October | 2015 | Beer Diary

Main mural (91 Aro St, 15 October 2015) — The main mural, though other art and easter eggs abound

Front door (91 Aro Street, 15 October 2015) — An open door, at last

Way back in August 2011, the Beer Diary Podcast’s first ‘away mission’ took place in the then-fledgling Garage Project, er, garage. Yesterday, George and I were invited to record another at the ‘dress rehearsal’ test-run of their new bar just up (and over) the road — which opens today. As it turned out,¹ I spent most of the four year stretch between episodes actually working at the brewery myself and though the idea for this place was locked in a while ago, I didn’t personally work on it and not much non-paperwork progress had been made before I left. So it was a real treat to drop in and see what they’d been up to on the eve of this, their latest Next Big Thing. The episode will be online soon² and disclaimers ahoy, obviously, given my lengthy association with the company and the fact we were there on a special invite and drinking on their dime, but I just wanted to share a few photos and some brief first impressions — because the place is a) gorgeous and b) interesting.

Continue reading 91 Aro Street — a backstage pass to Garage Project’s bar →

'Crash of the Titans', artist's conception of the night sky during an Andromeda-Milky Way merger (Public domain, credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay and R. van der Marel (STScI), and A. Mellinger) — Now that’s a merger

So last week, Asahi bought Mountain Goat. And earlier this month Heineken bought half of Lagunitas, then the company which makes Budweiser acquired something called Golden Road, and just under three years prior to that Emerson’s was subsumed within Lion.¹ Meanwhile: Russia re-annexed Crimea, Pixar has so far spent a decade in the belly of Disney, India smack-merged with the Eurasian Plate fifty-million-or-so years back and (geologically speaking) threw up the Himalayas, and in four billion years our galaxy will non-violently combine with Andromeda and send countless millions of worlds swirling into new orbits until something else supermassive comes along ― plus ça change plus c’est la même chose.

Continue reading Buyouts and reactions-to-buyouts →