Advent Beer Calendar - Days 5 to 8

In what is becoming an annual tradition I buy a beer can Advent calendar called Canvent from a local beer retailer in Melbourne, Australia called Carwyn Cellars it is 24 beers, all Australian, All Craft, all in cans all never before released brewed specially for this. Each 4 days I'm going to tell you about them. Oh and for the Northern Hemisphere people, reset your minds, it's hot down here for Christmas so don't expect too many malt bombs.

Beers 1 to 4 were covered here: https://steemit.com/beersaturday/@harveyword/advent-beer-calendar-days-1-to-4-at-beersaturday-130

Beer 5:
Brown Bean Bear From Rocky Ridge Brewing in Western Australia.
Smells strongly of wet coffee, which is never really an appealing thing to me. It's in the smell but perhaps not as strong in the taste, so things are looking up. It's actually a reasonable brown ale, it needed to go one way or the other though, either, more hops to play up the American Brown Ale style, or sweeter, maybe with from lactose to make a more milky solid coffee ale, unfortunately it's stuck in between a little.

Beer 6 - Frenchies Apricot Saison - Frenchies are a small brewery and restaurant in Sydney, Australia, they teen to do gentle beers which pair well with food. This beer smells bready, looks a little thin, it's not promising pre promote. The can tells me it's going to be be velvety smooth. It isn't it's more spritzy, reminds me a lot of homebrew, in a fruit infused wheat beer that's gone a bit wrong. This things starting to go downhill a little. Christmas could be ruined

Day 7 - Primeval Slayer Pale Ale from Uraidla brewery is SA - well this what CANVENT is all about a brewery I've never heard of, and if craft beer is about one thing it's about trying new things your never heard of. I of course have heard of a Pale ale, but this is a pale ale is full of kiwi hops, Taiheke (new to me) Nelson Sauvignon and Wai-iti (also new) which combine to make a light, balanced fruity and very enjoyable little pale ale - impressive stuff - Christmas is back on track.

Beer 8 - Cooa Mauve from a brewery in Tasmania called Ocho . Well this is beer I probably wouldn't have chosen myself - which I think is a good thing - pushing frontiers and all that. Its a dark chocolate 3.5% alcohol English style mild ale infused with lavender. Almost all of those descriptors are unappealing to me. but let's give it a go. There is a oily lavender smell on the nose, like I fell into and old ladies chest of drawers and a bit of powdered chocolate in the aftertaste. It's Interesting, I don't love it, but I also don't hate it, I wouldn't request another one either.

So we are eight days in to our beery countdown to Christmas, we have discovered a new brewery, some new hops and new malt, have some mediocre beers but also had some very nice ones, I can barely wait for Beers 9-12, so stay tuned.