Emerson’s ‘1812’ IPA

March 11, 2011 Phil 4 Comments

My impromptu round of Kegtris was apparently enough to earn me a second pint, this time of the also-just-tapped Emerson’s ‘1812’. The fashion for hop-tastic IPA being what it is, old-school classics like this are often unfairly passed-over. “Old-school” is obviously a fairly relative term, given that ‘1812’ isn’t old in IPA-itself terms — but it’s still pretty grandfatherly in the New Zealand craft brewing sense. It was an early example of local beer getting ‘noticed’ on the international stage, too; Michael Jackson (the beer and whisky writer, not the ‘other’ one, obviously) selected it for his 1998 book Beer (which was about as definitive, in its day, as its maximally-simple title suggests) and it’s even one of the dozen that also make the cover.

There are a few stories about the name. 1812 the year is a bit too early to be anything-much to do with the style itself,¹ so it’s often suggested that there’s some slightly-too-clever reference being made to the beer’s hoppy ‘overtures’ (hur-hur, very punny), but there’s also the odd-and-maybe-related fact that 1-8-1-2 are the last four digits of the brewery’s phone number. All this numerology and allusion-chasing is enough to make me remember just why the fuck I gave up on watching Lost.

But no matter. It’s a catchy, simple name. And a charming beer; a nice counterpart to modern, flashy, boistrous pale ales (as much fun as they no doubt are, when the mood for them strikes). The malty body is delightfully smooth (particularly off the taps, I thought), and there’s a very pleasant, gently-building marmaladey fruit character comfortably mooching around in the glass. Just a bloody marvellous sit-and-sip kind of a pint.

(And no, the bar didn’t get lighter inbetween this and the ‘Rapture’ that preceeded it. Rapture was on the front taps, and I was a little rushed by the General Populace surrounding me, so I didn’t muck about and obsess as much as I ordinarily might. With the 1812 on tap at a much-quieter end of the bar, I set up a proper long exposure shot. Hence the blurry people. I do like my new toy, I really do.)

Verbatim: Emerson’s ‘1812’ IPA 11/3/11 on tap @ MH, also. Further reward! And a chance to show off the camera, since a few stoppers-by were seeing me do some updates + having a tinker. If memory serves, this was a very early notable New Zealander. And it’s very tasty. B[y] current standards, it’s astonishingly mild, of course, but it’s always good to go old-school occasionally. Smooth malt body, nice, almost marmaladey fruitiness in there.

1: At least when it was known by that term. But from the opposite angle, 1812 is quite a bit too late to have much to do with the origins of beers vaguely of this sort (whatever they were called) and/or their export to India.

Actual Diary entries

Yeastie Boys ‘Blondie: Rapture’

March 11, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

As much I was enjoying the relative novelty of a Friday Night Off, I was also having a Bit Of A Day. The Gonzo and the writing helped somewhat, but when I returned to the Malthouse and saw that a few tap beers had run out, necessitating a fridge shuffle, I volunteered to sort it out. A dose of Kegtris — with its unique combination of heavy lifting, organising things into neat piles, and near-zero temperatures — is always good for my Zen, peculiar creature that I undoubtedly am.

Colin (the Overboss) was grateful for the Free Labour, and so offered to make it Slightly Not Free by shouting me a pint of the just-tapped ‘Rapture’ as reward when I finished. And it made for a lovely after-exertion restorative.

Whereas its crisp-and-snappy ‘Europa’ version was brewed with a ‘clean’ German Kölsch yeast, ‘Rapture’ was fermented with a Belgian abbey yeast and its light body of mild malt and understated hops provides a perfect showcase for just exactly what sort of difference that choice entails. It’s very easy-going, but delightfully interesting; the funkiness from the yeast is in no way overbearing or confrontingly odd, it’s just quirky fruity goodness. Flavour-wise, it put me in mind of some sort of halfway-hybrid of Tuatara ‘Ardennes’ and Yeastie Boys’ previous Belgian-esque brew ‘Plan K’, although it has a lighter body than either of those.

‘Europa’ was pretty damn tasty, but if I had to choose between Blondies, I’d go with this. The sheer interestingness of a much-lighter-than-usual Belgian ale — the usual stereotype of Belgian brews being rather hefty isn’t universally accurate, but it’s the stereotype for good reason, nonetheless — earns ‘Rapture’ quite a few points with me.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Rapture’ 11/3/11 on tap @ MH, reward for a (necessary) day-off dose of Kegtris. The second of the ‘Blondie’ pair of summer ales, this time with a Belgian abbey yeast. The lightness of the base really lets the unique yeasty flavours dance arond a little. Not all crisp + snappy like its sister, smooth, quirky fruitiness instead. Really rather fun. Massively reminds me of something, but I’m struggling to spot what… Not Ardennes or Plan K — but maybe their bastard daughter? Not overpoweringly funky, just easily so. And I’ve just unexpectedly landed on a nicely odd food match: Vintage Cheddar & Red Onion Kettle Chips (i.e., Purple Chips). The easy-going funkiness is in them, too. I am so fucking low-brow, sometimes.

Yeastie Boys 'Rapture', Hashigo tap badge

Actual Diary entries

Flying Dog ‘Gonzo’

March 11, 2011 Phil 1 Comment

Good people drink good beer.

So sayeth Hunter S. Thompson on the label, and for what it’s worth I concur.¹ I bloody loves this beer. I loves it for its intrinsic goodness and for the circumstances in which I’ve had it — and I’m a mad keen Hunter S. fan,² so I’m sure his appearance(s) on its livery should be included among those, too.

It’s just utterly delicious; black, boozy and bitter. Full of flavour, but in no way overblown or stunt-ish. Just rich and warming and delicious. And inspiring — with the name, the quote, the artwork that has always gone so well with HST’s stuff — how could you not just sit down and get some writing done, if you had your handy-dandy little laptop with you? I couldn’t not, because I did, if you follow. I plonked myself down in the bar and hacked happily away at my keyboard for quite a while, churning out quite a few Diary entries and generally enjoying my Evening Off.

Turning back to more strictly-Beer-Nerdy topics, I couldn’t help but notice that they label this as an Imperial Porter but also proudly trumpet that it’s an award-winning (American Style) Imperial Stout. Which nicely brings up the question of the porter versus stout difference — and my favourite answer: that, basically, there isn’t one. And as nerdy as I ever get about style names and the boundaries inbetween, this is one of those rare and delightful beers that just shut me right the fuck up and slap a stupid grin on my face. And set me to writing.

Verbatim: Flying Dog ‘Gonzo’ Imperial Porter 11/3/11 $12@HZ 12floz 7.8% 85 IBU I can’t remember if I ever diarised this, or if I just piggybacked on Toby’s one. I bloody loves it. For itself, and for its awesome HST referencing. And I’ve just noticed that they firmly deny a stout / porter difference, calling this both, on the label. Such an awesomely huge flavour, big + warm at the front, then smooth + rich to follow. Can’t resist doing some actual writing, with this in front of me.

1: I’m sure that any empirical case I’d try to make here would be drenched in confirmation bias — but still, it seems pretty solid. Certainly if someone sketchy-looking wanders into the bar late at night and starts to wobble the needle on my Muppet Detector, them asking “what’s your cheapest beer?” right out of the gate will start up some horrid-sounding mental alarms.
2: If you are similarly enamoured of HST but the word ‘Transmetropolitan’ means nothing to you, go now to your nearest bookstore / library / internet-shopping-thing. Now. You have your homework; report back. The rest of you — you unfortunate normals — you should check it out too. But let the proper people at it, first.

Actual Diary entries

8 Wired ‘Hopwired’ (Saison yeast)

March 7, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

Just when we got a couple of kegs of the ever-delightful Hopwired back in at work, I heard that Hashigo had a keg of an experimental Saison-yeast variation. Which sounded like a prime opportunity for ‘Science!’. I jokingly suggested to Dave that we should pour some pints, brave the Liquor Ban and meet halfway for a side-by-side tasting. He found the good plan buried in my nonsense, and brought a little-wee-flagon of the Saison-edition in to me at Malthouse. Bloody marvellous.

And what a fine experiment it was. Hopwired is a fantastic show-off of both brewing know-how and flavourful local hop varieties. Here in the Little Country, we’ve made passionfruity Riwaka hops, lemon-limey Moteuka hops, white-wine-grapey Nelson Sauvin hops — just to pick three that you’ll find in Hopwired, nicely heaped into a big bowl of fruit salad and then thrown, with some vigor, into your face. In a surprisingly-enjoyable way.

Saisons are, generally, light-but-complex, summery ales descended from Belgian farmhouse brews — and one of their unifying features is a certain funk brought on by the particular yeast used. It’s a difficult thing to describe; it’s a bit of a “know it when you see it” situation. Think of that distinctly woods-y, barnyard-y, slightly-too-real scent that the outdoors produces on occasion.

In Hopwired, the yeast softens that hurled-fruit-salad aspect off somewhat, and insinuates oodles of that musty, funky character. Perhaps because Hopwired is a good deal oomphier than the bones of a Saison would ordinarily be, that charmingly-freakish side is firmly in check, though; it doesn’t obnoxiously overwhelm things at all. There’s a wineyness in there too, which was vaguely reminscent of that in Dogfish Head’s stupidly-lovely ‘Midas Touch’ — it didn’t really taste like actual wine; more like what I wish wine was. Altogether a worthy beer, very worthy as an experiment, and a fascinating side-by-side. I’d almost always opt for the original ‘vanilla’ Hopwired myself, if it were down to one or the other, but this was cracking good fun.

Verbatim: 8 Wired ‘Hopwired’: Saison yeast 7/3/11 wee flagon gifted from David @ HZ. Experimental batch of the back-on-our-taps-too Hopwired. Smells like Science! Definitely changes the nose; musty + funky, softening off the fruit. Similar things happen in the face. Not scary-funky, just good old-fashioned James Brown funky. Hints of winey / sour flavours, but not too much. Really rather fun, though I would almost always be in the mood for the original.

Actual Diary entries

Deschutes ‘Hop in the Dark’

March 3, 2011 Phil 10 Comments

Beer style names are often rather odd, when you think about them too much. Which I do on occasion, perhaps unsurprisingly. My favourite example of late concerns a recent (delightful) trend in craft brewing circles which has seen the release of several dark-and-hoppy / hoppy-and-dark beers.

If you take the rich black malty base as your starting point, you might see these as hoppy porters and one instance of the broader modern hoppy-x phenomenon. But if you start from the hop focus instead, then these look like IPAs with the malt darkened to the limit.

Both starting points lead to clumsy potential names for the style, as it emerges. “American style porter” carries the unfortunate implication that the United States is synonymous with hoppiness and that sort of lumping is just a bit much like suggesting that “Belgian” equals boozy and “English” equals not-very-bubbly. Even if a nation does do something particularly well, I just can’t shake my discomfort with having their name in the style’s name.¹ The other extreme usually leads to “Black IPA”, which is peculiar for the rather-obvious reason that the ‘P’ in IPA stands for pale and ‘black’ pretty much entirely implies not pale.

I don’t really have a good suggestion for how to fix all this, but I can say that I emphatically reject Deschutes’ attempt here to coin “Cascadian Dark Ale” / “C.D.A.”. That’s just awful. It sounds horrendously smarmy in its full version, and too much like “seedy, eh?” in its abbreviated form. And what about beers that don’t opt for Cascade or generally-Cascadey hops? For what its worth, I vote No on C.D.A., while at the same time voting Hell Yes on another one of the beer itself, please.

I’m loving this style, whatever it winds up being called, and this is a bloody lovely example of it. Huge and rich, and with a many-fronted hoppy component that makes instant nonsense all over again of the one-dimensional name. Even when you know what you’re getting into with these things, the fruity nose is still a pleasant shock — the brain’s connection between this sort of appearance and more-traditional porter / stout is pretty strong yet, I suppose. This one just struck me like a fantastic fruit salad from some parallel universe in which chocolate is also a fruit.

And, enjoyably, this turned out to be a rare exception to the way in which taking photos of your beer tends to get you laughed at — here, it got me laughed with. My Newfoundlander friend Jillian (over here on an extended holiday, part of which she spent working with us at the Malthouse) took the opportunity to show off (or just entirely ad lib and invent; I’m not sure) her light-writing skill by ‘signing’ my glass with my trusty beer-illuminating cigarette lighter. It’s a pretty good result (though, if we’re being entirely honest, there were several hilariously-crap early attempts, which I’ll spare you), and gave me a crash-course in the long-exposure settings on my new camera. Bloody marvellous.

Verbatim: Deschutes ‘Hop in the Dark’ C.D.A. 3/3/11 @ MH from my stash. 1pt 6floz ÷ 2 w/ Peter, after a nice night out @ Hop Garden. The Emerson’s dinner was on, which had a side-effect of letting us hang with a bunch of regulars. This seemed suitably weight[]y. I do love the Black IPA, as much as I resist this silly name. It’s massively dark, with a surprisingly fruit nose. Just what you need. Like fruit salad, if chocolate was a fruit, as well.

1: I’m okay with “American Pale Ale”, though. Which is possibly just old-fashioned inconsistency, though I might defend myself by noting that APA certainly did emerge from the U.S., and that the national adjective pegs to the varieties of hops and their character rather than just the raw notion of their presence and intensity.

Actual Diary entries

Moa ‘Five Hop Winter Ale’

February 28, 2011 Phil 8 Comments

I’ve railed about it before, but Moa’s appalling brandwank annoys me sufficiently that it still buzzes in my brain as I enjoy something like this, one of their actually-rather-lovely offerings.

Praise first, praise first; stifle the rant for a moment. ‘5 Hop’ is a delicious E.S.B., richly flavoured and deftly balanced. It’s warming without being so stodgy you’d only want it on a cold evening, and nicely pitched at 6.2% — strong enough to warrant taking your time with.

So, wait, why the hell is it called “Five Hop Winter Ale”? That name manages to evoke two different things that this beer isn’t — it’s neither hop-focused, nor particularly wintery. It’s an E.S.B.. That’s a thing. You can call it that. You do call it that, in an afterthought buried at the end of the label or in the tasting notes on the website. Were you just trying to stick the word “hop” on something, since you launched this at the height of the “more hops = more good” fad?

While I’m at it, this sort of crap is an ongoing problem with the Moa Brewery, and it will be very interesting to see what does and does not survive the currently-underway ‘retooling’ of the branding. Given the prominent appearance of the nonsense phrase “super premium”¹ on the new tap badge, I’m not massively hopeful things will get much better — though I’m fascinated to find out which bits will get worse.

Setting aside for the moment such annoyances as their daft implication that they’re the only brewery in the country (in existence, perhaps?) to bottle-condition their beers,² let’s focus for a moment on just one part of their labels: the arch of text over the logo. Moa ‘Original’ premiered with a banner of “Premium Lager of New Zealand”, with ‘Noir’ then heralded as “Premium Dark Lager of New Zealand” and ‘Blanc’ cleverly cast as “Premium Wheat Beer of New Zealand”, subtly brushing aside the apparent reality that their wheat beer is also a lager, rather than the ale you’d almost certainly otherwise expect. Things then go all a bit whack. ‘Harvest’ (a lager with cherry flavouring) gets “Premium Alcoholic Harvest Beer”, which seems to imply three falsehoods — i.e., that the previous three aren’t alcoholic, that this isn’t made in New Zealand, and that “Harvest Beer” means anything at all.³ Then, ‘Five Hop’ and ‘St. Joseph’ get lumped together and mysteriously relegated to the less-descriptive category of “Premium Alcoholic Beer”, before things utterly collapse into a singularity of oddness when their ‘Weka’ lager is billed merely as a “Premium Alcoholic Beverage” — what, is it not actually a goddamn “beer” at all, any more? Just how worried should I be that they so studiously avoid that word, all of a sudden?

This kind of barely-coherent buzzword salad drives me nuts. And makes me sad when I think that it actually probably works often / well enough that some people can convince themselves that it’s worth it. To me, this is brandwank, and I detest it — particularly when it’s so clumsy and contradictory as this. Dear whomever: If you’re going to be an Evil Advertising Bastard, could you at least be a better writer, please?

Verbatim: Moa ‘5 Hop’ 28/2/11 @ Malthouse, w/ Mike the rep.. I’ve always thought this was just oddly-named. Why emphasise the hops, unless you’re going all-out pale ale? It’s a very nice ESBish kinda thing, really. Rich + malty, nicely fruity hops. They’re in the middle of a brand redo, and a push into Australia. Must try and see if the journalist hat fits me…

1: Seriously, can marketing people stop pretending that “premium” really means anything, here? The only way for it to ring true at all is to take it at its literal meaning of “more costly”. So maybe this really is an “exceptionally rare” (to hijack Moa’s current slogan) example of honesty in advertising.
2: The phrase “New Zealand’s native Moa is the only beer to be fermented in the bottle, like French champagne” appears on their current homepage. A longer blurb on the section labelled “Discovery” also implies the same, describing the brewing process and ending with “The result is a beer unlike any other — clear, exquisite and bottle-fermented” — the first adjective is outright false, the second subjective and the third hardly unique.
3: Well, it almost means something. If you said those words to any normal / sane kind of Beer Nerd, they’d think you were talking about a pale ale made with as-fresh-as-possible hops, a “wet-hop” beer like Thornbridge ‘Halcyon’ perhaps — just to pick the first one I found in my Diary.

Actual Diary entries

Rogue Mocha Porter

February 26, 2011 Phil 2 Comments

This is possibly the best instance of a Beer for the Occasion yet recorded in the Diary. After my visit to Hashigo, I wandered back to the Malthouse just before closing to have a beer with Stefan — he’d been our doorman for just over a year, but this was his last night as he was leaving to take over running a bar out in the Hutt. With the help of one of our regulars, I picked this beer from my stash, since it was a Mocha Porter for our Mocha Doorman. But then it lately dawned on me the pun works three times over:

rogue noun 2. a mischievous scamp
mocha adj. of a brown colour, like mocha coffee
porter noun 2(1). a person in control of the entrance to a building (wiktionary.org)

So, a Rogue Mocha Porter for our departing rogue mocha porter. How freaking perfect. Then I just went and piled on the puns — I am really quite seriously unable to help myself, on that score — and noted down the beer itself as smooth but with a bit of a bitter sting, again just like Stefan. Heh.

But that really does bring me nicely to the subject of doormen. We must be one of the more difficult doors to work, in this town; we’re a very civilised little bar, really, but we’re right on the big crazy noisy yahoo-laden party strip. So while we’re a fairly calm sort of a place, we do get our share of Collateral Muppets. Our doormen are our filters, and the best of them (by which I mean Stefan, and Rod, who worked our door for years — before it was in its present location, even) have this freakish, Jedi-like ability to wave away People Who Aren’t Really Our People without being a dick about it or resorting to silly pretend rules about the quality of a person’s shoes or whatnot. All the way, they keep everyone smiling — usually even those rare people who actually need to be eventually escorted from the premises. But damn, if things cross a line, the transformation from Amicable and Welcoming all the way to Serious and Scary is instant and awesome. It’s uncommon enough that a person would possess both temperaments, and exceedingly rare that they’d then also have the skill to flip from one to the other seamlessly and exactly when needed.

Big smiley Jedi like Stefan (and Rod) fit our little bar just perfectly, and in combination with our small staff and its higher-than-usual (for the industry, and for this street in particular) level of Giving a Damn, we’ve had some freakin’ excellent nights when all the smart money would be on carnage and chaos and constant annoyance for all concerned. He’ll be missed, but — much like the earlier one with Scott — it wasn’t a bleak, depressing Farewell, since the new gig does seem like such a good fit. Next time I’m out in the wilds of the Hutt Valley — I’m not just reflexively knocking the place, per Wellingtonian tradition; I used to live there — I’ll have to take the family and go visit.

Verbatim: Rogue Mocha Porter 26/2/11 12 floz 5.1% ÷ 2 w/ Stefan, on his last night @ MH. Mocha Porter for our Mocha Doorman. It’s big + smooth + chocolatey, like Stefan. And a little bit bitter at the end, like Stefan. Heh. And I have to give credit to Annika for the joke / beer pick. There were a few candidates, but this is freakin’ perfect.

Actual Diary entries

Coronado ‘Islander’ IPA

February 26, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

Not long after I showed up, Dave signed off and joined me, perched at the bar. He’d been bought a big bottle of this during the fundraiser night, and he split it with me. Which was extra-good, since it’s not often that two bartenders / Beer Nerds get to actually sit and have a beer, given that one or other (or both, obviously) of us is usually working.

They’d had this on tap at Hashigo as part of their recent haul of Western United States goodies, and Dave was instantly taken aback by how much milder it was out of the bottle. It was probably down to the bottle stock being older than the kegs they got — hoppy beers do calm down considerably over time, in the main. There may have been a bit of batch-to-batch variance going on here, too — that being another one of the joys of smallish breweries. Consistency is not an absolute virtue and uniformity is for supermarket stock; anyone demanding it of craft beer is a chump.

Mild-er as it may have been (I didn’t try the on-tap stuff), it was hardly mild per se, and we were agreed that it was pretty damn delightful and incredibly drinkable for a seven-percenter. The malt was nicely rich and smooth, and would’ve easily balanced out considerably higher hoppiness but was inherently delicious even in its absence. After my similar experience of Just Bloody Delightful-ness with their ‘Autumn Harvest Ale’, I’ll have to keep my eye out for these guys; I think there are still a few more in the haul.

And I can’t help but notice that this makes a hat-trick of Diary entries from Hashigo’s little basement beer bunker. Not a bad run at all.

Verbatim: Coronado ‘Islander’ IPA 26/2/11 1pt 6floz 7% bottle bought for Dave Wood, generously split with me. Nice bronze-gold, apparently a whole lot milder than what they had on tap. Probably a batch difference. Really lovely + drinkable, not a big wallop, surprisingly. Rich + smooth malt. Doesn’t taste more than 5% like this.

Actual Diary entries

Liberty Brewing ‘West Coast Blonde: Amarillo’

February 26, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

On February 26th,¹ Hashigo Zake hosted an amazing fundraising night, donating all of their takings between 6pm and midnight to raise money for a local mental health charity and the Red Cross effort in Christchurch. My plan was to stop by late shortly before midnight, after spending my Saturday night hanging out with some friends. But when Pieta realised she’d been locked out of her apartment and that her key was with her flatmate on the other side of town, it was me and my bike to the rescue. Which was all very fun and random, but it did put me in the mood / give me the need for something light and refreshing once I arrived at the pub.

And damn, was this it. Joseph Wood of Liberty Brewing had donated kegs of his West Coast Blonde, and it was precisely what I needed. The Amarillo-hopped version was on tap at the time (it exists in two differently-hopped varieties, and a a few kegs of both were delivered), and it reminded me a lot of Stone & Wood’s ‘Draught Ale’ (now renamed ‘Pacific Ale’) — and I mean that as a compliment because I freakin’ love that stuff² — what with the multi-faceted fruit-salady-ness, the gorgeous hazy strawish appearance, and the ability to make a person feel human again. For Liberty’s first official release, it’s pretty damn promising (and apparently also rather lovely in its Simcoe-hopped incarnation). But we already knew it would be, especially after his stupidly-awesome ‘Summ!t’ IIPA, which was an unofficial third entrant in Malthouse’s West Coast IPA Challenge last year — and which very much stole the show.³

Verbatim: Liberty ‘West Coast Blonde: Amarillo’ 26/2/11 donated to HZ for their Christchurch Quake / Mental Health fundraiser, which was apparently a huge hit, raising $5K+. Full Marks. I’ve just been biking around a bit tonight, so needed something light + refreshing. This is very much it. Lovely pale + hazy straw. Fruit[] salady, with edges of smokeyness. 5.5% (I still can’t draw fives.) Crisp + dry finish, compared to a nice NZ Pils by some. Really rather reminiscent of Stone & Wood Draught — though I should say “Pacific” now. Stunning burps.

1: i.e., “today”, if you’re playing along with the fiction wherein I update these things as I go, rather than in fits of productivity days or weeks or months (or years!) after the fact. And please, do play along.
2: We had it at the Malthouse after each of the two most-recent Beervana beer festivals. Which puts it in that awkward Grey Area of Not Uploaded Yet Diary Entries. Sorry about that, but take my word for it; its appearances are met with fairly glowing reviews.
3: I’d direct you to its entry, but, er, Grey Area (see above, n2) again. Sorry.

Actual Diary entries

Coronado ‘Autumn Harvest Ale’

February 24, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

I’d been out for a nice catch-up in the sunshine with some friends who’d just returned from the far side of the world — and being me, I therefore needed some time in the shade. Hashigo’s basement beer-haven was the pretty-obvious refuge for me between the waterfront and work.

Since their tap range changes so dizzyingly-often, a little Taster Tour is mandatory, and never a chore. I had a sample of this, first, and can’t even remember exactly what the bigger / crazier things offered to me afterwards were; there was just something irresistible about it. I’d never heard of it, and the best that some surrounding Beer Nerds could do by way of description was to tell me it was basically a Märzen — and I’ll confess to not really having much idea just what the hell that entailed (though, from what I’ve read since, it seems a pretty good fit). I often say that there’s often a particular joy to be had in trying a beer about which you know basically nothing, and this was one of those times.

I was a wonderfully enjoyable pint, filled with all sorts of interesting angles, but never overdoing things in any direction. The colour of it was particularly striking (with or without sneaky back-lighting tricks), and maybe its redness was part of what helped put me in mind of deliciously snappy apples when trying to pin down the crispness of the body. An incredibly charming beer, I can imagine it comfortably fitting any number of moods. Which makes it a shame that I’ll have to travel pretty far to get another. Unless Hashigo have another keg stashed away somewhere.

Verbatim: Coronado ‘Autumn Harvest Ale’ 24/2/11 on tap @ HZ 5% Had a few wheat beers in the sun w/ Aran & Maeve, stopped by here and was bombarded with tasters. This was first, and I’ve returned to it for its oddness + goodness. Pale + ambery, about which I know nothing. Which is always nice. Fruity + full + balanced + different. Not a hop bomb. Lovely. Crisp, like red apples. Just a really nice pint.

Beer Diary

Emerson’s ‘1812’ IPA

Yeastie Boys ‘Blondie: Rapture’

Flying Dog ‘Gonzo’

8 Wired ‘Hopwired’ (Saison yeast)

Deschutes ‘Hop in the Dark’

Moa ‘Five Hop Winter Ale’

Rogue Mocha Porter

Coronado ‘Islander’ IPA

Liberty Brewing ‘West Coast Blonde: Amarillo’

Coronado ‘Autumn Harvest Ale’

Tastings and ramblings and whatnot