Name: Two Birds Golden Ale

Style: Golden Ale

Country: Australia

ABV: 4.4%

Beer Description: Two Birds is a Melbourne brewery and also Australia’s first female owned brewery and have growing rapidly over the years. In about five years, most decent pubs are expected to have at least the Two Birds Golden Ale or their Sunset Ale in bottles.

While we’ve had this beer too many times to count, we’ve almost taken it for granted so never got around to reviewing it. However, if you’ve been following us on Twitter, you’ll know that we’ve had a bit of luck lately with our local pub trivia, getting second place two weeks in a row. The prize for second place is a slab of the Two Birds Sunset Ale. So we have plenty at home, and we’re not complaining.

While Two Birds are able to branch out into more creative beers, their flagship Golden Ale doesn’t branch out too far. Not that it has to. They’ve made the smart decision to rely on something relatively simple yet tasty as one of their main beers.

This Golden Ale does what it says on the label. It pours an easy golden colour without too much head. Quite simply it looks like beer.

The aroma of the beer presents some light honey from the malts and is combined with citrus from the Motueka hops. Already in the smell of the beer, the drinker knows that this is going to be a well balanced beer. There’s not going to be any big highs or lows here, but this is going to be a good beer to come back to time and time again. It’s already feeling like a session beer, and one you wouldn’t mind having a couple slabs of at home.

The wheat in this beer gives the body a mild creaminess. There’s a certain tartness to the taste of this beer. The tartness of citrus peel, with the dry sensation of citrus peel to boot. Some of the dry and tart sensation is probably coming from the hop bitterness, but much of it is also coming from other flavours in the hops.

According to the brewery, this beer has Summer hops in it which would be giving apricot and spice. The apricot is there, but the spice seems to be disguised by other elements of the beer, particular the slightly heavier than expected body and a mild sweetness. When we say slightly heavier than expected body, we’re not saying it’s too heavy for a Golden Ale, it’s just that it looks pretty light, and it has a bit of malt to chew on.

As mentioned, we have a bit of this beer to floating around the house, and we’re happy to have it. It won’t last very long though as it’s so easy to drink, it’s not hard to have a couple of these on a weeknight, especially as it’s pretty light in alcohol. Oh well, we’ll just have to get second place in trivia a few more times…

Check out other reviews of Golden Ales.

Go to other Two Birds beer reviews.