OCEAN REACH BREWING DREAMY DAZE
Glass bottles are gone, but much of the stigma around mental health remains. Share this beer with a mate and together let’s make positive convo’s as common as cans!
Origin – Cowes, Victoria
ABV – 5.0%
Size – 375mL can
Style – Pale Ale
I'm sure we're all familiar with the ‘desert island’ concept. Where you pick a limited number of things in a chosen category to bring with you to a remote island, where you presumably would spend the rest of your days with no access to anything else in that category. Though it's only fiction for most, it's was a reality for the craft beer drinkers of Phillip Island. Despite being only 140km south-east of Melbourne, until not so long ago the only way the four thousand locals and 3.5 million visitors per year could get a beer on the island was to have it brought over from the mainland.
Despite visitors perhaps having spotted other businesses on the enclave using brewery as part of their name, Simon Bismire, the founder and owner of Ocean Reach, brought brewing to Phillip Island for the first time in its history. Having spent evenings perfecting his small-batch home brews in his parent's garage in Bendigo, it took years of planning and a courageous leap of faith for Simon, his wife Alex, and his father and business partner Wayne to set up permanently in a place where the family had holidayed most weekends. But since squeezing a brewery, bar and kitchen into the tight space that was formerly a clothing store in late 2016, Ocean Reach, situated in the island's main township of Cowes, has been overflowing.
Indeed, such is the popularity both on the island and further afield that Simon has established a production brewery to keep up. Across the bar, there's a core range along with a constant rotation of specials that come and go as frequently as the tide. The latest of these masterpieces is this easy-drinking Dreamy Daze. Filled with new world hops, it’s a hazy pale that provides a substantial hit of pineapple, passionfruit and candied orange. Notwithstanding the soft mouthfeel and well-rounded body, it finishes dry and is surprisingly bitter for the style.
Whether it be Phillip Island or a deserted one, if I had only one beer to see out my life with, I'd be pretty satisfied to be stuck with an endless six-pack of these!
