Monthly Archives: November 2008

Actual Diary entries

Three Boys Golden Ale

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Three Boys Golden Ale
Three Boys Golden Ale

Pure summer gorgeousness. A very pale straw, and slightly hazy here since the small amount of sediment was a wee bit agitated-in. As Scott (the Bar Manager) puts it “it’s fruity, it’s flirty, it’s fantastic”. Absurdly refreshing, and apparently a “single malt” beer (which is fairly cute), it’s got an appropriate little golden-kiwifruit hint to it, and is the early frontrunner for Beer Of The Summer.

Three Boys Golden Ale
Diary entry #66, Three Boys Golden Ale

Verbatim: Three Boys Golden Ale. 23/11/08 $11 @ Malthaus 4.7% Very pale straw, a wee bit hazy. It’s gorgeous. As Scotty says, it’s fruity, it’s flirty, it’s fantastic. Very light, simple flavour. Absurdly refreshing. “Single malt” apparently. Amelia says it should have breasts — the only thing that’d make it better. “It looks like a beautiful Swedish girl.” A bit of golden kiwifruityness.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: And there’s Amelia’s Diary debut, in fine form. She’s also in the very idiosyncratic school of beer-describing, obviously. We both worked during the day at one pub down the far end of town (her starting early mornings, me on for lunch), so she was a frequent accomplice for a pre-work cup of tea or a not-working afternoon beer (or, occasionally, a pre-work beer, let’s be honest). Our flat-hunting would later on spur a few more excellent beer discoveries, and then (a year and a half after that), it was her that bought me Diary II and so helped provoke the online existence of this thing.

I should really buy her a(nother) beer.

And yeah, this was totally Beer Of The Summer, if you ask me. Which you kinda did.

Actual Diary entries

Three Boys IPA

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Three Boys IPA
Diary entry #65, Three Boys IPA

Verbatim: Three Boys IPA. 15/11/08 $8.50 @ Malthouse, 5.2% Had it lots, but it warrants an entry. Gorgeousness personified. Slightly less traditional than a Tuatara IPA, but proudly so. Wonderfully balanced (cf Epic…), slight grapefruity hint, not hoppy for the sake of it. Full damn marks.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: I’d probably run my little camera out of battery — the 15th does have both the Tuatara ‘Ardennes’ and the Pink Elephant ‘Golden Tusk’ noted down already. It does take a beating, that thing; probably 90% of its work is done under appallingly low light conditions. It’d be pretty tiring.

And here’s the first mention, I think, of the anti-Epic strain that definitely runs as an undercurrent through my early days at the Malthouse. For the record, though we’ll get into more detail later, I think their beers have vastly improved — but there was a whole bunch of Emperor’s New Clothesy carry-on around when I first encountered them.

Actual Diary entries

Pink Elephant ‘Golden Tusk’

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Pink Elephant 'Golden Tusk'
Pink Elephant 'Golden Tusk'

I should’ve been all over this. It’s from a pokey little operation in Blenheim where his bit seems to be making overstrong brews. This one clocks in at 7.1% and is the lowest-booze of the three we have in stock. It’s pitched as a ‘special bitter’, and starts with a nice big nose full of apricots and other orange-coloured stonefruity things. On your first sip, it’s got a pleasantly bitter punch and then… pretty much nothing. Alarmingly thin for a seven-percenter, one wonders how they managed that. You can keep going back for the aroma and the punch-upon-sipping, but your brain just keeps asking why that’s all there is.

Pink Elephant 'Golden Tusk'
Diary entry #62, Pink Elephant 'Golden Tusk'

Verbatim: Pink Elephant Golden Tusk Special. 15/11/08 $8 @ Malthouse 7.1% 330ml. A special bitter, with punch. Very big nose full of apricots and orangey stonefruits. Taste is pleasantly bitter, but very short. Surprisingly thin for a 7%-er.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: Weirdly, this entry and #63 seem backwards, in the book. There’s all sorts of funny little time-loops going on with the uploading of this Diary thing. It’s beginning to do my head in.

Actual Diary entries

Duchy Originals Ale

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Duchy Originals Ale
Duchy Originals Ale

I’ve already said how utterly indifferent I am to the organic fad, so when Prince Charles’ outfit present me with a ‘classic ruby ale’ to try, I’m flooded with conflicting emotions: apathy, curiousness, anti-Monarchism (but I always have that), a desire to not give money to Prince Charles but still to have his beer, and — above all, thirst. My conflict was solved when a customer bought one for me, out of the blue. Nice.

Which is a good word for the beer: nice. It won’t change your life, but it’s solid. Not overly ‘ruby’ for a ‘ruby’ ale, you’d have to say, but it’s a good little quaffer.

Duchy Originals Ale
Diary entry #63, Duchy Originals Ale

Verbatim: Duchy Originals Organic Ale. 14/11/08 $12.5 @ Malthouse. 5.0% 500ml. Shouted by a customer, so my republican cred is intact. An organic ruby ale. Classic English. Don’t give a toss about organic-ness, of course, but this is very pleasant. Quite accessible, I think. Some reviews say its hardcore. Maybe my taste is skewed.

Actual Diary entries

Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’

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Emerson's 'Bookbinder'
Emerson's 'Bookbinder'

Verbatim: Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’. With a book to read, naturally. Easily one of my favourites, again. (And I’ll have to get another one to photograph, since we’ve just recently gotten in some neat branded Emerson’s glassware. The sacrifices I make.) A classic English-style bitter ale, at session strength. When people come to our bar and are disappointed to learn we don’t have Sassy Red, they leave having met the Bookbinder, and being Better People for it. It’s got assertive, but still mild, hoppiness and maltiness and is just the sort of all-around beery awesomeness that a person could drink until the Universe goes pfft. And I intend to.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: The beer is still a favourite. And so is that book, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. That was George’s copy, which I borrowed and absolutely adored. It’s purest genius. And rather oddly and coincidentally, I just finally bought my own copy the day before posting this entry and writing this note. Peculiar.

Actual Diary entries

Tuatara ‘Ardennes’

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Tuatara 'Ardennes'
Tuatara 'Ardennes'

Verbatim: Tuatara ‘Ardennes’. A belgian-style strong golden ale from local favourites Tuatara. Just recently back on tap at work, and thereby eligible for staff drinks. Huzzah. One of our regulars (a formidable Beer Nerd) rates it as the #2 All-Around Best Value Beer Buy on the Planet, which isn’t a bad nod. It’s a lovely bright gold, slightly heftier than usual (at 6.5%, so not as full-on as the Belgian-Belgians often get), and with a nice smooth, slightly warming, peachy kind of yumminess to it.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: #1 on the Best Buy list mentioned above was Schneider Aventinus, if memory serves. But it often doesn’t, so don’t quote me on that.

Tuatara 'Ardennes'
Diary entry #64, Tuatara 'Ardennes'

It also occurs to me that I’m posting this, and writing these Afterthoughts, almost exactly two years since I took that photo. Two more years of backlog before I catch up with the steadily-marching-on ‘present’. Sheesh.

And then — mysteriously, a few weeks later — an actual Diary entry for this same beer pops up. But I didn’t take a photo at the time, so I’ve put the entry here, in the spirit of consolidation.

Actual Diary entries

Dux de Lux ‘Sou’wester’ Stout & Three Boys Pils

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Dux de Lux Souwester & Three Boys Pils
Dux de Lux Souwester & Three Boys Pils

Verbatim: Dux de Lux ‘Sou’wester’ Stout. The Dux was nominated in the “Best Pub” category this year at the bar awards, and so was a certain little pub in which this photograph was taken. But the Dux won. And they brew. Fairly well. The Stout isn’t nearly as smooth as the Emerson’s or the Pitch Black; it’s a lot ‘livelier’ where the other two (especially the Emerson’s) go silky. This may well be Your Thing. It’s not quite mine.

And Three Boys Pils. A not-well-enough-known microbrewery from Christchurch (and so a fellow survivor of that Blight on the Universe, with Dux de Lux), and home to a similar range of uniformly better beers, I say. The Pils is a solid lager offering, with a good deal more presence and punch — and altogether more Interestingness than Dux Lager (just for instance). Closer to the lagers most people are used to than the Emerson’s would be, but conspicuously head, shoulders, and Big Tall Green Bottle above the Heinekens and Steinlagers of the fridge.

Actual Diary entries

Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’ Stout

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Invercargill 'Pitch Black', handpulled
Invercargill 'Pitch Black', handpulled

Verbatim: Invercargill Brewery ‘Pitch Black’ Stout. Again from the hand pumps at Old Malty, and in many ways one step further down Black Beer Boulevard from the aforementioned (and aforedrunken) Tuatara Porter. Bigger, darker, and stouty, basically. But still (I think) fairly accessible. Something of a favourite for a few of my female friends. But that might just indicate my peculiar taste in female friends. Who knows?

Afterthoughts, November 2010: Here’s a very-minor example of a common rebellion, with me; I’ll have absolutely no part of this frequent talk of what might be a ‘girly beer’. I just know too many exceptions in both directions (girls who drink “non-girly” beer, and non-girls who drink “girly” beer) and am too-easily bored by blokey sexist blahblahblah to tolerate it much.

Also, the whole question of what divides ‘stout’ from ‘porter’ is a controversial one, despite my breezy invocation of a commonly-understood difference, above. I’ve always had it in my head that stouts will tend to be drier and coffee-ish-er, while porters will tend towards the sweeter and chocolatey-er end of the spectrum. Apparently, though — just like all other putative distinctions — that’s not really very historical of me. Martyn Cornell has written a pretty damn definitive account entitled ‘So what IS the difference between porter and stout?’, which — spoiler alert — basically concludes: there isn’t one.

Beer history is tricky like that. And I’m just going to keep on using my non-historical terms anyway. I’m stubborn like that.

Actual Diary entries

Tuatara Porter

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Tuatara Porter
Tuatara Porter

Verbatim: Tuatara Porter. A quiet little achiever, this one. On hand pump at das Malthaus, and so lovely and smooth and, well, flat. A nice way to ease yourself (and others) into drinking dark beer, it’s subtly coffee-ish and toast-ish and slightly chocolatey. A surprisingly good pre-lunch pint, too.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: After a long run of having the Tuatara IPA as my habitual after-work drink (roughly around the time of this ‘entry’), I think the porter has eventually become my favourite of the range. Especially on the handpull at work.

And in the background there is the deliciously nerdy fivethirtyeight.com (now deservingly subsumed into the New York Times webpage). I do love watching politics unfold, and am definitely fond of actual data, rather than talking heads wobbling their faces and venting their half-baked opinions. FiveThirtyEight and (the earlier, but somewhat more basic) electoral-vote.com thus necessitated that we be armed with a laptop as we watched the election. We did get some funny looks, but we also started a trend; just this week at the pub, people were gathered around, just as we were, to watch the American midterms. The most-recent local national election was up on the big screens, too — despite the result, there, it was nice to have something playing other than sport upon sport upon sport.

Actual Diary entries

Emerson’s Pilsner

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Emerson's Pilsner
Emerson's Pilsner

Verbatim: Emerson’s Pilsner. The other organic offering from Emerson’s (together with the previously-noted Oatmeal Stout) so they made something of a nice pair as First Drinks for George and I, having installed ourselves early in the pub.

The Pils is a slightly-hazy glowing gold, with a very white-winey kind of a feel to it; nice and complex, drawn-out flavours. Not as sharp or as dry as a pilsner might often be, but in this case, all the better for it.

Afterthoughts, November 2010: Very rare, even for a ‘Lazy Facebook diary entry’ that I’d take a snap and have a wee ramble about someone else’s beer. But there you have it. I guess it was out of pure enthusiasm for this delicious stuff. I hope you understand.