All posts by Phil

Archive Compendium #1

January 1, 2011 Phil 2 Comments

The original plan, back in October 2010, was to conduct a complete Great Uploading of Diary I before starting in with the new notes. I’ve done data entry as a job before, in both total-monkeywork and relatively-highbrow modes, so I figured I’d fly through it. But once word got out that I was finally uploading any of these things, people started asking about more-recent stuff and chipping away at Diary entries from years ago got backburnered.

It’s time to continue the back-filling, but it occurred to me that anything slotted in that far back¹ would never appear on the front page or the Recent Posts list, so I’ll do little Compendia like this once I’ve uploaded a batch — just for the sake of those of the pathologically curious / stamp-collecty / completist mindset. Like — you know — me.

Marston’s ‘Pedigree’ — which tries to take over England entire
Timothy Taylor’s ‘Landlord’ — had while flat-hunting for the pun of it
Three Boys Golden Ale, again — given retroactive credit for making this year’s Sevens Weekend bearable
Brugge Tripel — nowhere near as good as a certain movie set in the town it came from
Epic ‘Mayhem’ — wherein I begin my turnaround on Epic beers

These entries are all also united (together with what will be a second set of similar size) by an unfortunate gap in my big archive of original photos. A lot of those gaps are filled by lower-resolution copies that were in my ‘Beer Nerd Diaries’ albums on Facebook, but a few were lost completely in a computer failure. Sadface.

1: Indeed, this post itself is being back-dated (as evidenced by the otherwise-anachronistic Sevens reference above) so that it doesn’t park itself for too long at the top of the main page, since I’m also a few weeks behind on Diary II. All this time-travelling postage does make a certain sort of sense, I think, but if I ponder it too long, I get a Philosophy Headache. I therefore just plow on, assuming that I have some sort of Actual Plan buried in the background of my brain.

Actual Diary entries

Hallertau ‘Stuntman’ IIPA

December 31, 2010 Phil 2 Comments

And then, shortly after midnight and thereby officially into the New Year¹ all previous concern about Plural Big Beers was out the window, caught by a snappy breeze, completely buggered the hell off and was gone — as you can see by this thing.²

Toby and I had been tempted to have one earlier in the day, but went for the Emerson’s ‘JP’ instead. So later, once my friends had made their way back to the pub, New Year’s well-wishes had been exchanged, and the ‘What next?’ question returned, there was only one real candidate.

‘Stuntman’ is the loopiest — so far — of Hallertau’s fleet of hoppy pale ales.³ The brewer himself described it as a “stupid beer for brave people”, which I always liked; my note for the Beer Menu at work warns that “hop levels border on insanity, and the high strength propels wave after wave of flavour directly into the brain”. Not to belabour the point, but this is a big beer. It’s so perilously near to being overblown and unfunny that you get the exhilaratingly uncomfortable thrill of standing way too close to a precipitous drop.

The colour is an appealing gold, with a slightly-murky cast that is probably inevitable given the massive pile of ingredients that’d be necessary for a brew of this bigness. The aromas are invitingly citrussy, fruity, floral and foresty — orchardy, in a word. The hoppy bitterness on the palate is significant, to say the least, but at this level of alcoholic strength you’ve got to have boatloads of malt in the mix, so there is a surprising amount of balance to be had here too.

Oh, and the label. That is the best damn beer label in the country, probably in the world. I’m open to being alerted to other worthy candidates, but this sets a high bar. I really must get the t-shirt; it turns out they have made some.

Verbatim: Hallertau ‘Stuntman’ IIPA 31/12/10 750ml ÷ 3 w/ Toby & Wendy. 9.5% We’ve been ey[e]ing this up all day. Best beer label in NZ; must emai[l] Steve & ask him to make tshirts. Amelia picks up the sweatiness from the JP, but in a very different way… Piney + citrussy, like some odd sort of a mixed orchard. But utterly awesome. So close to being overblown.

1: Being basically nocturnal, and having worked for evers in an industry where a ‘shift’ usually rolls past your mere midnight, I’m of the habit of continuing to use the date of the day I woke up, until I actually go to sleep. Some clever math is required when I’m awake past two whole consecutive midnights, but such occasions are rarer, these days.
2: And this wasn’t even the actually-next beer after the Rip Tide that it follows in the Diary; smack on midnight, I had myself an Epic / Thornbridge Stout. If memory serves. Which it may well not. (See? Take notes!) You can see from the scan that my handwriting certainly got rather wibbly, and a few ‘typos’ definitely crept in with letters going missing and such.
3: The hierarchy goes: ‘Minimus’ (sessionable at 3.8%), ‘Statesman’ (their every-day APA), ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ (originally brewed for a mostly-friendly head-to-head against Epic’s ‘Armageddon’), and then this.

Actual Diary entries

BrewDog ‘Rip Tide’ Imperial Stout

December 31, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

I normally try not to have too-many ‘new’ strong beers in a single day, but New Year’s is New Year’s, so what the hell? I’d been looking forward to this for a while, and was still happily perched at the bar in the window, so the randoms mostly ignored me and there was room for a slowly rotating roster of friends and workmates to join me.

I was getting concerned about the Plural Big Beers problem because this stout tasted rather fruity, to me, which isn’t entirely usual. Ordinarily, if you had to guess, you’d expect a stout to be dominated by dark, roasted coffee and chocolate flavours — and they are definitely in there, they’re just not being far-and-away the loudest men in the room like they normally are. I thought maybe the fruit flavours from my just-previous pale ale were confusing me, so I conducted a little impromtu tasting panel of anyone nearby — partially also to show off what a lovely beer I had and therefore what a clever shopper I was — and we all basically concurred.

Not quite as massively boozy or as loopily-different as their marvellous ‘Paradox’ stouts, this is still a great testament to the cleverness of the BrewDog boys by being a properly solid strong stout which is set apart from its peers with that complex and fruity sideline.

Verbatim: BrewDog ‘Rip Tide’ Imperial Stout 31/12/10 $10ish @ NWT 330ml 8% 10.40pm and the bar is filling up with randoms. I’m hiding @ the window with Robot, Caleb & Staff as they get their breaks. Pours utter blackness, as you’d hope / expect. Not all coffee / choc, to me; quite a bit of fruit, though that could be IPA holdovers. I’m breaking my own rules about Plural Big Beers on a Night, but it’s New Year’s, so wtf. Raisin-y? Blackcurrant-y? Pieta has it as Black Forest, minus the chocolate. The stouty bigness is there, but its edges are very different, which is oodles of fun. No coffee, says Robot, but it’s like warm good chocolate to her. She’s on Stonecutter, so her ‘fruitiness’ bar will be calibrated differently. Peter, who had a Stonecutter last night (but not right now) favourably compares it to such. Aren’t we all rather clever?

Actual Diary entries

Lagunitas ‘A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin”

December 31, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

I’m not sure what did it, but New Year’s was uncharacteristically quiet, so I was able to sign off pretty early and just perch on the end of the bar.

My fellow bartender Halena had gotten back from some time in the U.S., and had whipped up some of her deservedly-famous hot wings (despite being jetlagged and staring down the barrel of a long shift). Something Californian and hop-tastic seemed therefore mandatory. Fortunately, one of these was sitting in my personal stash — Amelia had insisted I buy it after seeing the cute label, and after hearing my heavily-accented stab at ‘properly’ pronouncing the name.

It’s a really lovely beer. Gorgeous colour and aroma, with all those obligatory and classic U.S. West Coast hop notes in residence — intense, but not as ‘aggressive’ as some of its relatives can be. Surprisingly drinkable, given its weight and the forcefulness of the initial flavours.

Verbatim: Lagunitas ‘Little Sumpin’ Sumpin” Ale 31/12/10 $9ish @ Rumbles. 355ml 7.3% had on the occasion of Halena’s return from California, and especially because she brought me some heavily-Franked bbq chicken wings. No idea why the upside-down label, but I like it, the art and the name. Very fun to say, heavily accented. It’s quite pale + peachy gold, nice soft bubbles + a big blunt fruity nose. To me, the bitterness starts big and eases off. Which might be a nice change, or might be the hot sauce talking. Stonefruity + light + tasty — with that underlying hopwallop + boozewarmth.

Actual Diary entries

Emerson’s ‘JP’ 2010

December 31, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

I’d managed to draw the early (3pm start) shift for New Year’s Eve, and the afternoon was nice and quiet for the most part, giving me time to whip around to the other side of the bar and join my friends for a beer. Toby and I couldn’t think of a better First Beer for the day than this, since it had the soon-to-be-dead year in its name, and him and I had shared an earlier vintage back in Melbourne.

The ‘JP’ beers are all different takes on a Belgian style of one sort of other, brewed in honour of J.P. Dufour, who apparently did much to introduce the joys of the beers from his homeland to the local brewing scene. 2010’s edition was a hoppy tripel or Beligianish IPA, depending on your point of view and usual preferences — and it does the hybrid thing very well, much like I remember Green Flash’s ‘Le Freak’ doing.

Wendy commented that it smelled “like a boy’s bedroom”, and I had to totally concede that point and quote her directly. The ‘funkiness’ you get from Belgian yeast was perhaps met by a certain ‘sweatiness’ that seemed to crop up in some of our hops this year. Which also leads to a nice reminder on the way you can describe a beer in very strange terms — and still like it a lot.

Verbatim: Emerson’s ‘JP’ 2010 31/12/10 and how apt to start the end of a year with a vintage-dated thing. 500ml ÷ 2 with Toby, who shouted. 8.6% Belgian IPA / hoppy tripel. I have to quote Wendy, who said it tastes like a boy’s bedroom. The mustiness is definitely [there], and there’s the heat from the booze. Does the hybrid thing very well. And there was that infamous ‘sweaty’ hop batch this year. Again, it’s odd how you can describe something so weirdly, and still like it very much. The JPs are always good, and interesting, which is half the battle. It’s still nice and civilised in here, but I’m sure that’ll change.

Actual Diary entries

Tuatara Porter (doubly modified) & Croucher ‘Mrs. Claus’

December 29, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

Tuatara Porter (with pinot and cherries) and Croucher 'Mrs Claus'

There some beers that you want to like, but you just can’t. Both of these were near-misses, for me, so I lessened their Diary-polluting effect by consolidating them into one entry.

Pinot and porter are usually a great match — Hallertau do a wonderfully-mad ‘Porter Noir’ with barrels home to the usually-wild Brett yeast, and the Dux de Lux did a very nice (more ‘normal’) take on the same a while back. I like Tuatara’s Porter, but maybe it wasn’t ‘heavy’ enough to survive its time in the barrels — it had thinned out a lot, to the point that I didn’t like it at all when we had it flat from the handpull. It was decent when we had it on the regular taps, the lower temperature and the bubbles helping to hold it together, maybe. But here, pouring through a hopinator full of cherries, there was just too much going on and the porter wasn’t big enough not to be overwhelmed. The three sets of flavour — porter, pinot, and cherry — were just all too mild. First thing in the morning, after stewing overnight, it was at its best — but it was just all cherry, then.

And then, after Croucher’s enjoyably-odd ‘October’ IPA, ‘Mrs. Claus’ was a real disappointment. They were going for a Christmassy spiced-up Scotch ale, and I do like my spicy beers and my Scotch ales — but something just went wrong here, for me. Maybe it was just too cinnamonny, or maybe it just wasn’t at all suited to the handpull we had it on — it is tasting better, now that we’ve gassed it up and cooled it down a bit. But I wasn’t able to shake the feeling that I already knew a lovely fruitcakey beer in Renaissance’s stupidly-lovely ‘Stonecutter’, and this just couldn’t compete.

(Weirdly, one of the guys from the Arrow Brewing Company was in the bar on the night I’m writing this up — 28 January 2011 — and so I was reminded that they made an out-and-out Christmas Cake beer too. They had it at Beervana 2010, and Halena and I loved it to bits — it being the only thing we could think to have to follow Dogfish Head’s surprisingly-awesome Punkin’ Ale. So yeah; the offerings from Renaissance and Arrow make ‘Mrs. Claus’ doubly redundant, sadly.)

Verbatim: Tuatara Porter (Barrel-aged and with cherries) & Croucher ‘Mrs. Claus’ 29/12/10 two near misses, on a very quiet day. George keeps harrassing me for ‘dislike’ entries, so here’s one. These are real let-downs. The porter was nice enough on the bubbly tap, un-cherried, but here’s just too much at once, for a beer that lost a lot of body in the barrel. That made it limp + horrid on handpull, and here it just makes it too weak to stand up to all this tart + sour fruit. ‘Mrs. Claus’ is a stab at a ‘Christmas Cake Ale’, and is a spcied 6% scotch ale. I like their beers, but this fails to follow Stonecutter’s goodness — cf Emerson’s Southern Clam & Three Boys Oyster — if you can’t stand up to something already existing, don’t bother. It’s very metallic, too — tastes like the handpull hasn’t been cleared, though it has. Unpleasant, like being stabbed with a cinnamon-edged rusty old knife.

Actual Diary entries

Dogfish Head ‘Midas Touch’

December 27, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

Scott, the bar manager at Malthouse, dropped some Big News during our shift — something that had been brewing for a while, but which I felt was sufficiently ’embargoed’ that I didn’t mention it directly in the Diary lest I get my act together uncharacteristically quickly and jump the gun by posting it on here. The short version is that, after ten years — an honest-to-goodness decade — he had resigned. He’s off to run the Hop Garden, a new neighbourhood bar opening soon in Mount Victoria, owned by James Henderson of Bar Edward fame. For us, it’s a helluva loss, but their new place is a tremendously exciting prospect, so it’s full of that bittersweet “hate to see you go, but dead keen to see what you do next” vibe.

In the spirit of first things first, though; Big News deserves Big Beer, so I fetched this one out of my personal stash. I’d been looking forward to it for ages, and couldn’t think of a better opportunity or anyone more worthy of sharing it.

This is Dogfish Head in Resurrection Mode, taking a crack at re-creating an old recipe — the oldest known, in fact. The idea was to take the remains of vessels found in the 2,700-year-old tomb of King Midas, run them through all sorts of chemical analyses, and get a reasonable approximation of what the drink they once held was like. So in with the now-standard barley went honey, white muscat grapes, and saffron.

It is suitably wine-ish, and honey-ish, but also still definitely a lovely and peculiar ale. I just loved it, for both its intrinsic and circumstantial properties. I wanted to drink whole pints of it, standing around in the sun somewhere — and still wanted to, even knowing that this is 9% and would swiftly knock me on my arse. It’s light and lush and it feels like what I — a Beer Nerd, after all — wish wine tasted like while at the same time being totally recognisable as ‘just’ a staggeringly interesting golden ale.

Verbatim: Dogfish Head ‘Midas Touch’ 27/12/10 ÷2 with Scotty on the occasion of some Big News. 330ml $? from NWT (in my notes, but the internet died) [actually $10] I like it a lot, that’s the main thing. Beautiful golden peachy colour. Scotty through the saffron would be mostly giving colour, then we (proudly) realised we’re both sufficiently middle-class that we don’t know what it tastes like. The grapes come through a lot, making it very winey, but soft at the finish, not acid / sharp. The flavour makes you expect a whallop finish, but it’s just this lovely gentle wash instead. Wonderfully rides that line of Different Enough But Not Too Different.

Actual Diary entries

Twisted Hop ‘Nokabollokov’ Imperial Stout

December 26, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

Good old bloody-great-big Imperial Stout. Where would we be without you, then, huh? There are occasions where something as big and lovely and just-about-terrifying as this are just mandatory. Like here, catching up with a good friend and his family, in something of a now-weirdly-traditional Boxing Day Second Christmas.

And ‘Nokabollokov’ is just exactly what I want in one of these, too. It’s thick and gloopy, utterly dark, wonderfully flavourful — smoky, almost meaty in its bigness and richness — and kinda-vaguely-worryingly-easy to drink, given its strength. So it does pay to take it slow, or share — or both.

The scanner only slightly picked it up, but waving this thing around and pondering comparisons to such seemingly-bonkers referents as Oxo™ cubes lead to Diary II’s first spillstain. I thought that was pretty appropriate, for something this stainingly-dark and sneakishly-strong. I’ve been a lot finnickier with Diary II, so far, but my usual obsessiveness was overwhelmed by the fair-enough-ness of the situation.

Verbatim: Twisted Hop ‘Nokabollokov’ Imperial Stout 26/10/10 @ the Lanes in Yorick Bay. 330ml 8.6% $9ish @ Regional. Toby poured it for me, and reported it being distinctly treacly, which is always a good sign. It’s utter blackness — together with the stark label, it’s stunning. The bubbles are almost scarily dark + crema-ish, but to start it’s worryingly easy to drink. The bitterness builds as it warms + you drink, though — but not to an unwelcome level. Smoked Oxo™ cube, maybe, with caramel, says Toby. Suitably, it’s my first Diary-spill, too.

Actual Diary entries

Mikkeller ‘Jackie Brown’

December 26, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

Borrowing adjectives from another recent entry to describe Mikkeller himself is useful: he’s the reigning rockstar of brewing, a mad roving Dane who probably never sleeps, and who is an absurdly multi-tricked pony — because you’d be damn hard-pressed to find any equally-universal descriptors for his beers. For every boundary-breaking piece of madness, there’s something like this: easy-going and relatively sedate.

But still delicious. I was a little nervous when the bubbles got away from me — my thoughts quickly turned to the parallel importing debate and the concerns about rough travel for ‘unofficial’ imports — but my fears subsided as the foam did, because the nose underneath was perfectly lovely with no worrying traces of funk. It was, instead, very much that lid-just-pulled-off Milo tin scent, all cocoa-y and dry and malty. Less rich and ‘big’ than the other recent Brown Ale of note, Rewired (from the oddly-also-Danish Søren Eriksen’s 8 Wired label), it treads a delightful line between easiness and fullness.

My sister’s daughter Izzy tried a little sip, too. It’s difficult to have an un-sampled glass of anything when she’s around, and she does have a pretty neat palate for a four-and-a-half year old — as a rather spooky party trick, she can usually tell you the grape variety in a random glass of wine. I can’t do that, and I’m nearly eight times her age, and am an actual bartender — albeit an evidently rubbish one, when things made of grapes are on the line. Anyway, she described this as “lemonade chocolate”, which I thought was pretty neat. I’ll have to see if I can teach her to add beer-style-picking to her repertoire.

Verbatim: Mikkeller ‘Jackie Brown’ 26/10/10 6.0% $8ish from Rumbles @ the Parents’ house. Mine was enthusiastically heady, which always makes a person nervous about a random import. It’s a gorgeous rich brown, with a nicely dry malty Milo-tin-ish nose peeping through the light tan head now it’s subsided. That dry cocoa flavour is in the face, certainly. Deftly skates between being quite light + quite rich; it’s full-flavoured without being stodgy. What with this and the similarly-Danish ‘Rewired’, let’s have more brown ales! To compare, though it’s been a while, this is less rich + massive, but focuses in tighter on that nice dry cocoa. But really, I should have another Rewired. You know, for science. Izzy said it’s like “lemonade chocolate” — which I think captures the taste + the feel quite nicely.

Actual Diary entries

BrewDog ‘Paradox: Isle of Arran’

December 25, 2010 Phil Leave a comment

My Christmas Day was a rather relaxed affair, this year. Less of my already-smallish family was in town than usual, so things were toned right down, presents were waived entirely, and my sister and I spent a good few hours taking my niece / her daughter for a bike ride and a muck-around in the park. The flatmates were also out of town, so I came back into the City late at night to feed the Cat and treat myself to some nice quiet time with a good beer and a good book. I paired this, one of BrewDog’s ‘Paradox’ series of whisky-barrel-aged stouts, with Surface Detail, the newest book by the equally-Scottish Iain Banks — who himself had basically introduced me to whisky with an earlier (non-fiction) book of his. The hot summer day had turned into a crisp and clearish night, and Catface (evidently happy to have company) plonked herself nearby on the deck and just mooed at me occasionally, as she does. It all went together bloody marvellously; a fine present-to-self.

Malthouse had imported two of the other ‘Paradoxes’ the previous year, and the contrasts among them are a staggeringly awesome testament to the richly varied world of Scotch — each is aged in barrels from a different distillery, and the stout is absolutely transformed in unique and well-worth-finding-out ways. The ‘Smokehead’ version (with somehow-varied whisky barrels suspected to be from Ardbeg) tasted appropriately enormously of smoke — somehow glorious, righteous smoke, like you’d get standing nearby the burning houses of your enemies, I said at the time — and the ‘Springbank’ edition was just propelled into all-around massive flavourful heights, with all sorts of lovely richness biffed in at speed and with purpose.

This one was comparatively ‘confronting’ — really quite a full-on spicy nose to it, with borderline-concerning funky edges that defied pinning-down. It’s a deliciously and seriously complex kind of a thing; something of a fight to get to know properly, but damn well worth it.

Verbatim: BrewDog ‘Paradox’ — Isle of Arran 25/10/10 10% @ Home. $10+? [Actually $15] from NWT. Out on the deck, with the latest Banks book, which seemed apt. We loved the Paradoxes at work, so I had to get this. Very different. Smokehead was righteous fire; Springbank was enormous lushness, this is actually quite confronting. There’s a funky, feisty tartness to it. Spicy, gingery, rough woody. The ‘funk’ in the nose is almost off-putting, but you’re rewarded for getting past it. Not that it’s a struggle, but the clangs on a few alarm bells get ready, at least. Hanging out here with Catface makes for a very civilised end to a nicely understated Christmas.

Beer Diary

All posts by Phil

Archive Compendium #1

Hallertau ‘Stuntman’ IIPA

BrewDog ‘Rip Tide’ Imperial Stout

Lagunitas ‘A Little Sumpin’ Sumpin”

Emerson’s ‘JP’ 2010

Tuatara Porter (doubly modified) & Croucher ‘Mrs. Claus’

Dogfish Head ‘Midas Touch’

Twisted Hop ‘Nokabollokov’ Imperial Stout

Mikkeller ‘Jackie Brown’

BrewDog ‘Paradox: Isle of Arran’

Tastings and ramblings and whatnot