Moderately ironic, granted, that the first post after the one trumpeting the new camera and beer-related photography in general has no photo at all, but let’s press on regardless.
Golden Bear (at the top of the bottom island) looks like a very visitable place — just to tie things to the previous post once more and to underscore my desire to make the trip, it has a slightly Creatures-esque vibe about it, what with the Big Shed and the bar-brewery flow going on — and their beers seem increasingly worthy; their ‘Bear Trappe’ was a real stand-out of last year, for me.
They evidently make a biggish pale ale called ‘Hop Toad’, and then bigged it up further (another percentage point) to turn it into ‘Fat Toad’. We blammed through a keg pretty quickly, which is usually a testament of Interestingness and Goodness. I tried it when it was first tapped, and it didn’t have a great smack of nose (as I said in the Diary, it was like someone beside you having a ‘Hopwired’), but the taste was lovely and the body was brilliantly smooth. Weirdly, the nose did improve later, so I’m not sure if some strange chemistry and physics was at play in the keg or the line, or if was just the occasional strange biology of my own nose and brain.
And it’s just occurred to me that this ‘Fat Toad’ and Matilda Bay’s ‘Fat Yak’ are only separated in the Diary by four beers. What a strange coincidence and nice reminder that beers to get themselves some weird names, sometimes.
Verbatim: Golden Bear ‘Fat Toad’ IPA 31/1/11 on tap @ MH 7% We didn’t manage to get the lovely Bear Trappe, but here’s a belated consolation, because it’s really rather good. An embiggened ‘Hop Toad’, it seems. Nice orangey gold with soft white bubbles, it doesn’t have a whole swag of nose — more like the guy beside you is having a Hopwired. But damn, the smoothness in the body is insane. Actually a bit reminiscent of Bear Trappe, so he’s got some clever trick. Flavour is nice, but not “huge”, though it does build nicely. Jim himself was here the other day, but I didn’t recognise him quickly enough to buy him a beer. Damn.
Little Creatures Pale Ale, taken later with my new camera
Ordinarily, I have a fairly ‘involved’ Australia Day. Especially given that I’m not, you know, Australian. But it’s basically my favourite National Holiday, and I do wish our own Waitangi Day were more like it — something I’ve tried to implement, occasionally, with moderate success (if I do say so).
My first Australia Day was in 2001, when I was a summer scholarship student at the ANU in Canberra. And it was freaking awesome. Blisteringly hot weather (which I’d usually vote against), the Triple J ‘Hottest 100’ on the radio from 10am onwards, wading pools to sit in, barbequed food aplenty — and, on that initial occasion, a case of Coopers Sparkling Ale. Now, I usually take the day off, buy some good Australian beer, and mooch around somewhere sunny (but with shade nearby), listening to the ‘radio’ over the internet. Owing to an overload of Extraneous Stuff this year, my plans were somewhat mucked-about, but I still made sure to get myself well-stocked with lovely Big Country beer — and was moved to note it in the Diary at least, if I couldn’t have myself a proper Day.
I’ve said it many times before, but I really do love Little Creatures Pale. Coopers Sparkling was my first good Australian beer, but Creatures Pale has become probably my favourite, full stop. “Favourite” is always a tricky title to hand out, especially when you’re a Big Nerd. But when you are the Big Nerd at a Big Beer Bar, people do ask. Often, and pressingly. And I think that if push came to absolute shove, Creatures Pale would be it. It’s just so reliably lovely, nicely middling between ‘flavourful’ and ‘mellow’, and it also — keeping the situatedness of beer firmly in mind, as I always insist — just has, for me, so many brilliant memories densely packed into the brainspace around it.
The actual photos on this post are from about a month later, when I’d finally gone and splashed out on a new camera. I’m enough of a weirdo about these things that I did pretty much insist to myself that the new gadget’s first beer photo be the beloved Creatures. You have to get these things off to good starts, you do. It’s a lovely piece of kit, and still enjoyably baffling as I get to know the nearly-innumerable bells and whistles.
There is some bloody marvellous beer-related photography going on at the moment, and if you’re not already acquainted with the work of Aaron Caruana, Jed Soane, and Robert & Kim from ‘Beer Lens’ (just to pick my three most-frequented favourites, which helpfully also manage to hit the Big Country, Little Country, UK and US buttons between them), you damn well should be. I know that good gear isn’t even half of what makes for good photos, but those are the sorts of people who make me want to lift my game.
I’ve always loved the plea to use a glass for your Creatures, too, so was instantly presented with an excellent opportunity to take the macro settings for a spin, as well. I really like the result, with its awesomely-blurred Background Peter looking on. And seriously, folks, if a beer is worth drinking at all, then it’s worth drinking from a glass. That’s the rule.
Verbatim: Little Creatures Pale Ale 26/1/11 $20/6pk @ GG 330ml 5.2% Happy Australia Day! Though this is basically my tamest, since my first. Too much extraneous stuff, this year. But this stuff is just mandatory. And there’ll be a Cooper’s Sparkling, later. It’s just bloody lovely. That’s the word. This is always my arm-twisted citation for all-round favourite, when people ask here at work.
‘Pliny’ is one of those stupidly-highly-regarded beers that make for a rather weird tasting experience. You always worry about the Emperor’s New Pale Ale effect, and when it’s brought over ‘unofficially’ (however carefully), there’s the vexed question of whether any Not Overwhelmed reaction is down to an over-hyped thing itself, or simply the result of difficult travel. This wasn’t a “grey market” import, this was a trade; brought over by some travelling Americans and exchanged with one of our regulars for some local Good Stuff. From its time in a chilly bin filled with ice and water, it had lost its label, but that was smoothly replaced by an awesome tea-towel from Steph’s house (to help keep it cold on its trip to the pub), which I couldn’t resist including in the photo.
I thought it was really tasty; properly big and fruity and resiny and just what you’d expect and want out of a West Coast Double IPA. But it didn’t completely melt my face and leave me overawed — I’d have put Hallertau’s bigger IPAs comfortably in its league, for example — though there’s just no way to tell whether that’s because something genuinely face-melting had an imperfect journey or if that’s just what it was. Two out of the four of us had had it before, and did attest to it being better last time they had it, but that just opens up the batch-to-batch variance and the subjectivity cans of worms.
Which is really the whole lesson, isn’t it? There is no objective “best” beer. You like what you like, and that’s just how it should be, especially if you can start to put your finger on just why you react like you do to something — and doubly-especially if you remember to keep in mind what the brewer was trying to do when you evaluate something. Personally, I thought this stuff was bloody good — but I don’t think you need to go so far afield to get something in its class.
Verbatim: Russian River ‘Pliny the Elder’ ÷ 4 w/ Steph, Johnnie + Llew. Sample traded for some local goodies by Steph. Apparently treated about as well as you’d hope, but S+L still say it’s not at its best. The pine needle side is lacking, going more to melony fruitiness. To me, it’s Maximusesque; all those Northwest hops. It’s always tricky to try something so ludicrously highly regarded — you always worry about the prospect of Emperor’s New Pale Ale. I really like this, but it hasn’t knocked me out of my shoes; maybe that’s a travel thing, or maybe the blessed subjectivity. The 3 are all agreed that I have to retry Moa Pale Ale, so here’s hoping that was a dud. Consensus here [about ‘Pliny’] is both tastiness + disappointment. Not up to legendary status.
Russian River 'Pliny the Elder', bottlecap
Diary II entry #57, Russian River 'Pliny the Elder'
I love the idea of Variant Editions of beer. Though I only got to try the All Together Now culmination, I loved that Mikeller did ten single-hop pale ales in a run. And the Yeastie Boys themselves trod a similar path with their ‘Nerdherder’ and ‘Monster’ beers, both of which existed in two varyingly-hopped versions. It sounds like science,1 doesn’t it? Doesn’t it give you that extra geeky glow of enjoyment? Well, it does for me, at least.
The ‘Blondie’ golden ales see them in a similar mood, but this time with the differences between yeast varieties up for experimentation. A light, summery body of pale malt (with some wheat) is given a deft touch of local hops and then the ‘Europa’ variant has a German ale (kölsch?) yeast doing the fermentation, while ‘Rapture’ employs a Belgian abbey yeast. The latter will be on tap shortly at work, so should show up here in the not-too-distant. But here was ‘Europa’, on the handpull at the just-opened Hop Garden. Well, the not-really-opened Hop Garden, in fact; we were there on a bit of a sneak-preview “soft open”. I’ll do a proper entry on the bar itself soon, but suffice to say it was bloody lovely, looked absurdly promising — and has continued to be loveliness, and to build on that promisingness in my several visits, since.
I’m always a little freaked out by something this light on handpull, but that’s just me. Well, me, and probably also the fact that the smaller Wellington bars (the ones without the giant keg chillers in which to stack things, I mean) really should probably cool their handpulls down a few notches, especially for beers like these. But as much as I suspected I’d like the regular-tap version a bit better, this was pretty damn tasty and faultless and interesting. Which goes a hell of a long way. I did get to try the colder / bubblier version not too long after,2 and I was right to think I’d go for it more; the extra fruity snap made it just exactly what I was looking for.
Yeastie Boys 'Europa', on tap
Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Europa’ 20/1/11 4.?% 380ml @ Hop Garden! Sneaky soft open night. Beer first. Is very promising. For the style, handpull is odd, but doubtless the Yeasties have tweaked it a bit away from style anyhow. It’s light + faultless + nicely flavoured. Caleb says they have it cold + bubbly @ Bar Ed! Will revisit this soon then. So: the bar. So neat. Great to have a Mt Vic local. Very, very promising here. Total work-in-progress vibe at the moment — but Hashigo had that on their sneak-peek night, too. I can see where they’re going, and it’s going to be awesome.
30/1/11 a second, cold & bubbly @ Bar Ed. How appropriate to ha[ve] the “other half” here. George is unenthused, expecting more oomph, which means I should’ve warned about style better. He thinks it’s a bit like a Disprin in Sunny D. And I can see where he’s coming from. But I like it. As I thought, I’m more fond of it like this, but it does bring out a real sneaky bitter tail a lot more. Definitely grew on me. Light, but snappy + fruity. Good for a lazy afternoon of talking beer. Which we’re doing.
Diary II entry #56.1, Yeastie Boys 'Europa'
Diary II entry #56.2, Yeastie Boys 'Europa'
Diary II entry #56.3, Yeastie Boys 'Europa'
1: And by “science”, I mean Science!, wherein you pronounce the italics and the capital ‘s’, and take the exclamation point as your cue to thrust your index finger into the air. Proper 1950s Doomsday-Machine-building, cackling-at-thunderstorms kinda stuff, you know? 2: Does this count as double-Science!, now? Does the fact I took notes help?
This must be the first bar-but-not-“beer-bar”-bar in the Diary for quite some time. Either I should get out more, or more places should stock more interesting beer. Or, you know, both.
I’d signed out of work early (ish, if I must relativise these things for you “normal” daytime people), and was trying my hardest to be the guy who drank the last of the wonderfully-odd Portamarillo. I nearly made it, honestly, but was convinced by my good friend Pieta that what I really needed was a night out and a bit of old-fashioned silliness. So Mighty Mighty beckoned, as it does.
People did look at me strangely when I set up to take this photo (the darkness necessitated my camera’s little tripod, which always increases the wtf-stares), but I’ve long since left behind the days when I’d feel weird about that. And the result was totally worth it, and not a bad effort after all that Portamarillo, if I do say so myself.
I’ve had ‘Brewski’ before, and I basically suspect it’s a “holiday beer” — something that people associate with enjoyable circumstances, which they then project into the thing itself. People do ask for it a lot, at work, and swear blind to its utter loveliness — but they do that about umpteen samey crisp little South East Asian lagers, and they do it for Fiji Bitter too, come to that. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course; I’m a big advocate for keeping the ‘circumstantial’ side of beer enjoyment firmly in mind. I just think I’ll stick to having this stuff just when I’m actually in Wanaka. It was a bit too thin, and the one-note hop focus is oddly-chosen (they use Motueka hops alone in all of their three brews, apparently), so after finally Diarising this, I quickly switched to a Hop Rocker, to be honest.
That said, the brewery has reportedly been recently sold, so maybe we’ll see some more genuine interestingness and less mere-but-decent holidayishness soon.
Diary II entry #55, Wanaka Beerworks 'Brewski' Pilsener
Verbatim: Wanaka Beerworks ‘Brewski’ Pilsener 12/1/11 4.8% 330ml $8 @ Mighty Mighty. An early night, in which I attempted to personally kill the Portamarillo, lead here, at the literally-dragging by Pieta. She’s having a Castlepoint, I’m having this. And terrified the Indie kids by taking a photo. I had this way back in actual-Wanaka, so why not repeat & Diarise. Well, mostly because the band is painfully “ironic”. The beer is oddly-funked, and very pale. I suspect it’s a holiday beer, fondly remembered for circumstance.
It does seem to me that (though the traffic in both directions is still painfully slow) the Australians are having better luck at getting good New Zealand beer available over there than we are with the vice-versa, over here. We do manage to get some goodies at work, though, and have more in the pipelines…
Matilda Bay are one of those little-sibling operations owned by one of the giants (Foster’s, in this case), though it as originally an independent West Australian operation — its founders went on to start my beloved Little Creatures (itself part-owned by the giant Lion Nathan). It’s a hotly-disputed brewery in Australian beer geek circles when the “what is — and what is not — ‘craft’ beer, anyway?” definition comes up, as it cyclically does. And when we got this on tap at work, the local beer geeks were typically not massively enamoured of it, to say the least, usually finding it too mild. But I think you have to remember that the hoppy-hoppy end of the pale ale spectrum has been less explored in Australia than over here, and that Cooper’s Pale Ale exerts a massive gravitational effect on the term. So this exists as a Gateway Beer, and is very well suited to that admirable and necessary job — especially when you remember that the same company produce a “proper” APA, ‘Alpha’.
Which reminds me that I really should upload the entries from my October 2008 & April 2009 Melbourne trips; those were my introductions to all sorts of lovely Australian beers.
Verbatim: Matilda Bay ‘Fat Yak’ Pale Ale 10/1/11 on tap @ MH. Fairly sure I had it as part of my paddle @ Taphouse. Not popular with the Nerds — too mild. But I like it since it’s more Aussie stuff making the trip. And it’s inherently worthy enough as Baby’s First APA, which is necessary over there, given Coopers’ gravitational pull on the term. Plus, there’s always ‘Alpha’.
Hearken to a saga of two beers. Two incarnations of one beer — a Draft and Final, or a Beta and a One Point Oh, perhaps — neither of which I particularly enjoyed, one of which I sufficiently non-enjoyed that it became my first Beer Diary beer in years to have its glass tipped out rather than emptied in the usual imbibey way.
Moa’s Pale Ale was a pretty highly-anticipated thing, and I was dead keen to try it. I have a strange relationship with the Moa beers, finding some of them unforgivably naff, which is tempered by some of them being wonderfully interesting — though I see all of them as nobbishly marketed and over-priced. Of this one, I’d heard good things, and so picked one up to enjoy on a sunny afternoon.
My first alarm bells rang at the… sludge layered on the bottom. Given the choice, I prefer my beers bottle-conditioned, ordinarily. But this was ridiculous1 — and was common among all the bottles at the store, and confirmed by the local rep. as nothing out of the ordinary, though he pretty-quickly assured me that they’d already seen it as a bad idea and planned to tone things down for the next batch.
After a difficult pour, the beer settled down enough to present itself with a lovely colour, which I took as a sign that things might be okay after all, but it wound up being the highest praise I could give, review-wise, to the people sitting with me. The nose was all but absent, which is a fairly unforgivable sin for what should be a gorgeously aromatic style — and the one over-riding detectable note was that weirdly-distinctive ‘Moa Funk’ which usually stops me enjoying their milder beers like the ‘Original’ and ‘Blanc’.
And after struggling past the marketing, the sludge, the pour, and the nose, I was ‘rewarded’ with a bog-standard pale ale, at best. Pale ales are the fashionable thing at the moment, so when you’re this late to the game, you had better bring something special, or at least something interesting. This is doubly-so when you’re from the same town, pitched at the same booze, and charging the same (for a smaller bottle) as 8 Wired’s absurdly-fantastic ‘Hopwired’ — nevermind the half-dozen other easily-named examples of the style which also blow this thing out of the water without charging you an arm or a leg, and without shrouding themselves in dickish brandwank. It was that sense of rip-off and disappointment that stuck with me most, through the glass — and it got enough that I just pushed the eject button and biffed the remainder off the side of the deck, unfinished.
Moa Pale Ale, reformulated and on tap
I do know a lot of people who liked the beer, though, so I was hoping that my bottle was an errant failure — though its only distinctive feature was that centimeter of slurry, which was shared by all the others I’d seen, so I suspect I’m being oddly generous in that hope. I did resolve to try the promised reformulated version, though, and finally got a chance nearly two months later.
Calmed down a few percentage points in strength, and with the sediment in the bottled version toned down to typical / tolerable / non-insane levels, I was pleased to see that the lovely colour had been retained, and the ‘funk’ had vanished from aroma. Sadly, though, so had basically everything else; the beer had courageously leapt from being bad to being bland, which is a rather classic Frying Pan Versus Fire scenario. It seemed faultless, and was fairly tasty, but thereby also seemed completely pointless; merely an act of late-to-the-game Me Too Please. It was safe and cautious and inoffensive — and thereby tokened a sad return to form for the brewery, in my mind. After their brilliantly interesting and genuinely brave ‘Barrel Reserve’ series, this feels too much like a throwback to the days of their first three releases: I can just never shake the feeling that ‘Original’, ‘Blanc’ and ‘Noir’ were all designed to appeal (and to extract dollars from) people who want to buy themselves a bit of craft / boutique / obscure beer credibility, but who fundamentally don’t want to actually stray very far from their familiar green-bottle supermarket standbys. Unless you’re drawn to the brandwank like some sort of suit-wearing moth to their ‘super premium’ flame, you could get yourself any of a number of delicious pale ales at all levels of the flavour spectrum, and you’d keep a few extra dollars in your pocket — just as the same had always been true with their lager, wheat beer, and dark lager.
When the Moa beers are ‘on’, they are on. But when they’re naff, they are so tragically naff. And have the gall to levy you with a naffness premium while they’re at it.
Verbatim: Moa Pale Ale 8/1/11 @ Home $8ish? from Regional 7.2% 375ml. Chunkiest sediment ever. Bottle conditioning is one thing, shipping metric tonnes of sludge with your beer is another. I hope I got an errant bottle, because then it fountained, and I actually resorted to using a sieve. I do like the colour, but the aroma is barely anything other than that worrying Moa funk you get in the others. The flavour is okay, but merely okay. Nice pale ale, but you need more whizbang if you’re this late to the game, and implicitly trailing 8 Wired. It’s like almost all the hops went in way too early. Consensus is that it is simply fail. Good thing I carry that pen. We can see where they’re going, but they don’t make it. Unfinished.
Moa Pale Ale; Revised, Revisited 1/3/11 5.2% now, on tap @ MH. Halfway to their revised branding. I promised I’d retry this, so here I am, though they’ve modified it since batch #1, reducing strength, basically eliminating sludge. Weird that they’d change their mind so much so soon. I’m all for people copping to + correcting mistakes, but making one that huge is worrying in its own way. No nose, this time. Glad there’s no funk, but wish there was aroma. Very mild flavour, too. Makes me worry it’s a returned to First Three form; expensive, cleverly marketed and bland enough not to offend. Safe, cautious. There’s nothing wrong with it, at all, but the price would get you better beers at varying levels of punch. Pleasant peachy flavour arrives very late, with some bitterness.
Moa Pale Ale, chunks
Moa Pale Ale, abandoned
Moa, new tap badge
Diary II entry #53.1, Moa Pale Ale
Diary II entry #53.2, Moa Pale Ale
1: In fact, it was enough to put me in mind of Orbitz, an ill-conceived soft-drink-with-globs-in from my high school days. A few of the people I was sitting with were young enough to have no idea what I was talking about; they were the lucky ones. And weirdly, a related series of posts and comics appeared on Penny Arcade around the same time. It seems that Pepsi have rediscovered the with-globs-in idea, which makes me shed a little tear for our lack of progress, as a civilisation.
Still no scanner access at the moment, so another opportunity to hack away at the necessary back-filling of the Archives. This is the second half of the set of beers from the Unfortunate Patch of Missing Photos — some re-discovered in the ‘Beer Nerd Diaries’ album I used to maintain on Facebook, some lost and gone forever.
Beer and food and philosophy — which perfectly encapsulated my “tastings and ramblings and whatnot” mission, though the conversation distracted me from actual tasting notes
The original plan, back in October 2010, was to conduct a complete Great Uploading of Diary I before starting in with the new notes. I’ve done data entry as a job before, in both total-monkeywork and relatively-highbrow modes, so I figured I’d fly through it. But once word got out that I was finally uploading any of these things, people started asking about more-recent stuff and chipping away at Diary entries from years ago got backburnered.
It’s time to continue the back-filling, but it occurred to me that anything slotted in that far back1 would never appear on the front page or the Recent Posts list, so I’ll do little Compendia like this once I’ve uploaded a batch — just for the sake of those of the pathologically curious / stamp-collecty / completist mindset. Like — you know — me.
These entries are all also united (together with what will be a second set of similar size) by an unfortunate gap in my big archive of original photos. A lot of those gaps are filled by lower-resolution copies that were in my ‘Beer Nerd Diaries’ albums on Facebook, but a few were lost completely in a computer failure. Sadface.
1: Indeed, this post itself is being back-dated (as evidenced by the otherwise-anachronistic Sevens reference above) so that it doesn’t park itself for too long at the top of the main page, since I’m also a few weeks behind on Diary II. All this time-travelling postage does make a certain sort of sense, I think, but if I ponder it too long, I get a Philosophy Headache. I therefore just plow on, assuming that I have some sort of Actual Plan buried in the background of my brain.
