Moa Imperial Stout

June 16, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

It looks rather frightful, that Moa, doesn’t it? Maybe even sufficiently angry-faced that it hardly seems like a herbivore at all, in fact. I honestly still can’t tell if I like the kitsch of it, or if I just think it’s hideous. Something similar happens with the ludicrously-extravagant coasters — just how much money poured into the marketing budget that embossed leather-and-felt coasters got the green light? Like I’ve said possibly too-many times before,¹ the brandwank with Moa is relentless, and I’m depressingly unsurprised to report that (as of the time of writing, in mid-October — I’m way behind, I know) it continues unabated.²

Like I said with an earlier pint of ‘Black Power’, the awfulness of the aura of ad-crap the surrounds a Moa beer and trails along behind it like an unforgiveable stench is such that it might get in the way of actually enjoying one of their beers.³ For me, Black Power just wasn’t a worthy enough thing to pierce the fog and make itself enjoyable in spite of all that — but a stonking-great barrel-aged imperial stout? Now that did the trick.

It was helped somewhat by circumstances — not that it really needed much help — in that we had it and several of its siblings pouring at work at once, in a little version of the sort of ‘Tap Takeovers’ that happen semi-regularly at the Local Taphouses (if that is indeed the plural) over in Melbourne and Sydney. And such things are all very fun in and of themselves, of course: excuses and occasions and theme-ifying are some of my favourite things about a night at the pub. But for me, for multiply-peculiar me, a Tap Takeover is extra-special because it means Kegtris — it means a bloody-great Herculian dose of Kegtris, it does — and when it was all done, of course, someone had to make sure that the beers were pulled through and ready to go. Oh, the chore of it all.

And honestly, I really can quiet the fumingly-outraged part of my brain for a little while, with this. It’s just stupidly fantastic: utterly enormous, but not overblown, and it doesn’t come across as trying to do everything at once in a sad one-man-band kind of attention-grabbing — in that (and in its weight, and its barrel-aged-ness — but in not much else, other than its hometown, come to think of it), it’s quite reminiscent of 8 Wired’s masterful ‘Batch 18’. I tried some side-by-side with a little glass of the Scott Base Central Otago Pinot Noir, partially because I assumed (given the founding-family connections) those would be the barrels involved and partially because I just can’t bring the classic Pinot Noir flavours to mind off the top of my head, as ignorant in Matters of the Grape as I am. I’ve since been informed by Dave Nicholls — the brewer, despite what their ad-men might say,⁴ a (mercifully) excellent chap who just gets on with the making of the beer while largely ignoring the dissonant background buzzing of the marketing machine — that they weren’t the barrels in question, but the comparison was still instructive and I suppose you’d have to have some sort of super-palate to spot, in a 10.2% stout, differences drawn from varying vineyard’s barrels.

There’s a lot of flavour left in those barrels, it seems, and it melds into the stout in surprising and delightful ways; plenty of tart fruit notes, bordering on sour almost, fill in the edges of the beer, taking the whallop out of some of the bitterness and booze you’d otherwise expect from a thing like this. You can’t really tell whether they achieve that through some clever complimentary-flavour trick on the brain, or if they’re just using a more low-brow “Look over here, instead!” tactic. But ultimately you won’t care about the how of it, because the result is worryingly drinkable for the punch it steal conceals in its multi-talented self.

If Moa’s brandwank doesn’t rile you as much as it does me, then just go and get one of these, simply because it’s delicious. But even if you are as infuriated by their ad-men as I am, consider this one worth the trouble, a nice reminder that at least someone there still knows what they’re doing — and a rare and philosophically-instructive example of a situation where the price you pay in conscience (since you’re giving those ad-men a not-inconsiderable sum of money — the thing which is, after all, how they ‘keep score’) might actually be worth it.

Verbatim: Moa Russian Imperial Stout 16/6/11 10.2%, Jesus. Hideous branded glass, as reward for an epic round of Kegtris for tomorrow’s takeover / migration, and all that Moo. The fruitiness from the Pinot barrels do massively set it apart, but are very well integrated. Not just tacked on, you know, like their brandwank. Really couldn’t resist. Enjoying their better beers is a real see-saw. Why does ‘Estate’ = bareknuckle boxing, where ‘Reserve’ = motorcycle? Oh wait. Vice, versa. Shows how superfluous + devoid of meaning, I guess. Wait. The beer. Gloriously huge, but still not overblown. Dangerously drinkable. Whole riots of fun.

Diary II entry #111, Moa Russian Imperial Stout

1: Such as when writing / ranting / rambling about: the ‘Black Power’ chocolate wheat beer, beer-and-marketing in general, their ‘Five Hop’ ESB, or their (two attempts at a) pale ale — the basic point is that Moa are grossly (but deservedly) over-represented on the ‘Brandwank’ index page.
2: Maybe, maybe there’s a touch of irony in all this. Or an attempt at such. Alice Galletly — of the excellent ‘Beer for a Year’ blog, which makes an absolute mockery of my way-delayed posting schedule — mentioned (in passing), her assumption that their “Handcrafted Super Premium Beverage” tagline (visible on the reverse of the Scary-faced Moa Glass, pictured above) was tongue-in-cheek. I certainly hope so. I hope they’re just rubbish at ironic humour, rather than an actual pack of appalling wankers. Perhaps I’m all jaded and cynical, but I just can’t be that charitable.
3: They are now, in this regard, the opposite of how the Stoke beers were when I first met them. Those I wanted to like, but I just couldn’t. They’re dipping their toes quite enthusiastically into a bit of brandwankery, themselves, but I do keep trying them occasionally to see if I can like them yet. But alas; not yet.
4: Criminally, you could diligently read — on a heavy dose of anti-nausea pills — the entire corpus of Moa’s marketing materials and not have any clue who Dave was, what he did, or even that he existed at all. Presumably, a Suit in Auckland thinks that pushing the myth of Josh-as-the-man-who-still-runs-everything is more ‘marketable’. For that, and their likely-myriad other sins, they deserve a kick in the pants.

Actual Diary entries

I/IPA Workshop

June 5, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

As the U.S. Hop Crisis — 2^nd Edition, after the 2007 price rice / demand spike / availability crunch — starts to make itself felt, with stories of hop-fueled local beers being backburnered and put on hiatus for maybe-years, a tasting session like this seems absurdly decadent; the sort of wanton profligacy that makes a proudly-middle-class boy like me feel slightly squiffy and embarrassed. Thinking back upon it now and writing it up feels weirdly like reminiscing about days spent swimming in champagne, using high-denomination bills to light cigars, and paying the wastrel children of the lower classes a pittance to cart me hither and yon in a goddamn sedan chair. But, like a beer-powered meat-based version of Hedonism Bot, I apologise for nothing. We had a great time, and I’d do it again — though I probably should do so soon, while I still can.

If this new hop shortage really is the big deal that some people suggest — i.e., if it’s not all just tulips in Holland, all over again — it’ll be utterly fascinating to see what distorting effect it has on the beer drinker’s palate. The New New Thing in a subculture like that of the Beer Fanatics is always changing, but it’s especially interesting when change is imposed from ‘outside’ by something like an ingredient shortage rather than just by whatever-the-fuck it is that usually drives the ebbs and flows of these things (in fashion, or pop culture, or any number of other fields). It’s possible that malt-forward beers will have an accidental renaissance, but if I have to put my Predicting Hat on, I’d have to guess that in the (relative) absence of hopness, we’ll see a marked uptick in weirdness. Hopheads seem to correlate rather strikingly with extremophiles, in general — them being peatfreaks with their whisky and ultra-spicy food afficionados, and whatnot — so we might see a surge in the funky and the sour and the generally-rather-freaky. I’d be entirely unsurprised if idiosyncratic yeastiness (with a side order of wood-aged peculiarity, perhaps) was the Next Big Thing — but ultimately, who knows?

Anyway. Simon & Jessie — them who I met way back at a Birthday Dinner for Robyn, and who were there for the ‘Beer 121’ tasting session — had just-recently gotten back from California, and brought with them some swag to share. They all tilted toward the kind of hop-stupid things for which the Americans are (deservedly) famous for, so we decided to do a three-and-three face-off — which, given our shared experience of spending way too long at university (with an average of more-than-one degree-per-person and two out of our five still studying, in our thirties), it quickly became known as a Postgrad Seminar in IPA, or the Double IPA Workshop.

— Epic ‘Armageddon’ (Auckland, NZ, 6.66%)

It’s fair to say that if you find yourself having a beer called ‘Armageddon’ to calibrate and zero-in your palate, you’re in for a pretty big night. This is something I’ve had umpteen times — though usually on tap, since it makes semi-regular appearances at work — and have really grown to enjoy. It’s probably a “little bit of column A; little bit of column B” scenario whether that’s because it’s improved or whether my tastes have just drifted in its direction, but I do remember finding it rather obnoxious when it made its début in the original ‘IPA Challenge’ at Malthouse, way back when. It definitely changed a lot through its Challenge Season Iterations, and has settled into being a suitably big IPA, with an enjoyably multi-note aroma and a solid malty body. Its pieces are well put together, and it does make for an interesting contrast against the Hop Zombie I’d been drinking a lot of, around the same time — Zombie is officially ‘stronger’, but has a lighter body, and/but has more-lush hop flavours that match it very well; the two are both big, they’re just differently big.

— Sierra Nevada ‘Hoptimum’ (Chico, California, 10.4%)

I’d seen ads for this in a few beer-related magazines that made their way into our Rack of Reading Material (thanks to generous / littering foreigners and wanderers) and utterly adored its label art. When Simon & Jessie told me that this was one of the IPAs they’d muled over, I was very excited to try it — but it just didn’t quite do it for me, tragically. The colour was stunning (with its warmly rosy tint), and the aroma (which took a little while to waft out, surprisingly given its strength) was pleasant (if unusually understated). But, for me, it was just too fat, too hot and too bitter — so bitter, on the palate. That’s no Gentleman Lupulus, on the label, that’s the Headless Hopsman — a scary motherfucker out for a revenge that he seems to assume can only be had by laying waste to your tastebuds. But, like I say in my notes, it still does exactly what it says it will. My dislike of it — much like my (apparent) dislike of 8 Wired ‘Superconductor’, which came later at Malthouse’s IPA Challenge (and I say “apparent” because I was off-and-on inflicted by nasty, flu-y, sense-impairing grossness at the time) — mirrors George’s dislike of ‘Rex Attitude’; I can honestly say (to the beer, I mean) that “It’s not you, it’s me”.

— Hallertau ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ (Riverhead, NZ, 6.8%)

And so then back to something more familiar, to re-calibrate — and this must be the only real way to make the great-big Maximus flavours come across as light and refreshing. Originally brewed for the original Malthouse-hosted IPA head-to-head (against Epic’s ‘Armageddon’, no less), Maximus has also changed around a bit and is now steadily available as a member of Hallertau’s gorgeously-branded (and aptly-named) ‘Heroic Range’. Just like ‘Armageddon’, it was once the top rung of its brewery’s ladder in flavour-and-fiestiness terms but has since acquired a few more-full-on stablemates — and, of particular interest for me and my peculiarities, it spawned a midstrength sibling in the shape of the oh-so-lovely ‘Minimus’ (if only Epic’s family expanded in the downward direction, now that would be interesting…). It took us right back to ‘my kind’ of big-hoppy loveliness, after the assault of the ‘Hoptimum’, and that nose — my gawd it smells delicious. As we all noted at the time, it practically made Sierra Nevada’s Headless Hopsman smell like an empty glass that had held beer hours ago.

— Russian River ‘Pliny the Elder’ (Santa Rosa, California, 8%)

And then Pliny. About as famous a token of the type as you can get. I do very much like the way they relentlessly hammer home the plea / demand that you have your bottle in its best-possible condition (“Not for saving! Consume fresh or not at all!”, and all that, on and on and over again). It’s utterly-legendary status and the drink-it-fresh commandment make it difficult to ‘judge’ when you have it here at the bottom end of the world — a problem I struck once before — but this was in about as good a condition as you could’ve hoped for: Jessie and Simon were awesomely particular about it. When I check it’s “bottled on” date, I was momentarily taken aback by just how absurdly fresh it was — it appeared to have been bottled on the day before, until I remembered the inexcusably daft middle-endian nature of U.S. calendar notation. But still, the 6^th of April is pretty-damn-recent, when you’re drinking on the 5^th of June. And it is great. I’m still not convinced that it’s absolutely the best damn pale ale ever to have graced our humble universe, as so many people attest, but it’s astonishingly lovely stuff and remarkably well-balanced and put-together. George speculated that its reputation might, in addition to a bit of the Emperor’s New Pale Ale effect, be bolstered by a sort of Watchmen-esque place in people’s minds, earning extra credit for being gate-crashingly ahead of the curve in its day.

— Mike’s Organic Double India Pale Ale (Urenui, NZ, 9%)

Last of the locals in the lineup was Mike’s IIPA. Bookending a legend like Pliny with a couple of small-brewery offerings seems like an intimidating or unfair thing to do with the little guys, but it was genuinely awesome to see how well they stand up — they Americans really don’t leave us in the dirt on this score, if anyone was worrying. My original plan was to have 8 Wired ‘Hopwired’ in this slot, but the Mike’s makes an admirable substitute (as it’s done in a tasting or two that I’ve hosted, when stocks of 8 Wired were scarce). It throws a bit of that characteristically-American pineyness into the mix, and stands as a big, solid, somewhat-sweet monolith of a thing. There’s a fair amount of truth to the rule-of-thumb that 330ml offerings from Mike’s will be well-made, if slightly mainstreamy (out of commercial necessity), but the big-ass 750ml bottles may well blow your mind. Batch #2 of the IPA certainly held its own in a difficult crowd, and while I continue to not remotely give a damn about the certified-organic nature of the enterprise, it is impressive that they can do what they do with that extra constraint.

— Dogfish Head ‘90 Minute’ IPA (Milton, Delaware, 9%)

And then finally — and it was an enjoyable ordeal, heavy-laden with booze and hops as it was — we had a Dogfish Head ‘90 Minute’ to finish. It presented in the same heavy-orange tone as the Mike’s before it, but was shiningly clear. I’ve had this several times before and count it (and plenty of its siblings from the same brewery) among my favourites. Something about it fits nicely with the experimentalist spirit, too — its last appearance on here was as part of a side-by-side with its 60-minute brother. It’s big and glorious and suitably night-cappy, although you may be able to see (if you scroll way up to the original ‘Lineup’ photo) that we actually finished things off with a different-but-slightly-similar Croucher ‘Patriot’, just to reset from all these hoppy pale ales and have something dark with our dessert. We all got a distinct ‘vanilla’ note out of the 90 Minute, although at that late stage, our palates had taken a pounding and we may have been in the thrall of a mass hallucination. This is why you end a great-big tasting with something you already know, I suppose.

But it was a bloody-marvellous evening, all round. Two definite take-home lessons stand out, to my mind: 1) that local brewers really are very good indeed, there really is no need for any kind of Small Country Shyness (not that we often exhibit it, but it’s nice to be reassured), and that 2) beer is a many-splendoured thing; even when you pick a pretty-narrow corner of its spectrum of styles like IIPA, there’s a lot of variety to be had. Beer can be, you could say, fractally lovely stuff — the loveliness needn’t degrade, just because you zoom in closer.

Verbatim: Postgrad Workshop: I/IPA 5/6/11 @ George & Robyn’s 1) Epic Armageddon To calibrate, and ZOMBIE wasn’t around. Toffee-ish. Less one-note than PALE ALE. Massively contentious label text. 2) Sierra Nevada ‘Hoptimum’ Less aromatic, way more bitter in the face. Gorgeous glowing rosier colour. The label is misleading, until you see him as the Headless Hopsman. 10.4% Jeebus. Fat. More aromatic as it warms. But still maybe not the sure thing it should’ve been? Though it does do what it says on the tin. 3) Hallertau ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ The first time it’ll seem light + refreshing. Biggest nose so far. Paler, hazier, peachier. HOPTIMUM now smells like an empty glass. 4) Russian River ‘Pliny the Elder’ Again, with a much better travel provenance. Fresh, too. Bottled on the 6th of April, or yesterday, if the Americans used sensible dates. Fruitier, definitely well-balanced. Geroge is right that it’s Watchmen-y, in that it’d be mind-blowing a generation ago, but it’s still absolutely great, in context. 5) Mike’s IPA Batch #2. Piney + fruity + a bit sweet — though we’ve now got spicy pizza competing. 6) Dogfish Head ’90 Minute’ IPA. Same colour, but clear. Definite vanilla streak in there, now. Weird. Bloody marvellous finisher.

Podcast episodes

Beer Diary Podcast episode 5: The Garage Project

June 4, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

For our first podcast ‘on the road’ (or at least ‘out of the house’), we went to visit the Garage Project in Aro Valley (on 26 August 2011, for the record — this blog has an obscure and confusing, but ultimately meaningful, system for dating its posts…). We sit down with Jos and Pete, have a few beers — though none of their own, far-too-rare as they are — and have a bit of a ramble about who they are, what they’re planning / have done so far, and what has inspired them.

Since it is quite a long conversation, George made vaguely chapter-sized chunks of it that you can listen to separately, though they don’t come with their own whiz-bang embedded media player thing: #0 (introductions, beers so far), #1 (Hot Rocks, the Plan, feedback), #2 (missing out), #3 (Gubna, cans), #4 (future plans, creative freedom), #5 (beer-and-music analogies, experimentation), #6 (the rat race versus time to play), #7 (breaking free of existing structures), #8 (feedback and online presence, Judgment Day, midstrength beer), #9 (recommendations, things to look forward to).

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 both be reached on the Twitterthing, and you are (naturally) more than welcome to leave comments, here.

Two corny kegs of #10 (i.e., absolutely all of it)

The Garage, exterior — Genuinely a garage project

Show notes:

(0.10) Hear that echo? We were actually in a garage. There’s zero brandwank / myth-making in their name. We really must again give great thanks to Audacity, the open-source audio editor George uses, for cleaning up the audio a lot.
(1.00) Beer of the Week #1: Port Brewing ‘Hot Rocks’ Lager. My Malthouse-colleague and friend Jono Galuszka wrote a piece on the Garage Project for the Dominion Post. It was the photographer for that who was frustrated by the lack of “prop beer”. He was probably just miffed he didn’t get any “sneak peeks”.
(3.50) The Consumer report is out now, evidently, in what is presumably the September 2011 issue. There’s a little summary online, which does include an equally-little photo of our tasting panel — that’s me in the grey shirt; I was the only guy who didn’t show up with his own branding emblazoned upon himself.
(5.05) Beers so far: #1 ‘Trip Hop’ (pale ale), #2 ‘Manuka Dark’ (smoked beer), #3 ‘Pernicious Weed’ (pale ale), #4 & #5 were A and B variants of ‘Hazy Daze’ (new-hop-variety pale ales), #6 ‘Lord Cockswain’s Courage’ (oaked, Belgian Porter) & #7 ‘V.P.A.: Venusian Pale Ale’ (multiply-infused pale ale), #8 ‘Hapi Daze’ (pale ale), #9 ‘Golden Brown’ (brown ale). And, since recording: #10 ‘Bière de Garage’ (cherry bière de garde), #11 ‘Red Rocks’ (American amber ale).
(8.00) Pete’s previous gigs: Malt Shovel Brewery (a.k.a James Squires’), Hepworth & Co., Brakspear.
(8.59) And here, a fridge switches on, sounding for all the world like a massive Tesla Coil or something else mad-sciency. Since it wasn’t constant, the audio editor wasn’t able to scrub it out very well.
(10.40) Yeah, we’re a little ramblier, this week. We are four people with beers in our hands, after all. Back to ‘Hot Rocks’, I did manage to find the video that I mentioned which documents the making-of; it’s pretty damn cool stuff. Stone & Wood have a write-up for their version online, as well; I’m mad keen to try it. Also, Turkey fryers have their own Wikipedia page — and are therefore totally “a thing”.
(13.10) The comparison with software releases — particularly the difference between open and closed “beta” — is massively apt.
(15.50) “This beer is good shit” is a great review, in both senses. Jos compiled a ‘word cloud’ of the sum-total of feedback; it’s an interesting way to see public opinion in a snapshot and they’ve been doing more, specific to different beers.
(16.50) George was wondering, last time, whether my casual use of “shitfaced” in a discussion of midstrength beers (i.e., those that can help stop you becoming so) was our first expletive. Pete’s nervous enthusiasm for brewing here really does put me to shame. We’ll have to figure out how to activate the “language” tag on iTunes.
(19.00) Brewjolais really is sadly missed. A 2011 edition was planned, but brewing operations had shifted from Wellington to Christchurch, and the earthquake intervened. I spoke candidly to someone (who shall remain nameless for their protection and because my memory is, as you may know, rather rubbish) from Lion / Mac’s who assured me that enthusiasm for it as a beer remains among the staff, and that those of us in the public who miss it should write in and say so to help convince the marketing and accounting departments.
(25.20) A “corny keg” is apparently (and charmingly) more-properly known as a Cornelius Keg. Those are them in the photo of the entire batch of #10, above.
(26.20) Beer of the Week #2: Oskar Blues ‘Gubna’ IIPA, from a can (as you could probably guess from the awesome sound effects).
(26.30) If you’re a new listener, and haven’t heard George’s reactions to Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’, you should probably go visit Episode III, next.
(27.00) I am all in favour of canned beer, and had little rants on the subject as adjunts to my Diary entries for Maui Brewing’s Coconut Porter and ‘Big Swell’ IPA.
(29.30) “You could have [a vending machine] on your back!” is a reference to the seriously-awesome costumes the boys donned for the launch of their Dr. Grordbort-themed releases. Jos was all Safari Suit Explorer Type, but Pete was very much the Adventurer Mechanic, and had two corny kegs strapped to his back, with a dispensing hose in each hand.
(31.50) Martin Craig did a nice write-up on ‘The Chosen One’, after our blind tasting session with all three candidates and a few controls.
(36.30) I’ll admit (and have done, on here); I love the Steampunk aesthetic. But you can’t have rayguns in steampunk, and Grordbort has rayguns aplenty.
(45.20) Portal is an absolute masterpiece (and really cheap, these days), and when you look back to Narbacular Drop (the student project from which it developed, which I’ve also played), you really have to be impressed at what a small group of clever and committed people can do.
(45.50) Scott Boswell and I, when he still worked at Malthouse, spent quite a while one night reading about the legendary elBulli. Unfortunately, we were motivated to do so by the release of a collaboration beer they did with Estrella, called ‘Inedit’ — which was total pants. Jos and Pete’s points aren’t affected by that, though.
(52.50) Beer of the Week #3: Lost Abbey ‘Judgment Day’. That peculiar sound was Jos working the cork out of the bottle; so we had three beers, with three different enclosures.
(53.10) Garage Project online: @garage_project on Twitter, and website and occasional bloggery at garageproject.co.nz.
(54.10) The word cloud here is the one I mentioned and linked to in the note at 15.50 — we really are setting records for picking up abandoned threads of conversation after long tangents through other stuff.
(58.00) @BeerGlassphemy is on Twitter.
(58.40) Midstength News: Liberty Brewing’s ‘T.S.B.: Taranaki Session Beer’ slipped my mind in the Midstrength Beer episode, but proved a huge hit at a similarly-themed beer tasting at Weta Digital. Garage Project’s ‘Hapi Daze’ was mis-labeled as “Session IPA”, and Jos — ever-handy with the digital gadgets — did indeed whip up the taplist for Hamilton’s Tavern on no notice at all. Go take a look, yourself.
(1.03.20) Recommendations: Liberty Brewing’s stuff, in general. And Townshend ‘Sutton Hoo’ (which was a collaboration with / recipe borrowed from 666 Brewing) — its namesake historic place is well-worth reading about, too. Emerson’s Dunkelweiss.
(1.07.00) The collaborative ‘Peoples Project’ was announced online and in Jono’s Dominion Post article. Given my experience with the coffee-tastic ‘Batch 18’ from 8 Wired and the loopier ideas Pete mentions, I’m very keen.
(1.11.10) The Pacific Beer Expo will be October 22 & 23 in Wellington; tickets and a little write-up are available at Hashigo’s ‘Cult Beer Store’ online shop.
(1.12.45) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket.

Actual Diary entries

8 Wired ‘Batch 18’

June 3, 2011 Phil 2 Comments

This is ‘anniversary beer’ done right. And good god damn is it done right. I am peculiarly fond of ‘occasion beer’ and so do love it when brewers mark special moments with special beers. But when they’re afterthoughts, or half-assed, or tokenistic, then they’re just sad. Tuatara’s ‘X’ Anniversary Ale last year was one of those (for me, and just to pick the example that comes most-readily to mind) with its bungled packaging and uninspiring recipe — though it has to be said that this year’s offering was considerably better on all fronts, but we’ll get to that in its own turn, soon enough. Suffice it to say, though — as I already have done, twice — that ‘Batch 18’ is no let-down; it’s a freakin’ masterpiece.¹

8 Wired really did hit the ground running back in late 2009, with a lovely brown ale (which came to be known as ‘Rewired’, but initially carried the somewhat-awkward name ‘All of the Above’), then an attention-grabbing local-produce-celebrating pale ale (in ‘Hopwired’), and onwards to an ever-expanding frequently-impressively-experimental range of beers. Most-recently, the still-relatively-new brewery’s rise was marked by taking out the “Best Brewery” gong at the beer awards this year — an achievement that was utterly deserved and generated seemingly-none of the usual beer geek grumbles or quibbles with such awards.

But ‘Batch 18’ was in the works long before that. According to Søren’s characteristically-useful label text, the plan was to celebrate an “anniversary” with their eighth batch, setting calendar-based timing aside and leaning instead on that numeral in their name. Things were way too busy when #8 rolled around, so they pushed it back to #18; do it right, or don’t do it at all. I just love that;² it takes balls to delay something obviously-occasion-based past its actual date, merely in the name of doing it right — just try, those of you with spouses,³ to skip an anniversary and see how much compensatory awesomeness is required in return. This, though? This gets away with it; it’s massive and elaborate and you wouldn’t want to’ve done it in a rush. It’s a big imperial stout, fundamentally, but definitely isn’t just a slightly blinged-up version of their bloody-lovely ‘iStout’. Rather, it’s brewed with two different yeast strains, dosed up with jaggery (a raw sugar, which throws in some interesting flavours and helps kick the alcoholic strength up a few notches), infused with coffee, aged for a few months in oak barrels, infused with more coffee — before finally being bottled up and wrapped in a gorgeous-but-simple label that implores you to a) share, and b) be brave.

So I did, and I was. After I was done for the night, I sat at the bar and poured out five glasses — while admittedly bogarting the biggest glass for myself. We were all struck by the forceful nature of the nose of it, on first whiff. This was not a beer that was shy about letting you know that a lot would be going on in the glass. It doesn’t warn you away, but it does warn you nonetheless. There’s a distinct booziness to it (it is 12.5%, after all), and that must help waft all those aromas up out of the glass. All the components are quite obviously doing something, and can certainly be picked out individually if you try hard enough — but it’s also a deft exercise in Flavour Jenga; they’re piled in a great big stack, but not precariously or without balance. They combine in interesting ways, too, stitching together into interestingly-unexpected notes like the “blue cheese and pears” comparison that Jono hit upon.

I’ve got two more of these, sitting in my stash at work. I should drag one out now (well, not now, since it’s 4.30am as I write this) and have it in celebration of the Champion Brewery trophy, and then I might just leave the other bottle to sit and wait until their calendar-birthday rolls around later this year. Søren was pretty sure that the coffee flavour would ease right off over time, but it was still nicely present in the bottles we had at a Weta Digital beer tasting not too long ago — so there’s an element of Science! to my plan, not just an attempt at delayed gratification and blatant act of hoarding. Thought it is those, also.

Verbatim: 8 Wired ‘Batch 18’ 3/6/11 500ml ÷ 5 with Peter, Haitch, Jono + Katie (the new girl) 12.5% $15-ish @ Reg. Bloody nice idea, well pitched and executed bang on. A little terrifying in your nose, but not in a bad way. Fumey + funky — blue cheese + pears, we think. Definitely hot + lingering on the palate, and you can definitely taste all the components. I said “definitely” twice. That’s telling. It’s a bit crazy, but in a charming kind of way, not (just) an off-putting one.

1: Hell, given the elaborate recipe and execution, it comes close to being a “masterpiece” in the older-school sense of the thing that signifies the turn from journeyman to craftsman. But that’s not how the Brewer’s Guild works, these days, despite the name. I have to say that, now I mention it (to myself so far, obviously), I can’t shake the suspicion that it’s a pretty neat idea…
2: I’m a habitual procrastinator, as you might be able to discern from the disparity between the dates of Diary entries and the dates on which they appear, here. When I feel the need to defend myself, usually just to myself, this is the line I run most often.
3: “Spice”?

Actual Diary entries

Invercargill ‘Sa!son’

June 3, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

Invercargill Brewery really is the unsung workhorse of the local beer scene — or insufficiently-sung, at least. I was re-struck by that thought when I was writing about their utterly-delightful ‘Pitch Black’ stout, and I’ll take the chance to just repeat myself now, if you don’t mind. If, while staying busy running contract-brews, you can produce a range that includes a stout, an easy and accessible lager, and a motherfucking saison — then you are a very clever chap, indeed.

Saison is, as a style, well within the realm of the weird — both for its inherent, peculiar, funky and contradictory flavours and for the genuine oddness of some of the devotees it attracts (though they’re not quite as peculiar, in the main, as habitual gueuze-drinkers). One of the local craft beer scene’s elder statesmen, Fraser McInnes (who may not ever forgive me for using “elder” or “statesman” to describe him) is especially fond of them and was, for a while, helping us out at the Malthouse. On a Friday, his going-home time roughly coincided with my half-way-through time, and so I picked this up to share with him when he was done and I was in need of a mid-shift treat.

The seemingly out-of-place exclamation point is, I believe, a reference to the often-forgotten fact that when D.B. registered their now-infamous (and still-standing) “Radler” trademark, they also snagged “Saison” — despite that being equally daft, for the exact same reasons. D.B. did quietly abandon the Saison mark,¹ so the Bowdlerised version isn’t really necessary, but it remains a nicely-timed and well-aimed poke in the ribs — clever and funny enough that my Inner Sarcastic Bastard easily wins out over any complaining from my Inner Punctuation Nerd.

And it was delightful. The background-level of peculiarity never got in the way of the deliciousness of it all, which was a very welcome trick for it to pull. It’s gorgeously light and fruity — the label is absolutely right that there’s tangerine and passionfruit flavours kicking around in there, but the zestiness of the thing really made me think particularly of the dry, powdery sparkle you get flying off the freshly-ripped peel of a tangerine on a hot day. We were drinking this in a fairly-seriously wintery patch, but now that the weather has turned back towards the warm-and-sunny, I’ll definitely have to give it another go — the label’s text says that the beer tastes like a “bittersweet memory of summer”, and that couldn’t have been more bang on, really. And there was certainly a properly-Saisonny funk going on in here, too; they hadn’t just wimped out and sacrificed it entirely, for the sake of more mass-market appeal. It was firmly in the background, but it was artfully placed there for balance’s sake, rather than relegated to an out-of-the-way corner, in shame.

Verbatim: Invercargill ‘Sa!son’ 3/6/11 330ml $5.50 @ Reg 6.5% ÷ 2 with Fraser, since this is very much his favourite kind of thing. Nice DB-prod with the name, too. Does exactly as it says; light fruit nose (they say tangerine & passionfruit — which is right, but with the powdery peel of the former, too); zesty body that still manages to be nicely smooth under the lively bubbles. Deftly funky, not fraughtly so. Actually pretty damn lovely. Given the current weather and its suitability for their opposite, their “bittersweet memory of summer” note is perfect. The funk-level is James Brown on the stereo next door — when you were in the mood to listen to him anyway, but too lazy to get out of your chair.

1: God knows what they were planning on doing with it. I’m not sure if they intended on creating some non-saisonny “Saison” — much like their 5%, no-lemonade “Radler” — or whether they were going to try and buy some exotic, foreign-language flair for their “Summer Ale”. In any case, cooler heads prevailed. If only they had with the whole sad Radler debacle.

Actual Diary entries

Renaissance ‘Craftsman’ 2011

June 1, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

Gawd, it has been a while.

But it all rounds out in an oddly-nice way as I sit here and write about an absurdly, magnificently, madly chocolatey beer while eating some of the very-last (at last!) of my ultra-massive birthday cake — it seemed to be made of chocolate, chocolate, chocolate and some other kinds of chocolate. This whole week (since my actual birthday, last Tuesday; it’s late on September 4 as I write this) has put that whole “you can’t have your cake and eat it” cliché in a bin and thoroughly given it a pounding with cricket bats. It turns out that if some lovely-lovely people buy you a sufficiently massive cake, you can have it all week and eat it all week, too.

‘Craftsman’ had its re-launch at work way back in June — the value of t isn’t quite in the triple-digits, at least — shortly after it scooped the Champion Stout trophy at the Australian International Beer Awards. George and I were just recording a podcast episode today in which we discussed the various oddnesses of beer awards in general, so it’s additionally-fitting that I finally get around to this one, now. Whatever their issues — and let’s, for a moment, leave aside a) the peculiar way in which beer-judging works and b) the traditional Miniturised Industrial-looking Piece of Thing theme that all the trophies seem to go for — it remains a lovely moment when a deserving beer picks up an award and gives you yet another opportunity to shake the hand of the people from the brewery and congratulate them on the goodness of what they do.

I’d had a lovely afternoon, and had forgotten entirely that this was making its return that night. But on seeing the tap badge, quickly grabbing a tasting glass, and having just the merest sniff of it, I was instantly transported into a state of giddy, child-like glee. The nose of it is just perfect chocolate; like birthday cake, or a craving-ending snack, or an easter egg you found under the bed just when you were regretting having eaten them all already. The ultra-choc character comes from combining an oatmeal stout base with additional doses of cocoa nibs and vanilla. The latter was eased-off a little this year, and I think that was definitely the right move; last year’s edition had the same grin-inducing chocolatey loveliness, but got perhaps a little sticky by the time you’d made it most of the way through your pint. Here, everything’s in marvellous balance. That may be an odd-looking trophy, but it’s one damn well-earned.

(And in one final piece of nice, spooky timing, I closed my Diary entry with a mention of “The Barry White Joke”, a phrase that harks all the way back to Emerson’s sadly-retired Oatmeal Stout, and which I last noted here while rambling about Emerson’s ‘Grace Jones’ Porter — a ‘Brewers’ Reserve’ beer which has, itself, just been re-released. I had some tonight at Hop Garden, and it was tasting great.)

Verbatim: Renaissance ‘Craftsman’ 2011 1/6/11 @ MH. Launch of the new edition, which did very well over at the AIBA. Always nice to have Brian in the house, too. Me and Haitch were both reduced to wordless joy with our tasters — me probably helped along by still being on a bit of a high from a lovely afternoon. It’s just gorgeous. The vanilla is toned-back from last year, making it worryingly drinkable — I liked the 2010, but it did get a bit sticky. It’s liquid chocolate, dry and cocoa-y and dark. A worthy new target referent for my Barry White joke.

Podcast episodes

Beer Diary Podcast episode 4: Emerson’s Bookbinder and Midstrength Beer

June 1, 2011 Phil 13 Comments

I was in the very-vague planning stages for a Midstrength Beer tasting (which did eventually, er, eventuate) and George and I thought that the topic itself was worthy of a longer discussion, not merely a little recurring segment — although we’ll keep that, too. Sessionable beer really is an ongoing obsession of mine; a good one is a bloody marvellous thing for all sorts of reasons, and I’m delighted that they seem to be coming back onto the beer-drinkers’ and beer-makers’ radars.

We do apologise for the inadvertent hiatus suffered by the podcast (it’s the 30th of August as I post this, and so about five weeks since the last episode); we’ve both been abnormally-busy with our “regular” jobs, and I was also knocked over for a few weeks by a particularly nasty winter lurgy (as us hospitality workers occasionally are). We hope to return you (and ourselves, obviously) to regularly-scheduled programming from here.

As always, a direct download is available (and so will more-bite-sized ‘chapter’ chunks, in a day or two…), there’s a podcast-specific RSS feed, and you should be able to get us on iTunes. George and myself can both be reached on the Twitterthing, and you are (naturally) more than welcome to leave comments, here.

Show notes:

(0.40) It had been a while been recordings, and now it’s also been an extra while between postings. That feels oddly prescient.
(0.50) Beer of the Week: Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’.
(2.00) Pompallier House is totally worth a visit.
(3.30) It was officially called the Museum of Fishes and the usually-useful internets are being a little unclear on whether or not it still exists / has been sold / moved. Any local knowledge would be welcome; that place was awesome.
(4.20) Southern Cross is a surprisingly good good-beer venue, still.
(5.10) Basically everything is Toby’s fault, if the situation / humour demands. We’re both a little surprised that this is his first time getting called out for it.
(5.50) Emerson’s Pilsner was Beer of the Week for Episode I.
(7.55) When I ran the aforementioned Midstrength Beer tasting, the phrase “kebeb-seeking missile” came out of nowhere to describe late-night drunken food choices. You all know what I mean.
(8.15) The clip from The Human Body doesn’t appear to be online, sadly. But the whole series is worth watching, not just for that moment.
(8.50) I really did flub a good deal of the history, here. Kieran Haslett-Moore mercifully jumped in in a comment (below) and padded things out properly / tidied them up. I didn’t help my case by not really quantifying my “historically”, of course, and I suppose the general point — that midstrength things did fade from view for much of the last beer-drinking generation — still stands.
(9.30) Before proper sanitation, the water really would kill you. Beer has to be boiled, and has booze in it — both of these things help keep you safe against any number of otherwise-nasty microbes. The past was not a Golden Age.
(11.20) 8 Wired ‘Underwired’ got its own Diary entry, and was mentioned in Episode I (foreshadowingly) and II (with the benefit of hindsight).
(13.00) The definitional question is always fun for nit-picking (preferably with a few pints), but 3-point-something is a good guide. The Session Beer Project are the Americans I refer to who (for various good reasons) opt for ≤4.5%.
(15.00) Martyn Cornell’s post on the subject is a typically-great mix of history and damn-good-point-making.
(15.20) If you’re thinking in physics terms — and you should, occasionally — the relevant concept is power, not work; it’s not just the strength of the thing, it’s the strength per time. More-flavourful beers can be “sessionable” at higher ABV.
(16.20) Seriously, if you see Fraser around town, buy him a beer. Not just for his Argument Concerning Boozemath — for all sorts of reasons. The key is to remember that, factoring in various things which doubtless vary wildly, each beer you have contains some alcohol you’ll process before the next beer and some extra, intoxicating alcohol that’ll slowly build up. This is not really reflected in ABV or in “standard drinks” notation.
(20.40) In New Zealand, beer under 1.15% attracts no excise tax; anything 1.15% – 2.5% is subject to 38.208¢ per litre of beverage; and all beer 2.5% and over is levied at $25.476 per litre of alcohol.
(23.10) See? Toby made me drink Tui. Well, he didn’t make me. I still blame him.
(24.00) Pressed for recommendations: Emerson’s ‘Bookbinder’; Hallertau ‘Minimus’ (punnier name suggestions for the Winter Variant are welcome…); Cassels & Sons ‘Elder Ale’ (Elder-berries is very-definitely Monty Python); Yeastie Boys have made a few midstrengthables — I unfairly had a couple of no-longer-available ones come to mind, but unforgiveably forgot to mention / didn’t yet know about the Pot Kettle Black 2011 ‘Remix’, which is a session-strength “weemix” (and Stu’s pants really are legendary; Jed Soane got a good photo of them, as you’d be right to expect); Galbraith’s ‘Bob Hudson’s Bitter’ (which is lighter than I remember, at 3.2%).
(27.30) The Wikipedia page for White Lightning puts it bluntly — “It was known for its high alcohol strength and low price. White Lightning was popular with those wishing for alcoholic intoxication at a minimum price.” — and notes that its strength crept gradually downwards before it was abandoned entirely.
(29.40) Coopers make great Gateway Beers (as we mentioned in Episode II), and frequently (though not always) make just plain great beers.
(30.50) Talking about this again more recently, I’m not sure why the Australians were earlier on the midstrength uptake, in mass-market terms. One hypothesis that came up (I forget out of whose brain; possibly my own) is that the more-mad sporting culture over there helped push the big breweries to make 3.5%-ish lagers, in an effort to find a relatively-palatable middle ground for both the drinkers and the local authorities.
(31.20) That’s how out of date we got, right there. The has been a ruling on Radler, as you probably know. The bad guys won, as they sometimes do. I’ll have to rant properly about that at a later date. Campbell Live had two surprisingly-decent pieces on the subject, one before the verdict and one after.
(32.20) There you go, I said it: IPONZ are narcoleptics, or drunks. Or both.
(33.30) I know it was a while ago, so I should give a link to last time, which was indeed about “winter ales”.
(35.00) Breweries on the way: Garage Project (gee, we should interview them; tune in again next time…); ParrotDog (which probably isn’t at all Art Deco, in the logo department); Revolution Brewing; Brewaucracy.
(39.20) Liberty Brewing’s stuff has all been worthy, and some of it just plain marvellous. ‘Never Go Back’ is still my solid favourite. And I did slightly screw-up the history of the company; Stu (currently of Yeastie Boys, formerly of Liberty Itself) appeared in a comment (below) to give the proper story.
(42.40) Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’ (no apostrophe) is a pleasantly-coincidental thing to mention, given the slot this podcast episode will fall into, in the Beer Diary timestream — weirdly-distorted as it is. If you haven’t heard George trying ‘Rex Attitude’, you should listen to the tail end of Episode III. He is embarrassed to have to correct himself on his film references, though: he didn’t mean Remains of the Day (he enjoyed that), he meant The Age of Innocence (which he definitely did not enjoy).
(45.00) Cue the music: ‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket.
(45.26) We’re way overdue to give credit to Audacity, the open-source audio editor we’ve used for all of these so far. George — a man with degrees in marketing and zoology, not audio engineering — found it alarmingly-easy to learn and capable of genuinely impressive cleverness.

Actual Diary entries

Yeastie Boys ‘Fools Gold’

May 31, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

Given its provenance, I think it’s safe to assume that the name here is more a Stone Roses reference than an Iron Pyrite one. But hey; you never know — just when you think you’ve got their naming scheme figured-out, they do go and change things on you.¹

If you’re me — and I am, if you think about it — the name works especially since it combines my fondness for golden ales with the fact that my nieces have long called me “Uncle Fool”. I don’t know whether it started from classic two-year-old language-mangling or from a particularly-early activation of the Cook Family Bastard Sarcasm gene. But it passed from Niece I to Niece II, and will probably become part of Nephew I’s lexicon, once he starts finding his words. I kinda like it, I must say.

Meanwhile, the value of t has embiggened itself embarrassingly, thanks to recurring computer issues and a particularly vicious visit from an hospitality-worker winter lurgy. So this is fast drifting into the dark recesses of my already-enfeebled memory, but I can say that I absolutely loved it — short on particulars why as I admittedly am.

But it all makes sense, in a weird sort of way; I was at Hop Garden again just yesterday (for their absurdly-sublime burger, which had Yeastie Boys ‘PKB’ as an ingredient, no less) and something about the absolute depths of a stupidly-freezing winter night does make at least part of your mind turn back to warmer days — even if you are famously fond of colder weather and are basically-obliged to think back that far anyway, since you’ve become so far behind in uploading your Beer Diary.

As I say, I’m always up for a good golden ale — they’re the warm-weather obsession which matches my winter fondness for oatmeal stouts — and this was a nicely punchy one that suited a snackfest of Hop Garden’s big-fat-fries and salt-and-pepper squid (the latter matching unusually well, with its higher-than-usual pepperiness). To me at least, Fools Gold straddled the line between your modern light-and-lush golden ales and your more-classic paler-than-pale English pale ales; different, but still delicious. I only managed to have a couple of pints before it was gone from the City’s taps, so I presume I wasn’t the only one who found it a charming little uncomplicated and worthy thing. Peter and I were just mooching around town in honour of the fact he was finally free of his University responsibilities — and, given my nearly-interminable history with those places, I have complete sympathy with the need for a pint or several to mark the ending of such things.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Fool’s Gold’ 31/5/11 on tap @ HG, with Peter, who is now free of Uni, and with fries + salt-and-very-pepper squid. Apparently 4%, which is marvellous. Pitched as “pale ale”, it’s a nicely punchy golden. It was handpulled @ HZ, but I always prefer these bubbly. Goes gangbusters with “dinner”, such as I have. More forceful than a lush Three Boys Golden; but just different, not remotely ‘inferior’.

1: Personally, I’m really hoping it’s actually a reference to a Fool’s Gold Loaf — a sandwich (I use the term oh-so-loosely) popularised by none other than Elvis Presley. Fittingly, it’s a hollowed-out whole loaf, crammed with a jar of peanut butter and a whole ’nother jar of grape jelly — and a motherfucking pound of bacon. I’m seriously tempted to make one and maybe go on to produce a whole series of Elvis Meal Time videos.

Actual Diary entries

Renaissance / 8 Wired / Yeastie Boys ‘Rescue Red’

May 26, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

Around a year ago, Luke Nicholas was talking to Sam Calagione and was able to apparently-accurately say that their ‘Portamarillo’ would be New Zealand’s second-ever collaborative brew — after the also-with-Luke Epic / Thornbridge Stout. Now, they’re everywhere.

To maybe-needlessly hammer the point: Galbraith’s Alehouse is currently hosting several brewers as part of a ‘Great Brewers Cask Ale Series’; Liberty and Mike’s made a neighbourly project in the form of a ‘Taranaki Pale Ale’; what the Epic-led ‘Mash Up’ lacks with its loosely-defined sense of “collaboration” it more than makes up for with its relatively-massive scope; and at this year’s IPA Challenge at the Malthouse alone, damn-near half the beers were collaborations to some degree or other.¹

They seem like such a characteristically beer industry thing, too. I’m not sure if the wine folk are too snobbish to ever put their heads together and make something in the ‘rising tide lifts all boats’ spirit of a collaboration — perhaps they consider their boat sufficiently risen, or perhaps I usually just stay far enough away from grape juice that I don’t hear of such projects, if they do exist. Whatever; they’re a wonderful thing, and it’s great news that the trend (a very North American thing, it’d be fair to say) has crashed upon our shores. Long may it, and the spirit that propels it, continue.

And so here with are with ‘Rescue Red’, as it eventually came to be known, after a flurry of potential titles. A three-party project from Renaissance, 8 Wired and Yeastie Boys, it was brewed as a fundraiser for relief efforts in Canterbury and Queensland. Brew day was documented by Jed Soane, and the official write-up is well worth a read (and not merely by the usual standards for press releases). It’s a suitably multi-faceted thing; a sessionable, hoppy amber ale, fermented with a saison yeast. I like all of those features — in descending order, essentially — but it kept throwing enough curveballs that even after several decent-sized tastes, I wasn’t sure if I liked it. I continued to go back to it, though, which probably entails that I did like it — or at least I was a) fascinated, and b) non-repulsed.

Entirely fittingly, then, its actual appearance in my notes reigns supreme as the Grand Champion Distracted Diary Entry Of All Time; I entirely abandoned my first attempt, unfinished, and had to start afresh the next day. On the night of the initial datestamp, Jillian — her the Newfoundlander of the cigarette-lighter sign-writing — showed up at work just as I was finishing a round of Kegtris. It wasn’t long until she was due to continue her overseas explorings and head over the Big Country, so we took that as a fair-enough excuse to make a bit of a night of it — which involved borderline-gatecrashing a house party at which neither of us really knew anyone, dancing like lunatics to a fucking-marvellous and entirely-random ragtime band,² and some generally-enjoyable wandering-around-town. Awesome fun. Hence the ‘Nope; I’ll write about this later’.

In the end, I’m fairly sure I did enjoy ‘Rescue Red’, although it probably picked up a few Circumstantial Bonus Points — not that I ever object to those; hardly-relevant surrounding happenings are always going to colour your opinion of a thing, and you’d be a fool to try and stop them entirely doing so. It was definitely quirky and interesting, without being obnoxiously so in that awful trying-too-hard kind of way. The saisonny funk, conspicuous hops and rich red malt all got along together very well, however much they might look clashy on paper — after all, it might appear that organising a fridge, someone else’s party, and a chance encounter with swing music wouldn’t work well together, either; these things can surprise you occasionally. And you’d do well to let them.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys / 8 Wired / Renaissance ‘Rescue Red’ 26/5/11 4.8% on tap @ MH $10, but not so bad, because proceeds go to Queensland & Canterbury. “Hoppy red saison”, they say, with typical disregard for… everything — 27/5/11, restarting, with another. I was too distracted last time. Not in a bad way. I keep trying this, because I’m not sure if I like it — but I guess this kinda means I do. It’s enjoyably peculiar, but not overly or flashily so. Gorgeously red, too. Faintly berry-ish, the funk making it like cranberries on the turn.

1: i.e., Yeastie Boys and Liberty, twice; Townshend and Greig McGill of Brewaucracy; Moa’s Dave Nicholls with some help from Malthouse Overboss Colin Mallon; and a ‘Four Horsemen’ hophead supergroup collaboration in the shape of Luke Nicholas & Kelly Ryan of Epic, Steve Plowman from Hallertau, and Liberty’s Joseph Wood, again.
2: Namely, the Roseneath Centennial Ragtime Band. They play pretty-regularly around Wellington, it seems, and there are sample tracks available on their MySpace page.^a
— a: Meanwhile, Myspace still exists?

Actual Diary entries

Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’

May 23, 2011 Phil 5 Comments

The aforementioned ‘St. Bernard’ was proving a popular guest, and comparisons to ‘Pitch Black’ (made, unprompted, by quite a few people) had kept up enough that a couple of circuits of my ever-skeptical brain had started to fire up and crackle with the question of whether we were all just being nostalgic for that weirdly-long-lost (on tap, at least) old favourite. And I never really get annoyed with those careful, questioning bits of my brain — because they provide a damn-good excuse to retry something, you know, for Science!’s sake.¹

Nostalgia, and its opinion-inflating effect, can be fairly problematic in the beer world — as much as it can be anywhere else, I suppose. People often seem overly-fond of something they discovered on holiday, or think something isn’t as good as it used to be, or swear that something imported is always “better back home”. None of those are nonsense scenarios, of course: the enjoyment of beer is an ineliminably circumstantial thing, some recipes really are sacrificed over time (given the need to make ever-increasing quantities, or in an attempt to chase a more mainstream drinker — or both), and — all else being equal — something probably is better close to its source than after a long journey. Memory in general is problematic, of course. Mine, particularly so — hence the Diary itself.

But no, on this occasion, we’re all good. Every positive thought that lingers in your mind about Invercargill’s sessionable little stout is probably bang on. I tried this again, after probably more than a year, and after a relative boatload of delightful little somethings-similar — and it was still crackingly fantastic. There is some serious wizardry involved in cramming such dense deliciousness into such a small four-point-five-percent frame. That’s cleverness, that is; artistry, even. It’s got the flavour of a much-heavier thing — big, smooth, coffee-milkshake smoothness. In its own terms, in its own weight division, it is damn close to perfection — and you have to suspect that, in a head-to-head, it could beat the tar out of a fair few members of the heavyweight classes. If Pitch Black started liberally quoting classic Muhmmad Ali smack-talk, there’d be no cause for complaint — on the simple (and also-very-Ali) grounds that it ain’t braggin’, if it’s the truth.

And once you pause for a minute — hell, take six-minutes-forty-nine-seconds, and watch the relevant episode of NZ Craft Beer TV — to consider the dizzying range that they release under their own name and the stuff they brew for Yeastie Boys and the Mussel Inn and others, you really have to be a little bit in awe of Steve Nally and his little brewery near the end of the World. If you happen to be wearing a hat, take it off to them — if you’ve not got one on your noggin right now, go get one; they deserve the gesture.

Verbatim: Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’ Stout 23/5/11 330ml 4.5% Speaking of which! $8 @ MH Worried we were just being nostalgic, but inspired to test after Jono had one earlier. And no, we’re good. This stuff is delicious. Big flavour on a lightweight thing, and very well balanced. Coffee milkshake kinda smoothness to it, with a nicely cocoa-powder bitter fizzle at the end.

1: I’ve always had a bit of a case of science-envy. I mean, I have a humanities degree. I never get to do actual science, though I have plenty of friends who do (in some very impressive ways), so I tend to overstate things when I do anything properly experimental.

— Epic ‘Armageddon’ (Auckland, NZ, 6.66%)

— Sierra Nevada ‘Hoptimum’ (Chico, California, 10.4%)

— Hallertau ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ (Riverhead, NZ, 6.8%)

— Russian River ‘Pliny the Elder’ (Santa Rosa, California, 8%)

— Mike’s Organic Double India Pale Ale (Urenui, NZ, 9%)

— Dogfish Head ‘90 Minute’ IPA (Milton, Delaware, 9%)

Show notes:

Show notes:

Tastings and ramblings and whatnot