Great Northern Original
Carlton & United Breweries, Ltd.

Poured from bottle into a pint glass
Appearance- The beer pours a clear golden color with a one finger head of white foam. The head has a great level of retention, leaving tons of lace on the sides of the glass.
Smell- The smell is a mix of caramel and cardboard mixed with a bit of metal and grain.
Taste - The taste begins with a cracker malt and metallic taste mixed with a bit of caramel, corn, and bread . As the taste advances some paper and more metal, along with a bit of hay come to the tongue leaving one with a somewhat off taste to linger.
Mouthfeel- The body is light with a moderate carbonation level.
Overall - Not really a great brew. May be better to avoid.

Great Northern is my go to for beer, its got a nice taste and is incredibly refreshing.

Pinched out of the Father-in-Law's fridge in January 2025 and drank in March that year.

L: Amber yellow with a fluffy white head. Rings left on the way down. Lots of carbonation flows up the glass. It's a nice-looking beer...

S: The nose is dusty grain and hay with a touch of sweet apple. It pretty much smells like any Australian beer you could have bought 30 years ago.

T: The taste is inoffensively sweet. Grain and apple combine into an almost bitterless, candy-like facsimile of what a beer should taste like. This has mass-market appeal in spades but exemplifies everything wrong with that kind of beer by dumbing down the flavour and bitterness to something a non-beer drinker could almost - but not quite - handle.

M: The mouthfeel is mildly carbonated, perfectly pairing with the blandness of the palate to hit that middle-of-the-road mark again in every respect.

O: The original Great Northern beer, long since overtaken by its even sweeter, even blander, lighter-in-alcohol cousin, Great Northern Super Crisp. I would drink this beer if there were nothing else available, but there are almost literally thousands of beers in Australia alone that are better than this.

Cheers!
#684

Very clean, crisp summer beer. I had it almost ice cold, and it was great. This is an uncomplicated beer that satisfies. Don't ask me for a gourmet beer snob type of review, because this one is just beer. Just really good beer. This one was gifted to me from a relative. If I were to go to Australia, you can be sure this would be a go-to beerr.

 

Great Northern Original & their Super Crisp midstrength are the successor to the Cairns Draught, following the takeover by Carlton and United. I like to call it Australia's Corona. It's light and refreshing and admittedly, it's my go-to lawn mower/pool beer in the middle of summer. I certainly drank a lot of these in Cairns last time I was up there. It's light refreshing news perfect for the soupy, humid tropical north of Australia.

Appearance:
Stereotypical Aussie Adjunct lager look. Golden straw, fluffy and soapsudsy white head. Clear, golden piss.

Aroma:
Smells like a vat of anything Carlton and United churn out. Could be Carlton Draught or VB.
Typical grainy, grassy, slightly lemon rind smell courtesy of Pride of Ringwood. Light bread malts. Its a rinse and repeat CUB brew.

Taste: very sweet. Almost like syrup. Slight pungent taste from the hops. Almost no bitterness. Just sweetness.

Mouthfeel. Thin, watery, slightly syrupy. Not nearly as carbonated as VB or Carlton Draught, which makes knocking them back Super easy. It's not a beer to sip'saviour. It's actually one of the least carbonated Aussie Macro lagers out there.

Overall: it's thirst quenching in tropical heat. Not terrible, not great. Drink it in a hot, tropical climate, lying next to a pool it passes the pub test. Other than that it's just another Carlton and United brew. Perhaps without the metallic ring you hit from VB and Carlton.

#️⃣6️⃣0️⃣

$9 AUD for two schooners (on-draught) at Gilligan's, Cairns.

C / AVERAGE