Illustration by my incredibly talented comrade ramikin.jpg
Given that I built this place and can visit any time, it’s a little strange to say “I miss being here” — but I do. I know why I haven’t been around more often; a mix of factors internal and external that’d be familiar-enough to anyone else who does this kind of thing: timing, distractions, self-doubt, and difficulty gathering the energy to do the work on a deep-dive, or to brace for the blowback on something critical, or push past feelings of futility. It’s oddly comforting the reasons are so mundane — they’re all addressable (if not actually solvable) problems. So I’m going to try.1
Mr. Boh goes to Washington (and regularly visits Chinatown)
For the second installment of The Session’s 2025 reboot (despite best intentions, I missed the first one for reasons that may soon be obvious), Boak & Bailey asked: “What’s the best beer you can drink at home right now?” In normal circumstances, I might’ve gone on a riff about the troublesome idea of “best” (or even “good”) but right now it’s the notion of “home” that’s more complicated for me. Anyway, the answer is still clear enough: it’s National Bohemian — Natty Boh, to its friends.
Ingredients: Anchovies. (May contain traces of anger.)
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.
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.
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.
A boastful billboard wrapped around a big bollard — a bollboard? a billard? maybe a billboll?
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.
CORRECTION — the original version of this post incorrectly said that ‘Chance, Luck & Magic’ was the overall Champion Beer for the second year running. It wasn’t; Burkes Brewing ‘Unforgiven’ Porter won in 2021. Thanks to Michael Donaldson for noticing and letting me know. The data here is unaffected, but some of my commentary was thereby off.
A cork popped by way of congratulations
After this year’s Brewers’ Guild of New Zealand Awards — the BGONZAs, to their friends — the headline result was unusually clear: Garage Project1 just absolutely smashed it. Their ‘Chance, Luck & Magic’ took out the Best In Show award, prompting me to buy a $49 bottle of beer (which was suitably delicious, I should note), and they won the Champion Large Brewery title (for the second year running, no less) in spectacularly unambiguous fashion, since at least two other breweries would need to merge and pool their winnings to come close to G.P.’s medal haul.2 After that, it might seem superfluous to dig in the weeds of the data for other stories lurking in the details, but I have my traditions, and I am undeterred — and I think there’s still some things worthy of a little more attention.
These were AIBAs, not BGONZAs, admittedly; it turns out I don’t take many awards night photos
It’s beer awards night back home in New Zealand. I’ll be tuning in as best I can from over here in Melbourne1 and doubtless obsessing over various weird little details and patterns once I’ve got the full results. As I’ve tried to make the case here before,2 I think there are a few interesting stories lurking underneath the headline results that get most of the attention on the night, and you can only really find them by crunching some numbers. So let’s quickly do that for the awards that have happened since I got distracted by a) moving and b) a pandemic, so we’re all caught up and ready for more — since, as of tomorrow, I’ll have five years worth of data to play with, which feels like it’ll be a good time to go looking for trendlines…3
Look! There’s one, right there, lurking in the background. Move quietly. Don’t startle it.
I want to know how many breweries there are in New Zealand. And I honestly think it’s strange that it’s a hard thing to find out. Even the smallest of them is visible from hundreds of metres away, and they are usually literally bolted to the ground. This shouldn’t be difficult; we’re counting Kererū the brewery, not Kererū the bird. And yet every total I’ve seen hit the news for years has seemed way off ― so I decided to do my own survey, and my best estimate is that there are currently 141161.1
Last weekend gave us a fresh round of #BGONZAs — the Brewers’ Guild of New Zealand Awards.1 Continuing the new practice they started last year, the Guild has provided us not just with a list of who won what, but a full accounting of who tried to. So, like I did last time, I spent an oddly-enjoyable afternoon spreadsheeting and pivoting and entabulating the results and present them now for a little look behind the curtain at how the newly-expanded list of “Champions” are crowned, and to ponder the many different ways there are in which to succeed, and to fall short. There’s a lot going on — the awards, after all, cover most of the industry — but I think there’s a lot of interesting little details lurking.
