For a Very Special episode, George and I relinquish the microphone entirely to four of our friends. We’d wanted to dedicate an episode entirely to ‘Women & Beer’ for some time and eventually realised that we were sufficiently blessed for potential guests — and also sufficiently lacking in personal experience, for obvious reasons — that a takeover episode made all kinds of sense.
Our replacements are, in order of introduction: Megan Whelan (journalist and producer for The Wireless), Beth Brash (blogger at Eat & Greet), Hayley Adams (bartender at Golding’s Free Dive and project coordinator for the Safer Bars Alliance) and Steph Coutts (SOBA stalwart and founder of Craft Beer College — and thereby occasionally my boss). They discuss their own beer epiphanies and preferences, run-ins with lamentable marketing and experiences as part of the beer community — good and bad, grating and brilliant. Here, with my traditional apologies for the delay in posting it, is part one; part two will follow shortly.
It feels strange to show-note an episode I didn’t make, so I’m going to leave this one mostly un-annotated, other than the following little details:
Comments are, as always, welcome here or on the Beer Diary’s Facebook page. In addition, all four substitute hosts are active on Twitter: Megan, Beth, Hayley & Steph. If a reference needs clarifying, a correction submitted, or any such thing, you are particularly spoilt for ways in which to have your say.
Beers Of The Week in this part are: #1 Panhead Vindicator (at around 1.30) and #2 Renaissance Bloody R.I.P.A. (from about 24.30).
Since the traditional sign-off will have to wait until part 2, I’ll drop the relevant end credits here: our theme is‘Shopping for Explosives’, by The Coconut Monkeyrocket. Audio editing is done (by George) in Audacity. Hayley also provided the obligatory photo of their Beers Of The Week. Habitual thanks to all concerned.
So,1 as may or may not already be obvious, Beervana is nearly upon us. As it does every year, now, it’s brought a swirl of beautiful madness with it — the City is brimming with beer geeks and the calendar is crammed with things for them to over-occupy their time. Working in the beer business, though, can complicate the enjoyment of this week a little precisely because there is such a glorious mountain of stuff going on. Spare an extra thought for your barpeople; they’re likely pulling long hours and achingly envious of your ability to flit from spot to spot.
There’s a lot going on in my little corner(s) of the industry, as well: flinging beer hither and yon — slowly driven bonkers by the cautious ordering of restaurants unaccustomed to the enthusiasm of the beer-drinking public this time of year, and so requiring re-up after re-up — and lending a minor hand in the pile of other projects entailed by a day job at a brewery that goes utterly batshit on the eventsand special releases fronts. So I’m mostly hanging out for the festival itself, since I’m missing out on most of its satellites.
And I am, admittedly, superkeen. I stand by my sympathy for people who’ll now skip Beervana — feeling it’s outgrown them or they’ve outgrown it — in this rich ecosystem of ours, but I always enjoy it as pilgrim, participant, hypercritical observer, and raving evangelist. And as performer again, this year, with the Beer Diary Podcast: Live! on each evening, which should be buckets of fun — and the audience is open to all comers.
This is the big week in beer, in New Zealand. It’s our Christmas. Imagine how run off your feet you’d be, if you were an elf, and bolt that to the giddy excitement you felt when you were a kid. It’s both at once, and it’s bloody marvellous. Bring it on.2
1: If this post’s title earworms you as quickly and strongly as it did me, I make no apologies. ↑ 2: Meanwhile, I should reiterate that the placeholding ‘Station Ident’ idea is one shamelessly stolen from Honorary Friend Of The Show Warren Ellis. If you’re not reading his notes at morning.computer, you’re missing out on some of the best short-form stuff around. (And that really is a valid URL, now; the third age of the internet is really going to be strange.) ↑
An episode with no beer. Well, none were consumed — out of a vague nod to Dry July, but more a result of us both being in losing phases of the age-old battle of Monkey v Microbe. We ponder Dry July, as a charitable enterprise (we’re unconvinced) and (much better) a way for people to test and/or manage their relationship with one of humanity’s favourite drugs. Meanwhile, we drink some worthwhile non-beers,1 and I have a little ramble on the social history of tea and coffee and whatnot. And an episode this time of year wouldn’t be complete without a looking-forward toward the beer awards and Beervana.
Speaking of which — we’re going to be recording two episodes at Beervana itself, and you’re more than welcome to join the audience as we talk beer with some special visiting guests. Attendance is free and there’ll be Beers Of The Week for all. We’re on at 8pm on Friday, 7pm Saturday.
(4.00) Botswanan of the Week: Mma Rmotswe. The books are formulaic but enjoyable, and I thought the TV series was particularly well done. I’m sure I’m slightly biased because the author is also a big name in bioethics, but still.
(4.30) Beverage Of The Week #1: Gingerella. Tasty stuff indeed.
(8.30) Bars really do need to sort out their non-boozy options.
(13.30) A.U.D.I.T. — the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, an online version of which can be found here (ironically festooned, for me, last I visited, in Beervana ads).
(21.00) There’s a lot of myth-making in regards water and the historical popularity of beer. In Industrial Revolution era cities, though, the problem was a real one.
(22.50) The Beer Diary Podcast: Live! Friday at Saturday evening, no cover charge, with guests and beers-of-the-week for all. Should be a lark. Come along, if you’re in town and attending Beervana — and tell your friends.
(23.40) Beervana exhibitors. Australians aplenty, plus lots of new faces. But absolutely no Boundary Road / Independent / Asahi, for an apparently-hilarious reason. And a reminder about Beer Festival Economics.
(32.00) The rich ecosystem of festivals. You do see a few people wondering if Beervana isn’t for them anymore. To which I say 1) it’s possible that your tastes have changed more than the festival has, and 2) that’s not really a problem; there’s still so much for you to go to and go bananas about.
(33.00) The new ‘beer manufacturer’ award — overdue, and missing the point.
(38.00) Bouquet & Brickbat / Tip o’ the Hat & Wag o’ the Finger: We really do need a name for this segment; suggestions welcome. I keep getting stuck on ‘Cheers & Jeers’, but there’s probably something better lurking somewhere in the æther. But anyway — Yay Tuatara, for doing Interesting Things. (The new CEO is Richard Shirtcliffe, but he’s formerly of Phil & Ted’s; same industry, broadly, better name.) They’re obviously looking to restore their ‘Wellington’ cred and their ‘cool’, but that’s not a bad goal. And — Boo Dominion Breweries / Heineken global for using the same (bad) joke on two different billboard campaigns, and for the world’s worst mixed pack.
(48.50) Recommendations:Tuatara ‘Black’ — I’ve still only had the ‘Toasted’ one, but hear good things about the coffee and chocolate incarnations. It is worth noting, though, that they haven’t “re-brewed” Delicious Neck, it turns out; they’ve re-blended it — whether for reasons of deadline and schedule or just lack of inspiration, I hear the What We Do In The Shadows tie-in wasn’t a custom brew, but a blend of existing stock. Tasty, all the same, but still. Also Big Awesome Trappist-y Things, and Hallertau Funkonnay. And: #freshisnotbest; build a cellar.
(52.00) Friend Of The Show: As noted in the last episode, it seems Wil Wheaton did get his beer from us, which is awesome. For this week: Warren Ellis — creator of a bajillion things, almost too numerous to list, that we’re mutually hugely fond of.
1: It took me forever to find a non-beer photo in my collection. That coffee was me on my way to the Winter Ale Festival, last year, which I photographed on a ‘real’ (i.e., film) camera for the first time in years. Hence the terrible shot. Despite being an avid consumer of tea and coffee, I guess I don’t make an ‘occasion’ of it often enough. I should get out more — and take my camera with me. ↑ 2: On a hunch, I did actually contact Roy Morgan Research concerning the above-linked paper wherein ciders allegedly ‘overtook’ RTDs in popularity / consumption. And yes, the data was purely unmoderated self-reported numbers from asking people “Have you bought a cider?” in the relevant time period. The real lesson — since Rekorderlig, Wild Side, etc., etc., are all thought of as ciders by most people when they’re anything but — is that the industrial manufacturers have been successful in their bid to ‘re-brand’ their RTDs. ↑
Feminism, as they say, is1 the radical idea that women are people too. By very simple extension, women can be beer enthusiasts, bar owners, beer writers, and brewers. There’s a lot more to say on the subject, obviously, but it’s not really my gig to hold forth given my obvious lack of lived experience — a Very Special Podcast Episode was recorded this weekend which will probably elaborate thereon, instead, and that reminded me about this tasty beer and its somewhat-unusual context.
LBQ — that is to say, Little Beer Quarter; a well-established bar here in town which happens to be owned by women — was hosting a mini-tap-takeover by Moa, a company with something of a well-deserved reputation of boorish, sexist and otherwise-bigoted marketing. The high-water mark, such as it is,2 was perhaps their relentlessly shitty IPO document, but their offenses — both stunningly major and perplexingly minor — would probably be just too depressingly exhausting to fully catalogue. Their outright dismissal of women as potential consumers (nevermind investors or just non-ornaments) sees them fail at the earliest possible moral hurdle and earned Moa a spot on my own personal (and mercifully short) Boycott List.
Amended signage at LBQ — editing down Moa’s dickish “Finally, something drinkable…” slogan
The tension here — that between the character of the bar and of the brewery3 — was noted a fair amount online, with many surprised that LBQ would give Moa the oxygen, after freely taking (gentle) jabs before. Personally, it was admittedly gratifying to be reminded that I wasn’t alone in holding a grudge. A lot of people will independently bring up their history of appalling marketing and cite it as a reason for not buying their beer, skipping their offering at a festival, or not going to an event of theirs. We are, after all, enjoying a preposterous embarrassment of riches in our options in the beer world, so it’s relatively easy to boycott something for over a year and not really feel like you’re missing out at all. Consumer choice wide enough allows consumer judgement on any criteria they feel like applying — which is precisely how things should be. Moa, it has to be said, had been keeping their heads relatively low, lately;4 it looks like they thought they could just slink away from their prior bullshit and have everyone quietly forget about it — and it looks like they were wrong. Re-starting with a sincere “we screwed up — we acted gross, and we’re not going to do it again; we’re actually mostly going to get out of the way and let the beer speak for itself” could do a lot.5 They’ve conspicuously failed to make any kind of attempt in that direction, and that’s unfortunate for all concerned.
And maybe LBQ were still giving them a nudge in the ribs even as they hosted this perhaps-premature event, because on the afternoon of the takeover, they announced that they’d tapped a keg of the Beer Baroness-brewed edition of ‘Unite’ Pale Ale, the International Women’s Day collaboration beer. So I had that, for my own point-making circumstantial reasons, but I’ll eagerly have it again for its inherent deliciousness because it was just splendid. Nice how that works out, sometimes. A zippy little sessionable pale ale, it was very much My Thing — and a fresh batch is reputedly On The Way. The titular Baroness is Ava Wilson, who is also the manager of the ridiculously wonderful Pomeroy’s Pub, convenor for the NZ chapter of the Pink Boots Society (soon to have its inaugural meeting, and the mothership of which organised the global brewday), seminar-wrangler for the Great Kiwi Beer Festival, and an all-round superawesome individual. If you, like Moa’s marketing suits, live in the same country as Ava and you still don’t think women could be “beer people” then I submit that you are an ignorant retrograde.
I would at least hope — in a rare fit of optimism — that the craft beer ‘community’ was on the whole a welcoming, safe, and enjoyable place for women to be. Better than ‘the average’ (non-beer bars and festivals, the public at large..?), maybe, somehow. But it’s a long way from perfect, and every awful bit of sexist branding,† all the tired old stereotypes and presumptions that never quite die (see, e.g., how often people think “girly beer” might actually be a category, and what it’d consist in, and why), and every crappy bit of treatment women still endure in bars — they’re all worth calling out and resisting. So yes, among my self-chosen descriptors, I’ll wear “feminist”6 as happily as I do “beer geek”.
Diary III entry #24: Beer Baroness ‘Unite’ Pale Ale
Original notes: Beer Baronness ‘Unite’ Pale Ale 17/7/14 @ LBQ, amid a Moa tap takeover, so at least partially for irony + point-making. But the thing itself hardly needs an excuse; really nicely zippy + zesty hoppy little 4% thing. Not hugely weather-appropriate, but the bar is super cozy anyway. Lots of interesting reactions to this event, but my take is just that it’s premature. Apologetic fronting-up, then the charm offensive and re-focus on the beer.
1: If I felt like quibbling — and, let’s face it, I basically always do — I’d say “begins with” rather than “is”. But it’s a damn fine slogan, and at least damn close to the mark. ↑ 2: With “water” in a decidedly euphemistic sense, let’s say. ↑ 3: “…or at least its marketing department”, as the usual caveat goes — including from me (e.g., footnote 1 in my post on the IPO itself). And while it is true that the beers range from fine to great and the brewer himself is indeed a lovely chap, there comes a point where something goes on long enough and everyone involved really is at least a little bit culpable by association. ↑ 4: Well, other than hiring Shane Warne to front their product in Australia. Which makes little goddamn sense for several reasons, not least of which the boofhead reputation he’s transparently struggling to shake. Against their otherwise softly-softly tactics of late, I’m pretty much at a loss to explain that one. Perhaps it’s a mistake to try to attribute a rationality behind it at all; it might just show their instincts. ↑ 5: Just because someone will always come along and set a worse example, I suppose it’s at least a relief they aren’t just trying to obliviate their past misdeeds and erase them from the record (except for one example that we’ll get to later…) — unlike WilliamsWarn, whose foray into #everydaysexism was made all the sadder for their reaction to criticism. ↑ 6:Simplicter. I was in the habit of saying “~ ally”, but I’ve lately been convinced otherwise. ↑ †: Coincidentally, in the inadvertent extra delay in getting this online, the guys at the Ale Of A Time podcast uploaded an episode wherein they also address the sexist branding / beer-naming problem. So at least it’s getting a little more air and pushback — though I take a stronger line than both of them. ↑
I’ve been meaning to re-read Alice Galletly’s marvellous ‘Beer For A Year’ for ages. Despite best intentions, my own output is still at a low ebb — you should see the brimming Drafts folder I have on here1 — which often prompts me to go back through things I’ve enjoyed reading and which spurred me to write more. I bring up certain B.F.A.Y. posts regularly as I hack away at something vaguely related — but it’s high time I enjoyed it properly again: chronologically and cover to cover.
And in one of those marvellous coincidences that my brain seems enduringly capable of creating — where procrastination leads to eventually-excellent timing — I started re-reading Alice’s first post with my coffee this morning: bang on its three year anniversary.
So in lieu of umpteen neglected Sunday Readings, I gift to you 365(+) posts of excellent ramblings; wherein an ‘outsider’ with a wonderfully unpretentious enthusiasm undertakes a Herculean task, repeatedly doubts her wisdom for doing so before [SPOILER ALERT] ultimate triumph, instantly falls into an excellent system of hypothetical-relationship-based beer taxonomy, and myriad other delights. I’m less than a quarter of my way through the re-read, but loving it all over again already — it’s well suited to binge-reading, with that same joy in overdose and thematic overload you get from wallowing in a whole season of a favourite TV show.
1: I mean you actually should. As in, I’m trying to finish them off and get them publishable, I really am. You’ll have to excuse some fairly dated references in the mix. But I suppose that’s always been my thing, in a way. It turns out even self-imposed deadlines make that delightful wooshing sound. ↑
Back for our fourth season — which promises to include several Very Special Epsiodes, but more on those in due course — George and I quickly re-tell our Origin Story for new listeners, return briefly to the topic of our first-ever show (so-called “grey market” imports), before catching up on the beer festivals that happened while we were on hiatus. I also rave about keeping a Beer Diary (since it turns out I’ve been doing so for a decade), and we finally formalise what it means to be a ‘Friend of the Show’.
(0.45) It has been a while. George has a better excuse than I do.
(1.50) I really did make my own ‘business cards’, colossal dork that I am. They’re really mostly for festivals and such, and created in the spirit of never assuming anyone’s memory to be less crap than my own.
(4.10) Beer of the Week #1: Rogue ‘Brutal’ IPA. Imported by Tuatara, an arrangement they announced here with some fanfare, but which has since lapsed.
(5.00) Hashigo is coming up on five years old, having opened September 2009.
(30.10) I still haven’t made it to a wine tasting, despite good intentions.
(32.00) Beer of the Week #2: Oscar Blues ‘Ten Fiddy’. (Thanks, Tim!)
(36.30) Beer Diaries, themselves. Please excuse the clumsy foley.
(41.00) If we were going to switch themes, I’d only ever suggest that we go for the insanely catch one Last Week Tonight uses. But they got to it first. And Coconut Monkeyrocket’s track really does suit us somehow. Yay for Creative Commons.
(41.30) Friend of the Show, defined. We now have reason to believe that Wil did get his beer, meanwhile; I’m still working on a few of the others.
(44.10) Cont’d, and awarded to: Vicki Treadell — the departing British High Commissioner to New Zealand, beer lover and exemplary party hostess.
(46.00) SOBA’s Pursuit of Hoppiness is available online as well as in the pub.
(49.30) Recommendations: Er… We’re at a bit of a loss. You should read Scott’s Buzz and Hum blog, though. And try ParrotDog ‘DevilBird’. Then — after surreptitiously checking my Diary — I completely fail to do the beautiful madness of Billy B’s Golden Apple Beer any real justice. But generally: Smith Street.
(57.40) The Beer Diary Podcast: Live! — at Beervana, twice: Friday evening from 8pm and Saturday evening from 7pm.
The set-up for a fantastically decadent Emerson’s Sunday Lunch at Little Beer Quarter, about which more soon
It seems I inadvertently supersized my GABS-related sabbatical and wound up taking two months off this here blogthing.1 Such as happens from time to time, I suppose — and such as is probably warranted and wise. But that’ll do. It’s dawned on me that it’s less than a month until Beervana, that Season 4 of the podcast is overdue for its début, and that I have a lot of half-finished rambles and things to talk about sitting around on my laptop. There’s no shortage of wonderful things happening in the beer business that deserve celebrating, and (let’s face it, even after a healthful break, I’m still me) plenty of temper-spiking, rage-inducing bullshit in dire need of calling-out, too.
Some Technical Difficulties were holding me back a little, as was an Obnoxiously Lingering Winter Lurgi; both now seem on the rapid wane, at last. A few exciting new projects and Very Special Podcast Episodes are coming together, too, and will get fanfared in due course. So the lunchbreak — both metaphorical and literal, as I write this at work — is over.
1: I kept myself vaguely occupied on Twitter and on Beer Diary’s Facebook page, meanwhile. If you’re after more short-form spur-of-the-moment stuff from me, those are always a good start. ↑
Taplist at Frankie’s Pizza — and a sign indicating that my dinner was yet two orders away
I’m over in Australia again for a bit of a break and the damn-near-obligatory pilgrimage to the Great Australa— let’s just say GABS, shall we? A few days in Sydney has been buckets of fun, and (despite the FOMO) it’s been nice to have a blank time a few hundred kilometres removed from the Way More Awesome Good Beer Week Things Than I Could Ever Afford Let Alone Endure. I managed to visit a few more of those small bars that have sprung up recently: the sublime Frankie’s Pizza, the charmingly mad Spooning Goats, Baxter Inn (for a whisky) and Barbershop (for a gin) — though I also had a beer at the latter two; huzzah to the humble Boilermaker, I say, forever and always.
And so tomorrow down to Melbourne, and then all-damn-weekend at the festival. In the spirit of Full Disclosure, the organisers included me on their apparently-rather-generous (and generously-defined) Media Pass list, so I get a ticket to each session and (I think) a handful of tokens. Which is delightful and hugely appreciated, of course, but also worth explicitly saying for completeness’ sake — and not just as a humblebrag — since I’m otherwise here own my own dime and as Me From This Thing You’re Reading Right Now, rather than the “me” from my day job (nor various of the non-day jobs that fund holidays like this one). Granted, I’m already looking sideways at them over this nonsense with Moa and Shane Warne, so it’s hardly going to colour my ‘coverage’, but still.
I’ll be posting various bits and pieces on the usual short-from outlets — you can find me on the Twittermachine, the Bookface, Google+ (in the unlikely event it ever takes off), and logging my drinks that in that great beer-related memory aid, Untappd — and will try to get something up here either during or shortly after. At GABS itself, I’ll be sitting down with Luke & Dave of the ‘Ale of a Time’ podcast at some point during Session One on Friday; we’ll let you know when and where when we do. Otherwise, I’ll be wandering the Hall and the City in general, almost certainly wearing a nerdy (non-beery; something of a 2014 Festival Resolution) t-shirt and an interrobang badge: feel free to say Hi if you’re around and you spot me. It should be a lovely long weekend — and may yours be, also.
Over the decade I’ve been taking handwritten notes of my beer-drinking experiences, I have inevitably developed an idiosyncratic Style Guide.1 Broadly — though there are exceptions early on as the pattern developed, and sporadically throughout as I either forgot my own practice or thought of some now-lost rationalisation for a variance in some particular case — it’s like this: beer names are all capitals in the pen-and-paper form for easier cross-referencing, but otherwise just regular Title Case, with single-quote marks around a beer’s name when it’s a name, in the proper noun sense rather than a style descriptor. So Epic Pale Ale, but Epic ‘Mayhem’, if you follow. But this one, the latest in Monteith’s white label Brewer’s Series,2 necessitated I reach for the double-barreled scarequotes instead.
Objectivity is hard to find — and usually not worth looking for — in the beer world (or any other sensory pursuit), but I think I can comfortably say that this is no American Pale Ale in any sane sense of those words. Beer writer Neil Miller got a freebie in the post3 and Tweeted that it’d come with a package of Citra hops. The obvious jab — “Hey Monteith’s, the hops go in the beer…” — swiftly ensued, but turned out truer than anyone could’ve known: the beer has damn-near zero aroma or hop flavour, and certainly none remotely in the ballpark that “A.P.A.” would entail and require. I was instantly put in mind of the pale ale in Lion’s ridiculous ‘Crafty Beggars’ range4 — both smelled more like an empty glass that had previously held beer than one which currently did. It was insipid, incredibly boring, and what extra flavour did manifest itself as it warmed up a little and I grudgingly proceeded down the glass was not the kind that was welcome. The 40 I.B.U. — “International Bitterness Units”, a doomed-but-useful way of trying to measure the palate-punch of hops — on the label implies a relatively easy-going pale ale, sure, but this was so insubstantial as to amount to a cruel joke.
Because the problem here is that this kind of massive mislabeling cuts both ways. It’s not just that beer nerds and brewers should feel affronted to see a venerable and popular style being so poorly aped, it’s that anyone who likes this could well be horribly surprised if ever they buy a true-to-style American Pale Ale. Everyone would be better served if this was marketed as Heineken Trading As Monteith’s Brand Fermented Product Number Sixteen, instead; as it is, no matter how much you know about the words on the label, you know nothing about the beer inside — and vice versa . That it comes from the same sprawling conglomerate who’ve long abused the term “India Pale Ale”5 on a sweet and caramelly brown lager, as well as selling a “Radler” that isn’t a Radler, should put them firmly On Notice. It could always be pure incompetence and ignorance — and we are supposed to presume cock-up before conspiracy — but it’s so consistent that it looks more like deliberate piss-taking and deception. It’s as if Tony Mercer, the putative head brewer, is channeling Tony Soprano, running around the style spectrum and trying to ruin people’s idea of what each variety of beer can really be — much like the latter drove all over Jersey to meet with all the best divorce attorneys just so his wife couldn’t hire them later. A company of this scale could be a properly-wonderful provider of accessible ‘gateway’ beer and fridge-friendly stuff for the masses however nerdy or not, but sadly they seem to prefer wallowing in nonsense and pretending to be all kinds of things they aren’t.
Diary III entry #12: Monteith’s quote-unquote “American Pale Ale”
Original notes: Monteith’s “American Pale ” 18/3/14 @ home. 5.7% “40 IBU”, freebie from a retailer perhaps best left unnamed. I really want them to join the real world and start playing ball. They could be such great gateway providers. But no. They’re either taking the piss, or are just totally incompetent — or, I suppose, marketing is one and brewing is the other, each doing their share. This is damn near free of aroma. It’s like that Crafty Beggars Pale was. An empty glass. Bland, slightly buttery. Utterly boring, until it warms and worsens. Just horrible. That this is labeled “APA” is a problem for everyone. Are they Tony Soprano-ing all the beer styles?
1: “Decade”? Crap. I missed my own note-taking anniversary. Probably because I have the kind of memory issues that necessitate note-taking in the first place. “Inevitably” because the Diary started just after (my first round of) University finished. ↑ 2:Paging Dr. Freud, meanwhile. A “Brewer’s Series” does seem like a strangely-blunt admission that the main range is dictated more by the marketing and accounting departments, doesn’t it? ↑ 3: Almost certainly both because I am a notoriously grumpy bugger, and I am not a proper professional writer, I tend not to get sent samples. Indeed, a stickler in my own weird ways, I would (and have, on occasion) usually turn them down. Notable exceptions, though, are the bottle of Epic’s ‘One Trick Pony’ IPA that Luke Nicholas generously sent me on each version’s release (because I helped name the series), the couple of bottles Moa sent me (before I could get around to telling them not to; I’ll find a home for those soon…) — and this, which came from a bottle store who were somewhere between mystified and outraged by it, and wanted to share the experience around. ↑ 4: I hear a rumour that the Crafty Beggars brand has failed to meet expectations, and will be axed. The big breweries sure are fickle with their new ideas. Meanwhile, I am still happy calling the whole experiment “ridiculous”, with the proviso that the everything in its right place principle did render one of its members worthwhile on a very specific occasion. ↑ 5: Occasionally, you hear a minor defence of D.B. along the lines that they appended the “East” to IPA and thereby made up a nonsense new style and so technically aren’t bullshitting anyone. Sadly, that fails on two counts: “East India Pale Ale” really is the original style term, and D.B. explicitly (and very, very wrongly) link their product to the Usual History of IPA. ↑
It’s time again, at last, for our Year in Review: a look back at 2013, a pondering of its best beers and beer-related-things, and contemplation of what kind of ‘theme’ the year developed as it went. Our traditionally unhurried approach to these things (we’ve recorded all these episodes in March) met a few additional delays this year, but here we are. Plans are already underway for some Very Special Episodes in season four, but first let’s wrap up our third year — and thank you all for coming along for the rambles.
(1.40) ‘The Flat of the Axe’ is George’s Cold Chisel cover band, he informs me.
(3.30) Apparently, it is officially Ride of the Valkyries, but “Flight of ~” seems a common-enough mistake / mutation that I forgive myself.
(3.50) Beer of the Week #1:Almanac Honey Saison. My apologies for the lack of a photo. You’ll all just have to seek out an Almanac, Left Coast, or Speakeasy beer (all imported by the nice folk at Beer Without Borders) to see the gorgeousness.
(10.40) Useful Digital Thing of the Year:Feedly, because there really is a ridiculous wealth of good (and of interestingly / usefully not-good) beer writing in the world. My intermittent Sunday Reading posts try to keep up.
(12.50) George lasted nine minutes with a saison; easily a new record.
(13.50) 2013, Year of the x:The Homebrewer, says George, which possibly ties into my less-elegantly-phrased Commercial Realities Settling In, in several different ways, ranging from subtle to not at all subtle.
(23.20) Beer of the Week #2: Moon Dog ‘Black Lung III’.
(26.20) Beer of the Year — which one day we won’t have to explain in such detail anymore, but until then: Panhead ‘Quickchange’ XPA, for George — with honorable mentions for Baylands Red Ryder, and 8 Wired’s ‘Semiconductor’. And for me — after a fair amount of (now traditional, but this time with a vague evidence base) faffing around — it’s ParrotDog ‘Otis’. (Meanwhile, I wonder if the Panhead ‘Days of Thunder’ George remembers from Beervana has morphed into ‘The Vandal’, an IPA of notably-similar style and strength.)
(31.00) Year of the x prediction for 2014: Moral Panic. (Maybe with fringe benefits.)
(34.30) Glass of Beer of the Year:Yeastie Boys ‘Gunnamatta’, for George, which we shared over some Big News — with a silver medal (“Tasting Glass of Year”, perhaps) to Garage Project’s Triple Day of the Dead. My shortlist stretches into a longlist: my (one) Crafty Beggars ‘Wheat As’, Moon Dog ‘Black Lung III’ sitting in as Antipodean Gonzo, Bridge Road / Nøgne Ø ‘Aurora Borealis’, Renaissance ‘Elemental’, and Yeastie Boys / Lobethal Bierhaus ‘Wendy’. But: Yeastie Boys ‘Rex Attitude’, on the inaugural Table Top Day, playing Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs. Accidentally.
(41.00) Seriously, though: Planetary. And Transmetropolitan. George and I couldn’t recommend each highly enough.
(47.30) My apologies for not getting this up in time to warn you of Table Top Day 2014. Join in for 2015, maybe. And anyway: play more games. Meanwhile, the Call For Help is sincere — if any one can be a Beer Mule to California for us, get it touch.
(52.00) Beer of the Week #3: Rodenbach Grand Cru. Easily “Recommendation of the Year”, if we had one; Jono’s suggestion for this and fish ‘n’ chips has changed lives.
(54.00) Pleasant surprises / Miscellaneous bouquets: A surprise ParrotDog ‘Otis’, and a Garage Project ‘Beyond the Pale’ — though Em points out that if it’s just hibiscus flowers, it’s more tisane than “tea”. A mutual shout-out, also, to Luke and Dave’s ‘Ale of a Time’ podcast — Alternate Universe Us, perhaps. And a bribe / beer, for Tim Foster who provided some excellent feedback and earned himself a Yeastie Boys ‘Her Majesty’, which I should get into his possession any day now.
