slight tingle from carbonation. Not much other texture, I guess it's quaffable but feels very bland and uninteresting.

Very bland Aussie beer. Not too different from what the huge multi-nationals are churning out, so I can't really recommend this.

Serving type: on-tap

12-22-2012 06:22:46 | More by laituegonflable

lacqueredmouse

Australia

1.98/5  rDev -8.3%
look: 4 | smell: 1.5 | taste: 1.5 | feel: 3 | overall: 2.5

Had on-tap at the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular. Marketed as a "New World Pilsener", which is a slap in the face to all the great Aussie and New Zealand pilseners out there. I'll be unforgiving in my review as a result.

Unfortunately, though. It starts off rather well. Clean, clear yellow body, with a firm solid white head. Streaming small bubbled carbonation adds some verve. Looks good, and very much to style.

Here, it's all downhill, however. Nose is bombarded with a weak but still offensive character of PoR, or at least the yeasty, earthy horror of CUB's generic makeup, along with an unpleasant countermelody of mint. Overall, it's a really bizarre and totally unpleasant experience.

Light green notes on the front of the palate give way very quickly to nothing more than fizz and more of that earthy, yeasty dryness that leaves a horrible aftertaste. Firm mouthfeel is perhaps the only upside—while I expected it might be bland and empty, there's some rigidity to the structure at least.

Seriously? I really don't get what's up with Thunder Road. They just seem to brew really generic and really unappealing beer, and yet swathe it with the sort of marketing to appeal to beer geeks. I can't help but feel that they're doing the craft beer industry in Australia more harm than good by besmirching its good name with this swill.

"We do beer differently," they say. I say, "Bullshit."

Serving type: on-tap

05-26-2012 07:52:27 | More by lacqueredmouse