Mad blokes... but quite ordinary lager
IHAD never heard of a mob called The Mad Hueys, at least until last weekend when Hugh the Neighbour and I sat down to enjoy a lager that was new to the pair of us.
To be truthful, I only really picked it off the shelves at my local bottle-o because of the name.
Hueys… Hugh… Mad… Hmm – anyway, I know you can join the dots, thus it came to pass that HTN and I sat down to enjoy Captain’s Lager made by The Mad Hueys.
The label and the six-pack wrapper don’t give much away as to the origin nor provenance of either the beer or the brewer, so out came the trusty mobile phone for a quick consultation with Dr Google.
Much to our amazement, the first thing that came up was a line of fishing clothing manufactured and promoted by a fishing team named The Mad Hueys (if you already know all this, skip to the end of the article for the actual beer review).
These are blokes who have managed to cross that line between idiots and social media legends.
You see, they do crazy, albeit funny, stuff and have amassed a huge following on Facebook (140,000-plus followers) and YouTube.
So this beer is actually a product extension for their brand as opposed to a labour of love after years of trial and error in the pursuit of the perfect ale.
This is not to denigrate the drink – but it does trouble me slightly to find this in the “craft beer” aisle of a major retailer. In fact, in some ways it is the “anti-craft beer” beer.
The blurb on the beer starts off with the statement: “Not another f#cking IPA – it’s a Hueys beer” and: “If you tell someone you’re a beer lover, they think you only have eyes for fruity, hoppy, IPAs and weirdo stouts. We have made it our mission to change that perception and take the Australian beer drinking public back to the days when having a beer meant having a lager.”
The beer is made by Black Hops Brewery at Burleigh Heads and is a pleasant enough 4.2% ABV crisp, dry, Australian-style lager with nothing to complain about, with nothing particularly memorable there either.
They have certainly fulfilled their goal of taking us back to the days of unchallenging drops built for quaffing rather than pontificating over – all in all, what one would expect as a commercial add-on to a clothing store.