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Maui ‘Big Swell’ IPA

April 18, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

And then, a few days later, something rather similar — which makes a certain amount of sense in that my Monday was spent dealing with the same nonsense that lead to the unexpected Saturday night off. But it all worked out alright, and was fun in its own peculiar way, and so I cracked open one of these to celebrate.

Plus, here we are with another canned beer. I gave some of my thoughts on them — and on the spelling of Aluminum (no second i) — in my recent Diary entry on the same brewery’s Coconut Porter. That rant (the canned-beer one, not the Aluminum one so much) was prompted by comments made by local beer writer Neil Miller, and this was his Birthday. Perfect.

So soon after the Ballast Point ‘Big Eye’, it was nice to have another big-but-balanced American pale ale. The tagline on the can uses the word “hoppy” for thirty percent of its text, but the beer serves as a nice reminder that hoppiness isn’t exactly the same as bitterness, closely related though they are. It manifests here with all those wonderful classic American pale ale flavours of citrus fruit and fresh, resiny pine — but they’re all just a little more relaxed than they often are. Not tired, like a bad import or anything lacking in freshness, just relaxed. Imagine something already-delicious like Hallertau’s ‘Maximus’ finally escaping the clamour of Auckland,¹ getting itself a beach holiday and just chilling right the fuck out. Rather fitting, really, given its Hawaiian origins.

And damn, they aren’t kidding when they say smooth, either; it’s peachy, hazy golden colour, pillowy soft, excitable bubbles and luxuriously lush feel all put me in mind of Golden Bear’s ‘Bear Trappe’ though the two beers otherwise come from quite different backgrounds and styles. As I said on the Twitterthing when I bought this and the porter, anyone who wants to say there’s no such thing as good canned beer should have to do so to the Maui Brewing Company’s face — and to 21st Amendment, and to BrewDog, and… You get the idea.

Addendum: And then, the day after I posted this, Neil presented a somewhat-more-nuanced position on Twitter:

My definite preference is for beer in bottles but cans have their place. What is in the vessel is ultimately the most important. Some cheap cans can taste a bit metallic but a good can is fine – Big Swell IPA being the perfect example.

Though there’s still an under-current of anti-can sentiment in there — why else the definite preference? — I totally agree with the idea that it’s the beer that counts most. On that, given the inner (non-metal) lining of the sorts of cans usually used, metallic tastes are much more likely to be a brewing fault than attributable to the cans (a point covered, ironically, in the recent New Zealand TV programme for which Neil was a Talking Head). Still, it’s nice to know the fairly-strident lines he delivered in his ‘Beer 101’ tasting session — overhearing bits of which while clearing glasses was what initially freaked me out — don’t quite match up with his considered views on the matter.

Verbatim: Maul Brewing Co. ‘Big Swell’ IPA 18/4/11 355ml can $10 @ NWT 6.2% Reward for a weirdly enjoyable return to lawyering today. Really pretty hazy peachy gold, big fluffy white head. Soft nose of fruit + piney oily sides. Not big and bitter and punchy, still soft and smooth. Lush. The bubbles are totally reminiscent of Bear Trappe’s. And hey, it’s Neil Miller’s birthday, so a good canned beer is apt. It’s like Maximus went on a beach holiday + chilled out.

Diary II entry #93, Maui Brewing Co. 'Big Swell' IPA

1: Well, not that Hallertau live in the clamourous part of Auckland. Or really Auckland at all, as such. They’re clever enough to be a twenty-minute blat up the motorway out of town. But you know what I mean.

Actual Diary entries

Ballast Point ‘Big Eye’ IPA

April 16, 2011 Phil 3 Comments

My memory of this one gets a little hazy. I mean, the Creatures Stout was delightfully light, but it was followed by heavier things — as we continued to ramble, sit around and generally enjoy my unexpected Saturday night off. So far as memory (imperfectly) serves, I had a couple of Three Boys’ magnificent Oyster Stouts, joined a round of whiskies with my flatmate and his friends, and was given a Schneider ‘Aventinus’ that was accidentally opened (instead of the other kind of Schneider in stock). I was, therefore, perilously close to violating the Rule Against, but — as is, admittedly, quite-often the case — proceeded regardless.

I couldn’t not, really. I’d just missed out on a proper glass of the same brewery’s ‘Sculpin’ IPA: a ludicrously-highly-regarded thing of which I only managed an instantly-impressive taste that (apparently) put me in mind of “angry peaches”. The Hop Garden had bought their keg of Sculpin from the fine folks down the road at Hashigo Zake — in the spirit of a rising tide lifting all boats, and in the knowledge that your competition isn’t really your competition in the usual sense, in this business — and there were a few bottles of this in the fridge, so it seemed the obvious backup choice.

The impressions that stay with me through the partial fog of over-indulgence are simply these: loveliness and balance. The hops are met with enough of a smooth body to maintain an enormous amount of drinkability for something so flavourful. And they aren’t all about bitterness for the sake of it; they’re there in their massive quantities for a reason — as a device to deliver deliciousness, not just a way to punch you in the head as an end in itself. Some American IPAs (and some things inspired thereby) can slip into cartoonishness and a weird sort of blinkered extremism that (for me) often (but not always) defeats a lot of the fun. This isn’t one of those, not by a long shot; it’s big, but equally even-handed and enjoyable.

Verbatim: Ballast Point ‘Big Eye’ IPA 16/4/11 @ HG, after a mispour Aventinus. Score! Their ‘Sculpin’ was on tap, but ran out before this, while I was distracted by the above — it tasted, from a sample, like angry peaches; marvellous. This is a lovely red-bronze, 6.0%, 355ml $10.50. Fresh, fruit-laden nose. Very smooth body. It’s utterly lovely. Despite the origin, the style, the strength. Another astute HZ purchase. Clever chaps. Delicious, and balanced, as they are, against their stereotype.

Actual Diary entries

Little Creatures Single Batch Oatmeal Stout

April 16, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

It’s hardly a secret: I loves the Little Creatures, I do. It continues to pain me greatly that only the Pale Ale is available over here in New Zealand — as much as I freakin’ adore it, they’ve long make other brilliant things and have relatively-recently started doing these ‘Single Batch’ runs.

Coincidentally, I was just (before writing this up) listening to the first episode of Radio Brews News, a new podcast from some fine folk over in the Big Country. One of the topics of conversation was another Creatures ‘Single Batch’, a recently-released Märzen. Apparently it wasn’t overly well-received, with the general sense among some of the Beer Geek Crowd (not really shared by those on the podcast) that one-offs should be over-the-top, and anything shy of crazypants is a disappointment. Which, frankly, is bonkers. Firstly, there’s a solid case to be made that a Märzen which knocks your socks off is, at least, not quite right; they’re pretty easy-going things, by design. And secondly, I do tire of that undercurrent of thinking that only the big-and-brash are worth celebrating. There’s a lot to be said for well-made pieces of relaxing and restrained loveliness. Like this.

Also rather coincidentally, I’d recently been talking about Beer-and-x Matching. I know basically nothing about food,¹ so I’m all at sea when it comes to the finally-fashionable field of beer-and-food matching. Perhaps to compensate as much as for the inherent fun of it, I was recently talking about beer-and-music matching on the Twitterthing — so I’m listening to Talking Heads while writing this, for reasons that’ll be apparent if your Music Trivia skill is high enough² — and Pete Brown also brought up the subject of beer-and-books matching with excellent timing and linking it to a discussion of the broderline-synesthesia I sometimes try to hide behind when my ‘tasting note’ comparisons get particularly-loopy. But the best x is as true as it sounds twee to say: good beer goes best with good people.³

And this beer was linked to several. My friend Kirsten bought it for me when she was over in Melbourne for work, going so far as to lie about not being able to get any to bring home and leaving it to send me all geek-giddy when I just discovered it in her fridge. We didn’t get around to drinking it, distracted by good bars and good food as we were, so I thought it’d make a good bar-warming thing to split with Scott at his new pub — though it took us a few months to finally have it. Good thing I’m an alarmingly-patient fellow, sometimes; I was dead keen to try this. But it all worked out nicely; we had some good stories to share, and were joined by my flatmate (and our mutual friend and former colleague) Megan, and my friend KT. Just bloody marvellous.

So it was in good company, but it didn’t rest and try to coast on that advantage; it was delightful all of its own doing, as well. It was a wonderfully deft stout — only 4.2%, and with a light, silky body that still managed to have a real smoothness to it (presumably thanks to the oatmeal). The coffee-in-a-chocolate-milkshake flavour is delicious and not overblown — but still easily enough to warrant the sip-and-savour that a much heavier beer normally calls for or demands. I say in my notes that I was on a good stout run — which I am, and which I can tell you (from flipping forward a few pages) continues a good while yet — but that’s a two-edged thing; this could’ve been eclipsed by other recent beers, if it wasn’t something special. But it was just what I was looking for, exactly what I was hoping it’d be, and totally worth waiting for. Now I just have to find a suitable occasion for my second bottle…

Verbatim: Little Creatures Single Batch Oatmeal Stout 16/4/11 @ HG with Scotty, at last. Related a Good Story About Malthouse, so it seemed apt. 568ml — “pint-sized!”, 4.2%, and that [is] apparent in its lovely-lovely lightness. Deliciously smooth coffee / choc-milkshake wave a few seconds in. Just what I wanted, again. I am on a good stout run. Scott’s bottle-opener, “Freddie”, went well, given Pipsqueak’s logo. It’s deft, and confidently-understated. Plus I got to split it with KT, as well!

Little Creatures Single Batch Oatmeal Stout, brewers' scribble

1: Dinner tonight was scrambled eggs. That’s just about as elaborate a meal as I have ever prepared, or ever realistically aspire to prepare, on my own. Though, in my defence: they were excellent; the Three Boys Wheat I had complemented them wonderfully; and I’m not terrible as a sous-chef, so long as you find enthusiastic ignorance amusing, rather than irritating.
2: If not: Talking Heads released an album called Little Creatures, back in 1985. It and the live-in-the-bottle nature of their first and flagship product combined to inspire the name of the brewery, so the story goes.
3: Helpfully, good people drink good beer, as Hunter reminds us.

Actual Diary entries

Maui Coconut Porter

April 15, 2011 Phil 3 Comments

Either I’m frequently wrong about what I do and don’t like — or I like beer enough that it can turn me around on things that otherwise gross me out. Just to cite two very-recent examples: Yeastie Boys ‘Hud-a-wa” tasted of marmalade, and Emerson’s ‘Taieri George’ is like liquid Hot Cross Buns. Hell, nevermind individual beers: I don’t really even like citrus fruit at all but am frequently delighted by American-esque pale ales.

And then there’s coconut. Barring this — and its part in making the soupy half of a good laksa, and as the sprinkling on the outside of a lamington; two uses in which you can’t really taste it, anyway — I’ve got very little time for coconut. This, though? This is delicious. I’ve had it before, on my Birthday last year, as part of a suite of bloody-marvellous beers which I used to close off the original Diary.¹ So I already knew it, and knew it would make a fantastic follower to the stonkingly-beautiful 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Ice Cream Float I’d just had.

I wanted to have it out of some weird sense of solidarity, too, given that a Certain Beer Writer² had recently been maligning and ridiculing the mere idea of canned beer. That just struck me as needless, outdated, and wrong. As a blurb on these very cans will tell you, Aluminum³ is way better than glass for the storing of beer. It’s lighter, cheaper, more recyclable and utterly opaque — forget the vexed question of what colour glass blocks what types of light best: this isn’t a variously-tinted window, it’s a wall. There’s a stereotypical correlation between cheap-and-crappy beer and cans, sure, but it’s hardly any stronger than the statistical link between beer at all and bad beer. Good beer is still the minority, whatever its packaged in — and to the extent that slightly-more-than-average dodgy beers might be canned than bottled that’s not somehow the can’s fault. And it’s difficult to square anti-can sentiment in people who’ll also say that beer is usually better on tap than from a bottle — kegs are just fucking-great-big cans, made from a different metal, but with all the same advantages for all the same reasons.

Back to the beer. Especially if you followed the footnotes, it’s been a while since I mentioned it, so I’ll reiterate: it’s delicious. Previously-basically-useless coconut finally finds its destiny in providing a gorgeously complementary toasty dryness to the relaxedly rich and chocolatey porter. It’s a softer version of the effect you get with the stronger ‘roastiness’ you might find in a nice stout — which is arguably (though probably not) part the dividing line between porter and stout. You won’t get me near a Bounty Bar, though, so there’s got to be a fair amount texture-aversion going on behind my mostly-anti-coconut stance.

I was never quite sure about a few aspects of the labelling of the can, though. 1) That’s a weirdly-hideous drawing on the front, there. 2) The tagline “Like hot chicks on the beach” hardly seems to make any sense, nevermind the potential gendery sexisty minefield. And 3) “Certified made on Maui”? By who? And how, and why? Was there actually a dispute about this, at some point? I draw attention to these things mostly to point out the sorts of things which pop up in my mind but are quickly forgiven in the presence of a sufficiently-awesome beer. Slagging off Aluminum, or calling it “Aluminium”, though? That I won’t abide.

Verbatim: Maui Brewing Co. Coconut Porter 15/4/11 $10 @ NWT, because cans were recently needlessly maligned, and because it’s lovely. 355ml We bodged it up with Tuatara Porter on the Hopinator, but this is the real deal, and it shows. Light, fresh, delicious. Toasty cocoa / coconut, without any stodge.

Maui Coconut Porter, certification — Maui Coconut Porter, "certification"

Diary II entry #90, Maui Brewing Co. Coconut Porter

1: The latter half of Diary I is still stuck in a Not Uploaded Yet limbo, for which I keep apologising. I really will get around to it, some day. Partially because I’m as much as completeist as I am a procrastinator (imagine the headaches that internal tension causes…), but mostly because there are just some bloody-marvellous beers in there, to which I’m always annoyed I’m unable to refer.
2: Neil Miller. I’m not actually shy about naming names; I just know that him and I are approximately-equally fond of footnotes. [Later edit: on noticing this and a later reference, a More Nuanced Neil appeared than the one who provoked my disbelieving, can-defending near-outrage.]
3: Oh yes: Aluminum. One i. Does not rhyme with Sodium. This isn’t negotiable, and isn’t just one of my peculiar pieces of Occasional North American Idiom.^a Humphry Davy — the chemist who properly isolated it identified its existence (and who hired one of my personal heroes, Michael Faraday) — initially called it alumium (since he got it from it occurs in a compound simply called alum), but soon changed his mind (for reasons unknown) to Aluminum. The change to “-ium” stems from an anonymous review in a non-scientific journal, and comes for the inexcusably-daft reason of objecting to the “less classical sound” of Davy’s chosen name. Seriously? Piss off. Some anonymous literary critic doesn’t trump Humphry Motherfucking Davy (come back when you invent and discover a tenth of what he did, whoever you are); you don’t get to overrule the name given to a thing by its discoverer;^b and half the goddamn Periodic Table doesn’t have a “classical sound” — who cares? So no. No second i. It’s Aluminum.
— a: Which I certainly do exhibit, and which are mysterious (along with my mangled, Mongrelish accent) because I haven’t been on that continent for more than a few weeks of my entire life; perhaps I just watched too much TV, as a kid.
— a: Er, except in rare cases like when William Herschel (otherwise a seemingly cool guy, and doubtlessly great scientist) discovered Uranus and wanted to call it George’s Star or the Georgian Planet, after the king who just happened to’ve recently given him a stack of cash. But then, I’m still unsure “Uranus” is much better.

Actual Diary entries

8 Wired ‘iStout’ Ice Cream Float

April 15, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

8 Wired 'iStout' Float — 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Float

My brain and I often don’t get along very well. It gives me these peculiar and mysterious and very annoying headaches way too often, for example. But one night, it served me up a dream about an iStout Ice Cream Float, and I was clever enough to take the hint. The label has suggested it since the beer was launched, but I’d never gotten around to having one. Silly, silly me. Clever brain for reminding me, in its feverishly weird way.

I was — in the dream, you understand — just hanging out with the Rolling Stones, initially talking about the lamentable state of music journalism. As you do. We got to pondering the difference between learned skill and natural talent — in music to begin with, but then in beer. I brought up Søren, the wizard from 8 Wired; sure, he’s had a lot of relevant university-level education and doubtless oodles of practice and slog, but it seems equally clear that there’s just something somehow inherently brewerish about the man. He can put you in mind of those musicians who are just that extra bit better than their peers but then also seem more relaxed and effortless at the same time. Since they’re Not From Around Here, the Stones didn’t know who I was talking about, so I set off — from wherever-the-Hell-we-were, in my dream — to fetch some iStout and some ice cream. And then I woke up.

Once properly alive — you know: after coffee — I wandered the long way to work, and grabbed the necessaries, fighting through that particularly-peculiar sort of déjà vu¹ that comes with repeating the actions of a recent dream (without its more-surreal circumstances, of course). It was a Friday shift, and I wasn’t closing, so I knew I’d have some sit-down time to enjoy this when I was done. And I was burbling with excitement all evening; it just seems like such a deliriously decadent thing to do, some fabulous fusion of childish and grown-up treats. Which is how it turned out, really. It didn’t remotely disappoint.

iStout, on its own, is fantastic. It’s massive and glorious and rich and desserty (or at least nightcappy) all on its own. If you’ve never had one, sort that out tout suite. Buy two bottles while you’re at it, so you can have one of these the next night — or straight after, if you’re feeling a bit wild and have nothing to do in the morning (these are 10%, after all). It’s plenty big enough to not be overwhelmed by a generous dollop of good ice cream, and the two make for an awesome adults-only milkshakey masterclass in contrasts and complements. Depending on where you sip from, how much you prod the ice-cream-blob around the glass, or where you stick your spoon, you’re presented with a whole spectrum of flavour — from face-meltingly smooth chocolate loveliness right through to the face-punchingly awesome bitterness of a good Emergency Wakeup Coffee.

I’ll still concede that it sounds like a bit of a crazy thing to do, hurling a lump of frozen dairy product into your pint. But I absolutely insist that you try it.

(EXTREMELY)POSTSCRIPT, March 2024: I recently learned that the above unaccountably and unforgivably leaves out the crucial role played by Annika Corley, then one of my regulars at Malthouse, in convincing me to try this beautiful nonsense. Some time prior to this, she’d been at the bar and asked if we’d make iStout into a float, if she brought her own ice cream. She insisted I try it, despite apparently considerable resistance from me — which is strange to think, now, since I loved a cola float / spider when I was a kid, but it seems I was at that stage of beer geek where I was a bit too precious and reverential about things (I have since evolved, and absolutely love mixing and mucking around with all kinds of beer). I relented, tried it, was amazed, and the idea clearly lodged in my brain prompting the above-mentioned dream a while later. Annika, meanwhile, earned sufficient credit that she later convinced me to try pumpkin pie — and was right, again.

Verbatim: 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Ice Cream Float 15/4/11 $12 @ Reg, Kapiti Choc/Vanilla $3 @ Star Mart. 10% 500ml. I had actual dreams about this. And it’s everything I ever wanted it to be — although the Rolling Stones aren’t here… The bitterness of the stout makes for awesomely unexpected curveballs of flavour to the face. It’s like a grown-up milkshake. I got looked at very strangely, making this. Partially for the ingredients — and camera, book + tripod — but also for the huge idiotic grin on my face. The bitter curveballs seem to be thrown from someone hiding in the bubbles — spoonfulls of foam have it most. Feeling tipsy after having a “milkshake” is odd.

8 Wired 'iStout' Float, close-up — 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Float, close-up

8 Wired 'iStout' Float, serving suggestion — 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Float, serving suggestion

8 Wired 'iStout' Ice Cream Float — Diary II entry #89, 8 Wired ‘iStout’ Ice Cream Float

1: Spookily-enough — and speaking of Oddities of the Brain — I was just consulting the Blessed Wikipedia to get the uppy and downy accents the right way round (High School French was a long time ago) and I stumbled upon the related weirdness of jamais vu. That’s apparently the thing I was talking about rather recently, wherein the known-to-be-familiar suddenly becomes somehow alien and strange; I got it while writing about Heather Ale’s ‘Grozet’ ale, and overusing the word “weird” (ironically).

Actual Diary entries

Lindeman’s ‘Cuvée René’

April 11, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

And now for something completely different. Because gueuze beers are different in a staggering and mind-bending way. Some people are entirely horrified by them, despite otherwise being big beer nerds. Other people would drink them all day and all night and go a bit kittens-with-catnip at the mere sight of one. Myself, I’m somewhere in the middle. (Though it’s the latter people who freak me out more than the former. By quite a margin.)

Brewing is a delightful mix of Bucket Science and Rocket Science — it calls for meticulousness roughly as often as it demands a healthy dose of “fuck it; biff that in and see what happens”. And so while you’ve got brews that call for very-particular strains of yeast, carefully cultured over decades and gently prodded in some desirable direction, genetically speaking — you’ve also got beers that are basically made by quite-literally leaving the windows open and just running with whatever-the-Hell drifts in on the breeze. Then these beers, the lambics, go out of their way to emphasise their oddness by using older, dried (and so less-potent) hops and usually fairly easy-going malts; a subtler canvas upon which the Jackson-Pollock-y crazypants of their random yeasts can shine. Lambics often have fruit (or fruit syrup) added, but a “gueuze” is an unsweetened blend of young and old lambic, and they get a bit… eccentric.

It’s one of those Belgian styles which quickly calls for the word funk. Surprising adjectives flow from people who are praising these things: musty, sour, medicinal, cheesy. The blessed subjectivity is in sharp relief; devotees and detractors will describe them almost identically, really differing only on whether on not they personally find those characters appealing. Tim and I probably enjoyed drinking this more than we enjoyed it, if that makes any sense. It was a hell of a ride: an enjoyably confusing and confronting barrage of sensory assaults clanging around and in a strangely fascinating way, like when forgotten change works its way out of the pocket of your jeans as they go around in the tumble-drier. It’s baffling, but never quite enough to make you give up. Each sip put a pained and alarmed look on our faces, but it was never very long before we went back for more; you just can’t not, somehow. The sheer weirdness of it prompted some hilarious conversation.

Sticking with obviously-positive descriptors for a moment, this had the sharp tartness of a cleansingly-acidic white wine. The fruit flavour in the forefront of my mind was crabapples — and I’m a sucker for crabapples, since I grew up with a tree full of them in the front yard. But there’s just no denying the scarier flavours: an imperfectly-made homebrew cider, the too-clean chemical smell of hospital disinfectant, the spiky aroma of a bowl of lemons just about to start rotting, and the dried-sweat stench of a gym towel that sat neglected in a corner somewhere and missed last week’s round of laundry.

But like I say, people who love them love them. Try one when you’re feeling brave — or give one to someone who foolishly says something like “just get me a beer, anything, I don’t mind; beer’s beer”, if you’re feeling particularly bastardly.

Verbatim: Lindeman’s ‘Cuvée René’ Gueuze 11/4/11 $16 ÷ 2 with Tim @ MH. He had an embarrassing run-in with a Lambic, way back; threw it out, thinking it was off. Ah, our pre-geek days. Lovely hazy gold. Turning-fruit, hospitally nose. Amy freaked out: nappies with lemons growing in. The sterile-chemically-ness is in there. Along with the usual crabapples I like. It is confronting. Hard to imagine the people who’d casually drink it. Tim: homebrew cider. Totally. A glass of gym-towel; dry and sweaty.

Actual Diary entries

Emerson’s ‘Taieri George’

April 10, 2011 Phil 3 Comments

A third appearance, here, for dear old ‘George’. Not because it’d changed a whole bunch, or any other newsworthy reason — rather because the Diary was always about recording bloody-marvellous beer moments as much as it was for keeping notes of the new to guard against my hopelessly-crap memory.

The weather was getting wintery, I’d had a long week at work, and was just keeping to myself and turning my Sunday into a ‘Domesticity Day’ full of neglected laundry and other household stuff that is somehow even easier to fall behind on when you work nights. I wandered to the supermarket in the evening and realised there was room in the week’s budget for a nice bottle of beer — well, it’s more fair to say that I slightly rearranged the week’s budget to make sure there was room. We’d been selling the new batch of this at work, but I hadn’t had a chance to have one yet, so the What To Buy decision was unusually-easy.

Just-about everyone compares this to hot cross buns. Perhaps that’s partially down to the Easter-ish¹ timing of its annual release, but there’s an undeniable similarity in both the spice flavours and the malty bigness. What there bloody-well isn’t, though, is any of the godawful glugginess of a hot cross bun nor any of their horrible here-and-there raisins — an inexcusable waste of grapes, if you ask me. I guess this is the danger in these comparisons — and I’m not sure if my frequent fondness for slightly more whacked-out and metaphorical ones counts as me trying to avoid that problem, or makes me even more prone to it. I guess the point is this: even if you’re appalled by the ‘received tasting note’ for something, taking a gamble might prove rewarding. And: Taieri George is a stonking great pint of seasonally-apt deliciousness, year after year.

Also, there’s a rare-ish glimpse of a beer perched right here (he says, gesturing beside the keyboard he’s currently using, on his desk at home). At-home beers much more often tend to be comforting, sessionable old-standbys rather than the sorts of things which (usually) make the Diary — the actual physical thing-of-which is also right there, behind the BrewDog coaster, in its second incarnation. The original Diary (now full) is on the bookcase, just out of shot. These things really do exist.

Verbatim: Emerson’s ‘Taieri George’ 10/4/11 $9 from NW, at home, after a Domesticity Day and a PKB. The traditional dark, dark ruby. Nice spicy nose; cinnamon + nutmeg — but then, I can’t cook and can never remember the canonical ones. 500ml 6.8% We always say Hot Cross Buns, but this is so much nicer. I mean, it’s a liquid, so it avoids that horrid gluggy stodge, and retains the nice spicey flavours. Perfect on an Autumn night.

1: Seriously, ‘moveable feasts’? What the Hell sort of history-keeping descends to that level? Easter is arguably the most theologically-important event in the Christian story, and everyone’s okay with its anniversary swinging wildly from March 22 to April 25? That kinda freaks me out, as an ‘outsider’. The Wikipedia page on the ‘Computus’ problem makes for baffling reading, leaving me wondering why no one succeed in fixing a damn date — and suspecting that all that peculiar mathstronomy^a was a way to confound the ‘common people’ and maybe also something of a make-work program for monks who otherwise didn’t really have that much to do.^b
— a: You start from the 21st of March (but there’s a schism over whether you use the ‘new calendar’ or the old one) because that’s the vernal equinox (except it’s usually not), wait until the next ‘lunar month’ starts (which will happen at the ‘new moon’, though there’s a fudge-factor built into deciding just what counts, for that) and then you add fourteen days, because that’ll take you to the next full moon (except it often won’t), and then (finally) you look to the next Sunday — that is apparently “Easter day”. I think.
— b: Except the Trappists, of course. They make beer. So I’m more okay with them.

Actual Diary entries

Heather Ales ‘Grozet’

April 9, 2011 Phil 1 Comment

As you’d probably guess, we buy a lot of beer at work. And frequently, it seems we fill in the corners of an order with some half-dozens of especially random stuff. Because why not?

Peter and I were working one Saturday afternoon,¹ and these things were staring at us from the fridge, prompting questions for which we didn’t even have the beginnings of answers. Perhaps the Overboss (being mostly-Scottish) was already familiar with it when he ordered it, or maybe he was just being nostalgic and whimsical. But it was a mystery to us, and the Blessed Internets were contradictory in their reports and thereby less help than usual. So, being good empiricists, we just had one. And being publicly-minded learners-of-things, we also cut in those people with the unanswerable questions. That did carve a 330ml bottle into a half-dozen shares, but what we lacked in per-person sample size, we made up in roundtable (or over-bar) discussion.

Handily, this both mild, and weird — two things which are usually enough to stimulate controversy and conversation on their own. I’m a fan of both factors, in general, but only half warmed to this — I certainly didn’t enjoy it as much as the weirder beers by the same brewery, which also makes ales flavoured with heather and pine. I should elaborate on my Diary note: I don’t only like my weird beers to be very-weird — the favourable comparisons Dave (from Hashigo) and I were drawing for this were to Nøgne Ø’s lemongrass ale, which I’d had relatively-recently — but I wanted this to be weirder. It would’ve suited being weirder; not being moreso tipped the mildness dangerously close to unforgiveable limpness.

And damn, “weird” is another one of those words that look weird when you type them or read them too-many times in quick succession. Appropriately enough, I suppose.

Verbatim: Grozet Gooseberry & Wheat Ale 9/4/11 random bottle @ MH. 330ml ÷ 6 including Peter, Dave & Denise. From the brewery who make the heather Fraoch and the pine Alba. This was controversial in the crowd. Dave would buy a keg, Denise thought it was too… nothing, normal. I’m half way. I like weird, but I want weirder. Nose was better than taste — tinned pineapple, says Pete.

1: Er, Saturday the 9th of April 2011, obviously. As you can tell from the datestamp. But I’m writing this on a Thursday evening in June. Which shows you how bad the backlog has gotten. This time-travelling posting-plan does my head in sometimes, self-inflicted as it is.

Actual Diary entries

Yeastie Boys ‘Hud-a-wa” Strong

April 5, 2011 Phil 1 Comment

A new Yeastie Boys release is usually accompanied by an informal round of Guess What The Hell The Name Refers To. Ordinarily, it’s something musical — and often something alarmingly obscurely musical, more to the point, so you don’t really feel bad when the allusion sails clear over your head. Guesswork was enjoyably hopeless, here, as they’d changed trains entirely and gone with an old family nickname — “Hold the Wall”¹ — for an ancestor who “once held up a wall while his workmates escaped from a collapsing mine”. So, something suitably big, and strong, and full of character, right? Damn right.

But it may well get away from you, this one. A rewarding and enjoyable pint; one you won’t tire of easily, for sure. It’s a beer with legs and which can walk, as one of us at work put it, referring to the longevity its interestingness supplies — provided, crucially, that you remember there are some scary hobnail boots on the end of those legs, because this is a beer which could kick your ass if you forget that it’s 6.8%. Its suitability to the colder turn of weather coinciding with its launch caused a few people to lose track of that fact.

My early reaction to it amused my colleagues as I rode a rollercoaster of big hoppy zing, massive fruity fatness, and delicious malty oomph. They’re all nicely commingled in a proper pint, but in my first tasting glass they conspired to line up in order and take turns slapping silly grins on my face. After a day or two, I usually settle on a super-brief description to give curious customers and my phrase for this evolved quickly into “marmalade on malt biscuits” — another in a long line of Cliffs Notes that sound a little gross when you think about them too much, but which somehow capture the mood, the fun, and maybe the point. And I don’t even like actual marmalade or malt biscuits, singly. But their hypothetical marriage comes instantly to mind with the deliciously zesty hop fruitiness covering (but failing to smother) that hugely malty foundation.

Apparently (as I write this up way too late, with May turning into June), a second batch is on the way and Stu has been nearly-obsessively pointing out that the recipe has changed around quite a bit — which is, partly, just par for the course for these guys if you think back to ‘Pot Kettle Black’ (or indeed anything else that they’ve released more than once). It’ll be interesting to see how it varies, but so long as it still stands up to its name (and namesake), it’ll be worth a go.

Verbatim: Yeastie Boys ‘Hud-a-Wa” Strong 5/4/11 just on tap @ MH, after Kaibosh & Nerding. I had a little taste and loved the hopzing-fruit-malt rollercoaster, so am having a full one before going home. Very clear, gorgeous red-hinted rich dark amber colour. The story behind the name is a good one — and caught us all off guard by not being music-related. Easily straight up with Old 95 or Golden Pride or whatevs. Huge malty aftertaste, like biscuits. Positively oodles going on in there, but stitched very smoothly together. Zesty marmalade on malt biscuits.

1: Rendered in appropriately-old-timey Scots, which our (mostly-Scottish) Overboss at the Malthouse assures me should be pronounced much closer to Hud-a-war than the initially-tempting Hud-a-wah.

Actual Diary entries

Cassels & Sons ‘Elder Ale’

March 30, 2011 Phil Leave a comment

Lawks, I’ve fallen way behind on the updates again. The value of t has crept up to about 60 days. I knew it’d been a while, but the absurdly blue sky in this photo — compared against the much more me-ish weather we’ve been having laterly — really tipped me off. Excuses include occasionally-stonkingly-high levels of busy-ness at work, and a few technological problems I’ve been having with plugins not playing nice with other plugins.

But no mind; onwards!

This was me ‘auditioning’ a beer I’d never had before, contemplating its potential inclusion in a beer tasting I was running for some folks at the ACC. The brief was ‘A reintroduction to the New Zealand craft beer scene’; just a nice general run-down on ‘what’s happening’ — and you won’t be able to talk much about that for quite a while yet without mentioning the long shadow cast by the February earthquake. I’d recently watched a video featuring the aftermath at the Cassels & Sons brewery which was equal-parts horrific (in the wreckage), amazing (in the near-misses) and inspiring (in their obvious ‘fuck it; we’ll get back on track’ attitude); if you haven’t seen it, you should. I resolved to include one of their beers in the line-up, and given that it already included quite a few darker, weightier things, I thought I’d give this one a go.

And really, it’s a perfectly lovely thing. Nice, mild golden ale with a distinct-but-not-overblown fruity sideline from the Elderberries¹ Elderflowers. At a nudge under 4%, it fits anyone’s definition of ‘sessionable’ and so would be a freakin’ marvellous barbeque-and-general-summer-mooching companion. It was a pretty big hit at the tasting, and I just found it a good bit more enjoyable than I ever found, say, Mata’s vaguely-similarly-pitched honey and feijoa golden ales.

The next tasting I did on a basically-identical theme was a few weeks into the colder weather, so I swapped out this for their ‘Dunkel’ without even bothering to give it an audition like this one had. It quickly justified that decision, winning over the crowd and proving to be a nicely roasty dark lager — which apparently pushes it closer to being more-properly a Schwarzbier; the distinction between the two was a bit beyond my Beer Geek horizon, but this was a perfect time to learn. (Isn’t it always?) Here’s hoping these guys — and everyone else down there — get back to normality real soon.

Verbatim: Cassels & Sons ‘Elder Ale’ 30/3/11 $8 @ Reg, at home, auditioning for a beer tasting @ ACC on Friday. Lovely bottles, and nice to see some of their stuff after the earthquake, though it’ll be a while before they’re running again. 3.9% Elderflower-ed [that should be Elderberry-ed] ale, here. L&P-looking, flowers-and-funk nose. Decently quaffable and interesting. Nothing much, but not really trying to be. Middling near-golden ale, with an interesting sideline. Definitely good in the Sun.

1: Edited, 2 July 2011: I keep making that mistake; I fixed it when writing up my notes, but still made it here. Sheesh. Thanks to the Cassels crew for the incoming link, and the correction.

Beer Diary

Tag Archives: Diary pages

Maui ‘Big Swell’ IPA

Ballast Point ‘Big Eye’ IPA

Little Creatures Single Batch Oatmeal Stout

Maui Coconut Porter

8 Wired ‘iStout’ Ice Cream Float

Lindeman’s ‘Cuvée René’

Emerson’s ‘Taieri George’

Heather Ales ‘Grozet’

Yeastie Boys ‘Hud-a-wa” Strong

Cassels & Sons ‘Elder Ale’

Tastings and ramblings and whatnot