Back for a second ‘Year in Review’ and in moderate danger of starting a tradition, we sit down for a trio of appropriate beers and ponder 2012; a year full of great beers, big beer-related news, and mercifully few apocalypses. We stick pretty-much to last year’s categories (such as we had); I offer a few suggestions for things to make sure you’re reading / watching / using, and then get down to pondering what 2012 might go down in beer history as the Year Of, before reminiscing on our beers of the year.

As always, a direct download is available, there’s a podcast-specific RSS feed, and you should be able to get us on iTunes. George and myself can also both be reached on the Twitterthing, or you can leave comments here or on the Bookface.

— Show notes:

• (0.50) We did indeed do this last year.
• (1.40) And the full ramble on awards was slightly before that.
• (2.40) Beer of the Week #1: Liberty ‘Alpha Dogg’. Jo sat down with us (and Mike) for s02e03. Mike’s new brewery now has a name, too; Panhead Custom Ales. Inexcusably, and uncharacteristically, I’m lacking photos for a bunch of beers that’ll get mentioned in this episode, including our Beers of the Week. Apologies for that; I’ll attempt to re-solidify my nerdy camera habit.
• (6.20) The combination of “buttery”, “not bitter” and “rosé” probably gets George removed from Jo’s Christmas Card List. But he really did like Alpha Dogg.
• (8.00) Blog of the Year: Jono Galuszka’s ‘From Drinker to Brewer’ (the pre-Newspaperisation blog version is still online, and worth a trawl through the archives), with very-honourable-indeed mentions for Alice Galletly’s ‘Beer for a Year’ and Greig McGill’s Awkward Beer Reviews. With heavy Liberty / Beer of the Week #1 connections all round, happily enough. And if you don’t get the My Drunk Kitchen reference, you need to immediately also add Hannah Hart to your Twittermachine and/or Suit of Distracting Bookmarks.
• (12.40) Website of the Year: Untappd (appified interfaces are available, naturally, for iOS and Android), which does indeed make a cameo appearance in one particular A.B.R. episode. I’m on there with the same underscored handle as I had to use on Twitter (he says, cursing his very-common name). I don’t join in the numerical / bottlecappy ratings for various philosophical reasons, but they’ve recently confirmed that you don’t muck up the statistics if you abstain. So all good.
• (16.10) 2012, Year of the x. Mainstreaming, says George; Pretender, says Phil — in a nice coincidence, and a fitting difference-in-approach/temperament. Boundary Road and Crafty Beggars are obviously the highest-profile examples, from the Big Faking Small end of the spectrum. The Small Faking Existence, or Small-to-Medium Fudging Origin end is more depressing, blunting my usual impulse to name and shame. ‘Dr. Hops’ is a bleak example of the former — although, I’m mortified to report (given my praise for them on this point), Yeastie Boys have begun a determined back-sliding on the giving of credit where due; it turns out that mentions of Steve Nally and/or Invercargill are slowly being expunged from their labels. Fudging Origin is just weird, too; Liberty aren’t the only ones to do it, but I just don’t understand why it seems like an option worth taking. I might have to compile a Wall Of Shame, just for completeness. I’ll have to do a full post on ‘Hancock & Co.’, too, and what a contemptible pile of bullshit they are — while arrogantly claiming the “NZBeer” Twitter handle, for fuck’s sake.
• (29.20) Beer of the Week #2: Yeastie Boys ‘Gunnamatta’. There were a number of ill-timed and unfortunate mis-steps at Invercargill over the past few months, which combined to cause (among other things) the Great Yeastie Drought of 2012-2013 — Stu’s post explaining which is a masterpiece of honesty and fair dealing, which either compensates for their apparent creeping habit of Origin Fudging, or puts it in enragingly stark relief (I can’t decide which).
• (31.10) CNNNN did some hiliariously brutal man-on-the-street stuff on this.
• (33.20) As noted above, the shortage continued, and was caused by reasons deeper than I realised at the time. We’re nearly out of the woods, though.
• (34.10) Beer of the Year, and our criteria confusingly clarified.
• (36.45) The ‘karaoke for the deaf’ version of ‘Torn’ still cracks me up.
• (36.50) Phil’s (work) Beer of the Year: Garage Project ‘Day of the Dead’.
• (38.20) Phil’s (non-work) Beer of the Year: Afterwork pints; including, among others, Stone & Wood ‘Pacific Ale’, ParrotDog ‘FlaxenFeather’, Three Boys Golden Ale, Moo Brew Pilsner, Garage Project ‘Hāpi Daze’, Hallertau Saison, and (once I remember it, a little later in the episode), Yeastie Boys ‘Golden Perch’. Only very broadly ‘of a kind’, but all just absolutely lovely, relaxing beers.
• (40.30) Pete Mitcham’s ‘When only the rest will do’ is excellent.
• (41.40) George’s Beer of the Year: Yeastie Boys ‘Gunnamatta’.
• (42.50) Phil’s Glass of Beer of the Year: Liberty ‘Rennals Towards Muriwai’, a multiply-gorgeous thing, for oodles of both inherent and circumstantial reasons.
• (47.40) George’s Glass of Beer of the Year: a specific Yeastie Boys ‘Gunnamatta’. I mentioned my own Beach Gunnamattas back when referencing my entry for the ‘Desert Island Beers’ series, and the mandatory Paul Kelly track is here, for easy re-playing.
• (50.30) Honourable G.O.B.O.T.Y. mentions: Hallertau ‘Funkonnay’, what a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster beer should taste like. And Bright Brewery’s ‘Resistance Red’ and/or Feral’s ‘Watermelon Warhead’ from GABS, or perhaps one of the beers I had back at the beloved Wig & Pen.
• (55.10) Beer of the Week #3: Emerson’s ‘JP’ 2012. In our last episode, we talked about The Acquisition (he says, in a way that makes him want to pronounce the capital letters like Australians do when talking about their Constitutional crisis as “The Dismissal”). I think I’ve had all the JPs (the “Js-P”?) over the years; the first one in my Diary is from the dim-dark recesses of 2008.
• (56.55) Honourable mentions, more generally: Renaissance’s ‘Great Punkin”, which made up for the badly-flavoured beers George endured in the U.S., and Garage Project ‘Ziggy’s Carrot Cake Ale’, which caused fire-hazard log-jam queues at Beervana.
• (1.01.30) Now I can’t remember the name of the tied house which uses “free house” in its signage. Hopefully a commenter can help, since it does so nicely tie the ‘Year of the x’ themes from this year and last together.
• (1.03.00) Fork & Brewer’s pilsner is a very decent afterwork pint, but also a sad case in marketing; the brewer(s?) made a tasty North-German-esque dry pilsner but then the Overbosses handed naming duties over to the ad agency they work with. On seeing “pilsner”, reading Wikipedia and/or not thinking very hard (or asking the beer’s creator many/any questions), they named it “Bohemian Hipster”, which is both a) boringly predictable and b) off by about 600 km.
• (1.05.00) On the Beer List: Wil Wheaton. Happily, in the intervening time between recording and posting, I think I’ve figured out just the beer to send him. I shall endeavour to actually get it in the post as soon as I’m back at work next week. He’s totally worth following on Twitter, is active on the aforementioned Untappd, and runs the ‘Tabletop’ show on Felicia Day‘s awesome Geek & Sundry YouTube channel — and is, therefore, Our Kind Of Geek very many times over.
• (1.08.15) Badass Digest is indeed a cornucopia of awesome things.
• (1.09.00) ‘Yumyum Beersies’ (or a variation thereon) has shown up in several comics by The Oatmeal, most recently in a rather-on-the-money one about Making Things For The Web — parts of which ring very loud bells, for me.
• (1.09.30) It was one thousand eight hundred (and ten) years ago, if we assume by “twenty-three” I meant ‘203’; clearly my brain was multiply-broken, here.
• (1.09.40) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket. Audio editing done in Audacity. Habitual thanks to both.