Bucketty's IPA by Bucketty's Brewing

This beer blog will now take just a quick intermission from regaling you all with tales from the Royal Tour to actually talk about beer. In this case, a brilliant IPA from a little brewery from Brookvale, that really should be from Bucketty. I’ve been absolutely loving Bucketty’s IPA from Bucketty’s Brewing.

Those of you that are particularly good with New South Wales geography know that Bucketty is a locality (town would probably be too generous) in the wilderness to the south of the Hunter and to the west of the Central Coast. As I somewhat cryptically alluded to, that locality is both the namesake and the intended location of Bucketty’s Brewing.

I do love a beer with a story, and that is 100% the case here. In fact that story was better documented than any summary I could write up in the brewer’s blog here: https://www.buckettys.com.au/blogs/our-story/time-to-get-a-pilot-brewery.

It was a fair journey for Bucketty’s. But at least the final destination was awesome beer.

That being said, here’s a summary. The idea was to set up a brewery in the beautiful wilderness of Bucketty. I’ve had the good fortune of passing through Bucketty a few times and it is a gorgeous place. An ideal place for a bit of a destination brewery as well. Bucketty’s Brewing jumped through every hoop imaginable from clandestine groups of objecting “neighbours” to intransigent councils. But they were finally tripped up for good by the unintended side effects of a well-intentioned zoning provision.

But Bucketty’s took it in stride. They decided to set up shop in Brookvale on Sydney’s north shore instead. It wasn’t how they envisioned it, obviously, but after that long winding road, they started pumping out some really damn good beer.

My favourite of those I’ve tried is the simply named Bucketty’s IPA. This is definitely not one of your soft hazy, New Englandy IPA’s. This is a deep amber coloured resinous, hoppy IPA with a ton of bite. The hoppiness is right up front and unapologetic. And the resiny finish sticks with you in the best way possible.

Bucketty’s IPA does a great job of walking that line between a beer that craft beer hop heads would enjoy and one that’s still accessible to more casual beer fans. That’s a really difficult line to straddle and this beer does it really well. And at 5.8% it’s got a little bit of a kick. But it definitely isn’t a night ender like a lot of craft IPA’s can sometimes be.

I’ve tried a couple of Bucketty’s beers now. All of them were of the IPA extraction. And every one of them was excellent. But if I had to pick one (and for the purposes of this blog post, I did) the flagship Bucketty’s IPA is the clear pick as far as I’m concerned.

It’s obviously what’s inside that’s the biggest selling point. But I’m digging the branding and overall look of the can as well.

I haven’t been able to make my way up to Brookvale just yet to undertake a more comprehensive sampling of what Bucketty’s has to offer. But it’s very much on my list. In the meantime I can guarantee there will be another box of Bucketty’s brewing beer en route to my house in the near future.

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