And so the Beer Diary Podcast is back for a fifth season — and with our traditional delay in hitting ‘publish’, no less. Episodes should return to their usual non-super-sized format and a sharper turnaround in this back half of the year — but you all know what kind of paving projects are undertaken with good intentions. Here, we accidentally settle on a G-theme: we catch up about the end of my tenure at Garage Project, including some thoughts on how they make their interesting beers; discuss the debut of GABS — Sydney Edition, which also makes us ponder trans-Tasman beer availability; and read a neat little piece in the Guardian on Gastrophysics which sets us wondering about experiments that really should be done at the beer awards.

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 Twitter, or you can leave comments here or on Facebook. You can also now point people at podcast.beerdiary.nz and the show has its own Twitter handle — which you can use for feedback, suggestions and whatnot. Cheers!

— Show notes:

• (0.40) It has been ages, in a few ways, inadvertently. This episode was recorded 9 June 2015.
• (2.20) Beer of the Week #1: Garage Project ‘Sea Of Green’.
• (3.10) The speed-winemaking phenomenon is Beaujolais nouveau.
• (6.40) The poster is included in Pete’s blog post on the making of Sea Of Green, and their original Facebook post garnered a little pushback. The varietals don’t seem to’ve made it online anywhere obvious.
• (10.30) Leaving the Garage. We made a little Vine on me last day, with me (first official employee) raising a glass of Trip Hop (first official beer).
• (15.00) The ‘how to buy a beer’ ramble was recorded at Golding’s.
• (16.20) BDP’s first away mission, damn near four years ago: Garage Project.
• (18.00) The “cabbage beer” was Mon P’tit Chou, a saison brewed without cabbages. And George is no fan of saisons.
• (23.20) Beer of the Week #2: Garage Project ‘Bossa Nova’. And I have some idea how they put the fruit in it, but that probably counts as a Trade Secret. Pete addresses the classification question in his blog post for the beer, and has similarly little patience for overly pedantic taxonomy.
• (35.10) GABS 2015 — Sydney Edition v1.0, an excellent new incarnation of an excellent thing, and a lovesong to festivals in general.
• (48.00) I did get this right: Robe Town Brewery, in Robe, SA.
• (50.10) We talked about the ‘dud’ (now resurrected) P.K.B. in our episode with the now-Antipodean Stu McKinlay. ‘Darkmatta’ was released this week, huzzah for coincidences of timing.
• (54.40) In fairness, Beervana’s new overlords are all over this already.
• (57.00) Gastrophysics, following a little article in the Guardian.
• (1.00.00) Tom Scott (H.F.O.T.S.) on grammatical gender. I don’t quite finish the thought in the episode, but I obviously also agree that the “key” example says as many worrying things about notions of gender as it does about oddities of grammar.
• (1.01.10) It was ‘Black Se7en’ from 666 Brewing.
• (1.06.40) Doubling-up on brands obviously gets into False Provenance, an enduring bugbear of mine. George’s dairy example was “Piako”.
• (01.10.00) Beer of the Week #3: Garage Project ‘Day Of The Dead’. I’ve already cashed in my entitlement on Triple Day Of The Dead.
• (1.14.00) My copy is currently out on loan, but in Cryptonomicon, it’s chapter 70, ‘Origin’, where the family divide up an estate using a parking lot as a large-scale graph.
• (1.17.50) Our conversation with Hadyn on questionable beer names.
• (1.25.10) Festivals “coming up” are obviously now long gone. But hey, Beervana is just on the horizon…
• (1.30.40) Martin’s new URL is, indeed, beertown.nz
• (1.33.40) Tip of the hat: Little Creatures (part of the Lion Group). It’s not rocket wizardry, people. Wag of the finger: sloppy keg-filling.
• (1.37.40) Recommendations: Panhead special editions, and Hop Federation American Brown.
• (1.41.20) Honorary Friend Of The Show: Neal Stephenson, my favourite living author (especially after Iain Banks and Terry Pratchett both died, sadly). I just finished Seveneves yesterday, in fact; it’s responsible for at least a day or two of my delay in getting this online. And speaking of big books, The Year Of Reading Massively is definitely worth a listen.
• (1.46.30) A round of applause for Luke Robertson, too. Damn nice.
• (1.49.25) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket. Audio editing done in Audacity. Habitual thanks to both.