The 2024 New Zealand Beer Awards — formerly (and affectionately) known as the BGONZAs — were announced over the weekend, which means it’s time again to dive into the results and seek out whatever curious details lurk under the surface. This year saw a few breweries return to form, some interesting rearrangement among trophy classes, and maybe an uncommon (and underexplained) tie-break at the top.
Continue reading Medals and math VII — returns, reshuffles, and rarely used rules
Since I moved here, I’ve been meaning to subject the Australian International Beer Awards to the same analysis that I do for the competition back home. But a mix of feeling less familiar with the industry here and the vastly bigger-and-messier dataset has derailed me. Until now. There’s a lot to unpack, but a little statistics can provide a better context for the results you might’ve seen promoted recently — and an effective antidote to spin and preconceived ideas about who makes “good” beer.
Continue reading Medals & math: Australian edition — a deep dive into the 2024 AIBAs
Tiramisu, but with a nice strong stout instead of the liqueur or fortified wine the recipe might call for,1 has become one of those things that I’ll make at the slightest provocation. As a staff treat for a looming busy night, if some newly released beer seems like it might work nicely, or if I find a kilo of mascarpone on special; pretty much any excuse will do. It’s always a hit, so I’m well overdue to share what I’ve learned more widely than I can share the thing itself. You deserve a treat — but then we have to have a quick chat about some outdated terminology you’ll probably see when shopping for the right beer to go in it.
Continue reading Beeramisu — and a brief note concerning “Imperial” stout
Last week, as I was helping out on a canning run at the brewery, I was listening to the ‘Why Brut IPA Never Hit It Big’ episode of the Taplines podcast,1 and it’s had me thinking and reminiscing and pondering ever since. That conversation (between journalist Dave Infante and brewer Kim Sturdavant, who developed the style and coined the name) is well worth a listen, and I don’t really disagree anywhere, but as someone who was bartending through the peak of the phenomenon and who really loved those beers, remembers them fondly and looks for their echoes to this day, I have a few thoughts to add.2
Continue reading A nearly missing link — ‘Brut IPA’ as an important transitional fossil
Late last year we were fortunate enough to be in New York, happily spending each day walking towards some landmark or other and then exploring the surrounding neighbourhood a bit before catching the subway home. After visiting the stunning Public Library and the enormous Strand Bookstore, I saw we were close to a couple of pins I’d put into my map before the trip1 so we walked a few more blocks — and stumbled into a succession of quietly magical moments. One unassuming little street, three lessons in how to be a great bar.
Continue reading Three bars on East 7th Street, New York, one Monday in November
A few years ago, U.S. brewing company Fast Fashion sponsored a new hop varietal and named it “anchovy”, in a move that’s probably half in-joke turned outwards and half marketing stunt.1 It’s still fairly niche, but it pops up occasionally in this part of the world, and always restarts a train of thought of mine when it does.2 Personally, I love anchovies; that’s a word with positive associations for me,3 and I can see the fun in the incongruity of naming a hop that. But the beer industry has an awkward relationship with comedy that’s worth poking at a little.
Continue reading A hop called Anchovy, and the impossibility of April Fools
So. Beer awards, again. (And belatedly, again.) The announcement that entries were open for the 2024 Brewers Guild of NZ Awards, together with the fact I was at the presentation dinner for the Australian competition last week,1 plus the chance to drink a bunch more New Zealand beer than usual at The Catfish recently have all combined to spur me into finally publishing the number-crunching I did for last year’s BGONZAs. As always, there’s some interesting details in here that are easily overlooked if you don’t do a little elementary statistics, and plenty of trends and quirks to keep in mind while anticipating doing it all over again in August.
Continue reading Medals and math V — close calls, clean sweeps, and other countries
Late last week, the story suddenly broke that Epic1 had gone into liquidation. As one of the best-known names of the early craft beer scene in New Zealand, and likely the “gateway beer” for a sizeable chunk of the subculture, the news was received with shock and sadness, labelled a tragedy, and many wondered what it foretold for the wider industry as they praised the legacy of founder Luke Nicholas. But a lot of the reaction has mistaken historical influence for current relevance or viability,2 and overlooked some real problems that should have been more obvious to all concerned.
Like a New Zealander excited when the country is mentioned out loud in overseas media or just actually included on a map, I’m always interested when beer pops up in unexpected places. Last Friday’s NYT crossword had ipa among its solutions, which itself isn’t uncommon — the crowded design of American crosswords mean they reuse some three-letter words a lot — but the clue specifically referencing hazy struck me, and I wondered if that was new, and what (if anything) it might mean.
Continue reading The New York Times crossword as a measure of mainstreaming
Melbourne’s Own Consistently Excellent Beer, the billboard read, provided you walked back and forward a bit or at least leaned side to side, since it’d been stuck up on a surface that was too tightly curved. I’d seen variations on that poster campaign before, but now it made me mad; they’ve gone from the usual advertising puffery into raw uncut nonsense and lies. Fixation hasn’t been either for years.
Continue reading Fixation: not really Melbourne’s, and not particularly consistent