Oh, I’m so sad I entirely lost the photo for this… this, thing. It turns out I never even added it to my ‘Beer Nerd Diaries’ on Facebook, back when that the world’s window into my beerbrain. Perhaps I was just embarrassed.
(I’m only slightly sad that I apparently can’t spell Kaiapoi, even when the beer label was staring me in the phiz. I’ve long since comes to terms with that fact that, for a Trivia Nerd, my New Zealand Geography is relatively rubbish.)
A case of this arrived with the traditional Massive Swag of Stuff before the beer festival in August, and a good many of these were still in the fridge six months later. Perhaps owing to the laughably-homebrewish label that I so very much wish I could show you. It was a beer from another time, it seemed, one when ‘No Added Sugar’ was something worth bragging about rather than a minimum condition for the merest scrap of credibility.
It smelt utterly awful, and tasting alarmingly… nothing. One really does wonder how they managed that. Or, indeed, why. Two local boys were over the moon to see that we stocked it, but had the dignity to have that classic hometown combination of embarrassment and pride as they insisted Peter and I try it. I’m glad we did, because I’m just that much of a masochist / empiricist, but honestly, I’d rather a Tui,1 if I ever found myself in the mood for something of the style.
Verbatim: Kaipoi Draught 25/3/09 nicked from Malty 330ml Been in the fridge since Beerfest in September. Two boys from Kaipoi insisted we try. Smells like arse, or silage. Doesn’t taste too bad, because not much at all. “No added sugar” and all that sad branding. And “draught”. Hrmph. What a word in need of retirement.
1: A few months later, some mischievous staff — on the occasion of my 30th birthday, and of DB winning an award in their class for it — amended my “Staff Pick” on the Big Blackboard to Tui. I decided just to own it, and insist that people actually give it a go, for its historical oddness.