Hawkers Barleywine 2023 440ml Can

Country: Australia

Brewery: Hawkers Beer

Style: Barley Wine

Format: 440ml Can

ABV: 11.2%

Once you’ve created a monster, it can’t always be controlled - this untamed barleywine is both gentle giant and brutish beast, wielding sultry notes of dried fruits and fortified wine. Show it due respect, and it will return the favour. Enjoy now or cellar it for a rainy day. Even better, treat yourself to this one and grab a second for future you. Future you will be stoked.

On the artwork: Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein is the classic of all classics, taking a rightful place among the top ranks of the world’s greatest literature. Using the iconography of Frankenstein’s Monster was simply an obvious choice, though the story certainly raises the question of who the real monster is. For the unfamiliar, Dr Frankenstein, young and perilously motivated, sets off to university and begins pouring himself into creating life (short version, at least). Instead of the joy of triumph he expected to find upon his eventual success, he finds immediate and monumental regret, loathing his own creation prompting him to flee his lab. The monster escapes and immediately finds he is not accepted in the world, percolating into an unattainable longing to be loved and an unwavering quest for revenge on the doctor for bringing him into a joyless and painful existence. Both are miserable, and nobody wins. But, if you’re drinking this Barleywine, you win. Maybe if Shelley’s characters all had sat around and cracked one of these together, they could have worked through some stuff.