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.
Diary II entry #67, Coronado 'Islander' IPA
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.
I do like a chance to get my Nerd on, have a ramble over some beers and do a bit of evangelising. Work normally provides me with plenty, but I’m always up for ‘extracurricular’ ones, too.
Here, the brief was to lead some visiting Californians on a little tour through the local scene. For the occasion of her wedding party, Jessie — who described herself as growing up “within crawling distance” of the Sierra Nevada brewery — was playing host to her parents (her father is himself a proper Beer Nerd and writes for Northwest Brewing News), her sister and a friend-from-way-back. And since Jessie, her husband Simon, and George and Robyn (who were joining in and providing the venue) had all been in on a previous ‘Beer 101’ tasting session, I figured I’d bam the class code up a few notches and call this ‘Beer 121’, in honour of the Constitutional Amendment that undid that whole Prohibition nonsense.1
The lineup was:
Tui — I got so many weird looks when I told people I’d be opening with this — and when I, great big Beer Nerd that I am, was seen buying a six pack. I honestly think it’s mandatory, though, on several grounds: 1) Its history and connection to our own local flirtation with Prohibition, the ultra-daft Six O’clock Closing Era. This is flavourless and limp, but it is so for a reason. 2) It is arguably the definitive modern example of the ‘New Zealand Draught’ style born of that time; it certainly regularly wins awards as such. And so far, that’s the only style that this little country is usually regarded as birthing. 3) Its enduring popularity — it’s one thing to have an enjoyable tour around a country’s best microbrews, but to completely ignore the crap which still sells by the millions all around it would just be weird. Tui is our Bud Light, and you should at least know what you’re avoiding — and why.
Emerson’s Pilsner — Swiftly to something tasty, then. I made the argument that ‘New Zealand Pilsner’ could plausibly be our next “indigenous style”, perhaps somewhat saving us the national embarrassment of the above. And at least one spot had to go to an Emerson’s beer, in recognition of their longevity in the local good beer game. Its crisp, snappy fruitiness was an instant hit, and we’re still struggling to come up with a suggestion for a Something Vaguely Similar that the Californians can seek out now that they’re home again. (Help welcome.)
Tuatara APA — Next, an example of a local run at an American style; perhaps the American style, and certainly one which sprung up from the area where our visitors live. I picked this one over the other usual candidate (Epic Pale Ale), since this has some more-local points in its favour (being a Wellington beer) and because I think it’s just currently more interesting than its obvious inspiration. For the record, the Californians were in agreement that this was pretty spot-on APA; those that liked such things like this — and those who don’t usually like the pale ales back home didn’t go for this, either.
8 Wired ‘Hopwired’ IPA — This, then, is a beer clearly inspired by big hoppy American pale ales, but it ups the ‘local flavour’ by using only New-Zealand-developed hop varieties, providing a great excuse to show them off. Also much more multi-faceted than the Tuatara above, it definitely began to win over the doubters that one struck.
Yeastie Boys ‘Pot Kettle Black: US remix’ — Talk of ‘rockstar’ brewers and of contract brewing made for a nice segue between the Hopwired and this really rather serendipitous beer. I was planning on using standard-edition ‘PKB’ anyway, for its inherent loveliness and interestingness and for the connection with the ‘Black IPA’ trend that seems to be bubbling up here and in the States — but to have a ‘US remix’ available? Bloody marvellous timing. It was also the only beer of the night that I was also tasting for the first time. And suffice to say I really should see if I can grab a bottle and give it its own Diary entry.
Epic / Dogfish Head ‘Portamarillo’ — And then to finish, what more could you ask for than a New Zealand / U.S. collaboration? Especially when the beer in question is so deliriously idiosyncratic and uniquely ‘local’, with its flavours of tamarillo smoked over native Pohutakawa, our ‘national Christmas tree’. Sacrilicious.
Brilliantly, Jessie even made sure that there was Apple Pie for afters; what else could we have had? Its blistering awesomeness and the fun we were having matching it with the remains of the PKB and the Portamarillo (and then experimenting with little Ice Cream Floats with each — which were excellent) explains why I entirely failed to make an actual paper Diary entry to memorialise the evening.
Beer 121, a shiny forest of tasting glasses
Beer 121, obligatory (and fantastic) apple pie
1: Fittingly, there’s also a rather-charming craft brewery named after that clever and worthy (if slow) legislative rethink. I’ve had their ‘Brew Free or Die Hard’ IPA, but its Diary entry is still stuck in the infamous Not Uploaded Yet limbo.
This one didn’t technically violate the rule against Plural Big Beers in a night, but you do ruin your good midstength start if you then have a flagon of golden ale, and then find yourself tempted to try something Big like this. But oh well; you still do it, you just note down that you probably shouldn’t have.
I wound up at Hop Garden (which is in/conveniently on my way home from town), and Scotty couldn’t resist showing off his astute purchase of a swag of these, so we split one.
Rye beers are finally coming back into fashion after a rather mysterious absence; different grains make for different chemistry, unsurprisingly, and with rye you usually get a boatload of really nice texture, which was certainly the case here. The piney hoppiness was characteristically face-punching (for a pale ale from its part of the world), and the balance between the two made for a beer that managed to be simultaneously serious and fun. At least, that’s how I think I remember it. And hey; I do take notes.
Diary II entry #62, Bear Republic 'Hop Rod' Rye
Verbatim: Bear Republic ‘Hop Rod’ Rye 12/2/11 @ HG, with Scotty, who cleverly bought it off HZ. 355ml 8% 18% Rye, and it shows in the body. Nicely massive piney nose + taste. I’ll admit to being slightly too far-gone for doing this properly, but we had to try it. Quite a dark amber, which implies the pleasantly surprising balance. Big fruitiness in there. Monster bitter finish. Quite special.
I’ve said it many times before, but it’s not like saying it again is going to cost me extra: the world, and particularly this part of it, needs more midstrength craft beer. So when I heard that Søren (him of the reliably-delightful 8 Wired beers) was making one, and was dropping the booze level even lower, I was intrigued.
George (him who bought the original Diary) and I wandered into Hashigo on our way to the wedding party for our friends Simon & Jessie. People were talking about it as a 2.2% version of the much-loved Hopwired (hence the awesomely punny name), but it was more reminiscent (to me) of the redderTall Poppy. I therefore felt I should try to come up with an equally-punny name, and gravitated towards “Short Poppy”, which seems to work. And it was pretty good; maybe one of those beers that I like more as an achievement than as a beer, but still a very worthy thing.
At 2.2%, you’ve gone past ‘midstrength’ and right down to officially ‘light’, so it’s no surprise that considerable fullness of body had to be sacrificed to get all the way there. Strangely, if anything, the weakest point of the drinking experience was the moment of actually sipping it, because of that thinness. Seconds after that’s over, and for a good few minutes from there, the hoppy flavours pleasantly amble around your skull and also manifest in some surprisingly nice burps. If you’re after a hop-focussed midstrength, I’d still suggest that Hallertau’s ‘Minimus’ takes the gong,1 but this is some seriously impressive brewing, all the same.
And then, when I got to the wedding party and went looking for a beer, I was faced with a fridge full of the usual supermarket-brand green bottles. But I was then told that Simon & Jessie had made a special trip to Regional and picked me up a flagon of the blessed Three Boys Golden. That struck me as a real sign that I was definitely becoming something of a Notorious Beer Nerd, and that I have some pretty neat friends — it was bloody lovely.
Verbatim: 8 Wired ‘Underwired’ Mini IPA 12/2/11 2.2% on tap @ HZ w/ George. More mid-strength! Although this is officially “light”, and if anywhere, that’s where the weaknesses come in; soda-water / disprin body. But what else could you have, way down there? Colour is very dark, as against expectation. Reddish hints. Hoppy flavour shines best in the aftertaste + the burps. It’s just a touch thin at the moment it’s sipped. So, Minimus still has it, but this is an impressive feat, and I love that there are more in the game, now. Still definitely beery, but less Hopwired to me than Tall Poppy — so… “Short Poppy”?
8 Wired 'Underwired', tap badge
Diary II entry #61, 8 Wired 'Underwired' Mini IPA
A flagon of the blessed Three Boys Golden
1: For a few Bonus Nerd Points, I’m having one right now, as I write this. Well, that, and because I like it — and simply because it’s there.
Moderately ironic, granted, that the first post after the one trumpeting the new camera and beer-related photography in general has no photo at all, but let’s press on regardless.
Golden Bear (at the top of the bottom island) looks like a very visitable place — just to tie things to the previous post once more and to underscore my desire to make the trip, it has a slightly Creatures-esque vibe about it, what with the Big Shed and the bar-brewery flow going on — and their beers seem increasingly worthy; their ‘Bear Trappe’ was a real stand-out of last year, for me.
They evidently make a biggish pale ale called ‘Hop Toad’, and then bigged it up further (another percentage point) to turn it into ‘Fat Toad’. We blammed through a keg pretty quickly, which is usually a testament of Interestingness and Goodness. I tried it when it was first tapped, and it didn’t have a great smack of nose (as I said in the Diary, it was like someone beside you having a ‘Hopwired’), but the taste was lovely and the body was brilliantly smooth. Weirdly, the nose did improve later, so I’m not sure if some strange chemistry and physics was at play in the keg or the line, or if was just the occasional strange biology of my own nose and brain.
And it’s just occurred to me that this ‘Fat Toad’ and Matilda Bay’s ‘Fat Yak’ are only separated in the Diary by four beers. What a strange coincidence and nice reminder that beers to get themselves some weird names, sometimes.
Verbatim: Golden Bear ‘Fat Toad’ IPA 31/1/11 on tap @ MH 7% We didn’t manage to get the lovely Bear Trappe, but here’s a belated consolation, because it’s really rather good. An embiggened ‘Hop Toad’, it seems. Nice orangey gold with soft white bubbles, it doesn’t have a whole swag of nose — more like the guy beside you is having a Hopwired. But damn, the smoothness in the body is insane. Actually a bit reminiscent of Bear Trappe, so he’s got some clever trick. Flavour is nice, but not “huge”, though it does build nicely. Jim himself was here the other day, but I didn’t recognise him quickly enough to buy him a beer. Damn.
Little Creatures Pale Ale, taken later with my new camera
Ordinarily, I have a fairly ‘involved’ Australia Day. Especially given that I’m not, you know, Australian. But it’s basically my favourite National Holiday, and I do wish our own Waitangi Day were more like it — something I’ve tried to implement, occasionally, with moderate success (if I do say so).
My first Australia Day was in 2001, when I was a summer scholarship student at the ANU in Canberra. And it was freaking awesome. Blisteringly hot weather (which I’d usually vote against), the Triple J ‘Hottest 100’ on the radio from 10am onwards, wading pools to sit in, barbequed food aplenty — and, on that initial occasion, a case of Coopers Sparkling Ale. Now, I usually take the day off, buy some good Australian beer, and mooch around somewhere sunny (but with shade nearby), listening to the ‘radio’ over the internet. Owing to an overload of Extraneous Stuff this year, my plans were somewhat mucked-about, but I still made sure to get myself well-stocked with lovely Big Country beer — and was moved to note it in the Diary at least, if I couldn’t have myself a proper Day.
I’ve said it many times before, but I really do love Little Creatures Pale. Coopers Sparkling was my first good Australian beer, but Creatures Pale has become probably my favourite, full stop. “Favourite” is always a tricky title to hand out, especially when you’re a Big Nerd. But when you are the Big Nerd at a Big Beer Bar, people do ask. Often, and pressingly. And I think that if push came to absolute shove, Creatures Pale would be it. It’s just so reliably lovely, nicely middling between ‘flavourful’ and ‘mellow’, and it also — keeping the situatedness of beer firmly in mind, as I always insist — just has, for me, so many brilliant memories densely packed into the brainspace around it.
The actual photos on this post are from about a month later, when I’d finally gone and splashed out on a new camera. I’m enough of a weirdo about these things that I did pretty much insist to myself that the new gadget’s first beer photo be the beloved Creatures. You have to get these things off to good starts, you do. It’s a lovely piece of kit, and still enjoyably baffling as I get to know the nearly-innumerable bells and whistles.
There is some bloody marvellous beer-related photography going on at the moment, and if you’re not already acquainted with the work of Aaron Caruana, Jed Soane, and Robert & Kim from ‘Beer Lens’ (just to pick my three most-frequented favourites, which helpfully also manage to hit the Big Country, Little Country, UK and US buttons between them), you damn well should be. I know that good gear isn’t even half of what makes for good photos, but those are the sorts of people who make me want to lift my game.
I’ve always loved the plea to use a glass for your Creatures, too, so was instantly presented with an excellent opportunity to take the macro settings for a spin, as well. I really like the result, with its awesomely-blurred Background Peter looking on. And seriously, folks, if a beer is worth drinking at all, then it’s worth drinking from a glass. That’s the rule.
Verbatim: Little Creatures Pale Ale 26/1/11 $20/6pk @ GG 330ml 5.2% Happy Australia Day! Though this is basically my tamest, since my first. Too much extraneous stuff, this year. But this stuff is just mandatory. And there’ll be a Cooper’s Sparkling, later. It’s just bloody lovely. That’s the word. This is always my arm-twisted citation for all-round favourite, when people ask here at work.
‘Pliny’ is one of those stupidly-highly-regarded beers that make for a rather weird tasting experience. You always worry about the Emperor’s New Pale Ale effect, and when it’s brought over ‘unofficially’ (however carefully), there’s the vexed question of whether any Not Overwhelmed reaction is down to an over-hyped thing itself, or simply the result of difficult travel. This wasn’t a “grey market” import, this was a trade; brought over by some travelling Americans and exchanged with one of our regulars for some local Good Stuff. From its time in a chilly bin filled with ice and water, it had lost its label, but that was smoothly replaced by an awesome tea-towel from Steph’s house (to help keep it cold on its trip to the pub), which I couldn’t resist including in the photo.
I thought it was really tasty; properly big and fruity and resiny and just what you’d expect and want out of a West Coast Double IPA. But it didn’t completely melt my face and leave me overawed — I’d have put Hallertau’s bigger IPAs comfortably in its league, for example — though there’s just no way to tell whether that’s because something genuinely face-melting had an imperfect journey or if that’s just what it was. Two out of the four of us had had it before, and did attest to it being better last time they had it, but that just opens up the batch-to-batch variance and the subjectivity cans of worms.
Which is really the whole lesson, isn’t it? There is no objective “best” beer. You like what you like, and that’s just how it should be, especially if you can start to put your finger on just why you react like you do to something — and doubly-especially if you remember to keep in mind what the brewer was trying to do when you evaluate something. Personally, I thought this stuff was bloody good — but I don’t think you need to go so far afield to get something in its class.
Verbatim: Russian River ‘Pliny the Elder’ ÷ 4 w/ Steph, Johnnie + Llew. Sample traded for some local goodies by Steph. Apparently treated about as well as you’d hope, but S+L still say it’s not at its best. The pine needle side is lacking, going more to melony fruitiness. To me, it’s Maximusesque; all those Northwest hops. It’s always tricky to try something so ludicrously highly regarded — you always worry about the prospect of Emperor’s New Pale Ale. I really like this, but it hasn’t knocked me out of my shoes; maybe that’s a travel thing, or maybe the blessed subjectivity. The 3 are all agreed that I have to retry Moa Pale Ale, so here’s hoping that was a dud. Consensus here [about ‘Pliny’] is both tastiness + disappointment. Not up to legendary status.
Russian River 'Pliny the Elder', bottlecap
Diary II entry #57, Russian River 'Pliny the Elder'
It does seem to me that (though the traffic in both directions is still painfully slow) the Australians are having better luck at getting good New Zealand beer available over there than we are with the vice-versa, over here. We do manage to get some goodies at work, though, and have more in the pipelines…
Matilda Bay are one of those little-sibling operations owned by one of the giants (Foster’s, in this case), though it as originally an independent West Australian operation — its founders went on to start my beloved Little Creatures (itself part-owned by the giant Lion Nathan). It’s a hotly-disputed brewery in Australian beer geek circles when the “what is — and what is not — ‘craft’ beer, anyway?” definition comes up, as it cyclically does. And when we got this on tap at work, the local beer geeks were typically not massively enamoured of it, to say the least, usually finding it too mild. But I think you have to remember that the hoppy-hoppy end of the pale ale spectrum has been less explored in Australia than over here, and that Cooper’s Pale Ale exerts a massive gravitational effect on the term. So this exists as a Gateway Beer, and is very well suited to that admirable and necessary job — especially when you remember that the same company produce a “proper” APA, ‘Alpha’.
Which reminds me that I really should upload the entries from my October 2008 & April 2009 Melbourne trips; those were my introductions to all sorts of lovely Australian beers.
Verbatim: Matilda Bay ‘Fat Yak’ Pale Ale 10/1/11 on tap @ MH. Fairly sure I had it as part of my paddle @ Taphouse. Not popular with the Nerds — too mild. But I like it since it’s more Aussie stuff making the trip. And it’s inherently worthy enough as Baby’s First APA, which is necessary over there, given Coopers’ gravitational pull on the term. Plus, there’s always ‘Alpha’.
Hearken to a saga of two beers. Two incarnations of one beer — a Draft and Final, or a Beta and a One Point Oh, perhaps — neither of which I particularly enjoyed, one of which I sufficiently non-enjoyed that it became my first Beer Diary beer in years to have its glass tipped out rather than emptied in the usual imbibey way.
Moa’s Pale Ale was a pretty highly-anticipated thing, and I was dead keen to try it. I have a strange relationship with the Moa beers, finding some of them unforgivably naff, which is tempered by some of them being wonderfully interesting — though I see all of them as nobbishly marketed and over-priced. Of this one, I’d heard good things, and so picked one up to enjoy on a sunny afternoon.
My first alarm bells rang at the… sludge layered on the bottom. Given the choice, I prefer my beers bottle-conditioned, ordinarily. But this was ridiculous1 — and was common among all the bottles at the store, and confirmed by the local rep. as nothing out of the ordinary, though he pretty-quickly assured me that they’d already seen it as a bad idea and planned to tone things down for the next batch.
After a difficult pour, the beer settled down enough to present itself with a lovely colour, which I took as a sign that things might be okay after all, but it wound up being the highest praise I could give, review-wise, to the people sitting with me. The nose was all but absent, which is a fairly unforgivable sin for what should be a gorgeously aromatic style — and the one over-riding detectable note was that weirdly-distinctive ‘Moa Funk’ which usually stops me enjoying their milder beers like the ‘Original’ and ‘Blanc’.
And after struggling past the marketing, the sludge, the pour, and the nose, I was ‘rewarded’ with a bog-standard pale ale, at best. Pale ales are the fashionable thing at the moment, so when you’re this late to the game, you had better bring something special, or at least something interesting. This is doubly-so when you’re from the same town, pitched at the same booze, and charging the same (for a smaller bottle) as 8 Wired’s absurdly-fantastic ‘Hopwired’ — nevermind the half-dozen other easily-named examples of the style which also blow this thing out of the water without charging you an arm or a leg, and without shrouding themselves in dickish brandwank. It was that sense of rip-off and disappointment that stuck with me most, through the glass — and it got enough that I just pushed the eject button and biffed the remainder off the side of the deck, unfinished.
Moa Pale Ale, reformulated and on tap
I do know a lot of people who liked the beer, though, so I was hoping that my bottle was an errant failure — though its only distinctive feature was that centimeter of slurry, which was shared by all the others I’d seen, so I suspect I’m being oddly generous in that hope. I did resolve to try the promised reformulated version, though, and finally got a chance nearly two months later.
Calmed down a few percentage points in strength, and with the sediment in the bottled version toned down to typical / tolerable / non-insane levels, I was pleased to see that the lovely colour had been retained, and the ‘funk’ had vanished from aroma. Sadly, though, so had basically everything else; the beer had courageously leapt from being bad to being bland, which is a rather classic Frying Pan Versus Fire scenario. It seemed faultless, and was fairly tasty, but thereby also seemed completely pointless; merely an act of late-to-the-game Me Too Please. It was safe and cautious and inoffensive — and thereby tokened a sad return to form for the brewery, in my mind. After their brilliantly interesting and genuinely brave ‘Barrel Reserve’ series, this feels too much like a throwback to the days of their first three releases: I can just never shake the feeling that ‘Original’, ‘Blanc’ and ‘Noir’ were all designed to appeal (and to extract dollars from) people who want to buy themselves a bit of craft / boutique / obscure beer credibility, but who fundamentally don’t want to actually stray very far from their familiar green-bottle supermarket standbys. Unless you’re drawn to the brandwank like some sort of suit-wearing moth to their ‘super premium’ flame, you could get yourself any of a number of delicious pale ales at all levels of the flavour spectrum, and you’d keep a few extra dollars in your pocket — just as the same had always been true with their lager, wheat beer, and dark lager.
When the Moa beers are ‘on’, they are on. But when they’re naff, they are so tragically naff. And have the gall to levy you with a naffness premium while they’re at it.
Verbatim: Moa Pale Ale 8/1/11 @ Home $8ish? from Regional 7.2% 375ml. Chunkiest sediment ever. Bottle conditioning is one thing, shipping metric tonnes of sludge with your beer is another. I hope I got an errant bottle, because then it fountained, and I actually resorted to using a sieve. I do like the colour, but the aroma is barely anything other than that worrying Moa funk you get in the others. The flavour is okay, but merely okay. Nice pale ale, but you need more whizbang if you’re this late to the game, and implicitly trailing 8 Wired. It’s like almost all the hops went in way too early. Consensus is that it is simply fail. Good thing I carry that pen. We can see where they’re going, but they don’t make it. Unfinished.
Moa Pale Ale; Revised, Revisited 1/3/11 5.2% now, on tap @ MH. Halfway to their revised branding. I promised I’d retry this, so here I am, though they’ve modified it since batch #1, reducing strength, basically eliminating sludge. Weird that they’d change their mind so much so soon. I’m all for people copping to + correcting mistakes, but making one that huge is worrying in its own way. No nose, this time. Glad there’s no funk, but wish there was aroma. Very mild flavour, too. Makes me worry it’s a returned to First Three form; expensive, cleverly marketed and bland enough not to offend. Safe, cautious. There’s nothing wrong with it, at all, but the price would get you better beers at varying levels of punch. Pleasant peachy flavour arrives very late, with some bitterness.
Moa Pale Ale, chunks
Moa Pale Ale, abandoned
Moa, new tap badge
Diary II entry #53.1, Moa Pale Ale
Diary II entry #53.2, Moa Pale Ale
1: In fact, it was enough to put me in mind of Orbitz, an ill-conceived soft-drink-with-globs-in from my high school days. A few of the people I was sitting with were young enough to have no idea what I was talking about; they were the lucky ones. And weirdly, a related series of posts and comics appeared on Penny Arcade around the same time. It seems that Pepsi have rediscovered the with-globs-in idea, which makes me shed a little tear for our lack of progress, as a civilisation.
And then, shortly after midnight and thereby officially into the New Year1 all previous concern about Plural Big Beers was out the window, caught by a snappy breeze, completely buggered the hell off and was gone — as you can see by this thing.2
Toby and I had been tempted to have one earlier in the day, but went for the Emerson’s ‘JP’ instead. So later, once my friends had made their way back to the pub, New Year’s well-wishes had been exchanged, and the ‘What next?’ question returned, there was only one real candidate.
‘Stuntman’ is the loopiest — so far — of Hallertau’s fleet of hoppy pale ales.3 The brewer himself described it as a “stupid beer for brave people”, which I always liked; my note for the Beer Menu at work warns that “hop levels border on insanity, and the high strength propels wave after wave of flavour directly into the brain”. Not to belabour the point, but this is a big beer. It’s so perilously near to being overblown and unfunny that you get the exhilaratingly uncomfortable thrill of standing way too close to a precipitous drop.
The colour is an appealing gold, with a slightly-murky cast that is probably inevitable given the massive pile of ingredients that’d be necessary for a brew of this bigness. The aromas are invitingly citrussy, fruity, floral and foresty — orchardy, in a word. The hoppy bitterness on the palate is significant, to say the least, but at this level of alcoholic strength you’ve got to have boatloads of malt in the mix, so there is a surprising amount of balance to be had here too.
Oh, and the label. That is the best damn beer label in the country, probably in the world. I’m open to being alerted to other worthy candidates, but this sets a high bar. I really must get the t-shirt; it turns out they have made some.
Diary II entry #52, Hallertau 'Stuntman'
Verbatim: Hallertau ‘Stuntman’ IIPA 31/12/10 750ml ÷ 3 w/ Toby & Wendy. 9.5% We’ve been ey[e]ing this up all day. Best beer label in NZ; must emai[l] Steve & ask him to make tshirts. Amelia picks up the sweatiness from the JP, but in a very different way… Piney + citrussy, like some odd sort of a mixed orchard. But utterly awesome. So close to being overblown.
1: Being basically nocturnal, and having worked for evers in an industry where a ‘shift’ usually rolls past your mere midnight, I’m of the habit of continuing to use the date of the day I woke up, until I actually go to sleep. Some clever math is required when I’m awake past two whole consecutive midnights, but such occasions are rarer, these days. 2: And this wasn’t even the actually-next beer after the Rip Tide that it follows in the Diary; smack on midnight, I had myself an Epic / Thornbridge Stout. If memory serves. Which it may well not. (See? Take notes!) You can see from the scan that my handwriting certainly got rather wibbly, and a few ‘typos’ definitely crept in with letters going missing and such. 3: The hierarchy goes: ‘Minimus’ (sessionable at 3.8%), ‘Statesman’ (their every-day APA), ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’ (originally brewed for a mostly-friendly head-to-head against Epic’s ‘Armageddon’), and then this.
