I’m not sure what did it, but New Year’s was uncharacteristically quiet, so I was able to sign off pretty early and just perch on the end of the bar.
My fellow bartender Halena had gotten back from some time in the U.S., and had whipped up some of her deservedly-famous hot wings (despite being jetlagged and staring down the barrel of a long shift). Something Californian and hop-tastic seemed therefore mandatory. Fortunately, one of these was sitting in my personal stash — Amelia had insisted I buy it after seeing the cute label, and after hearing my heavily-accented stab at ‘properly’ pronouncing the name.
It’s a really lovely beer. Gorgeous colour and aroma, with all those obligatory and classic U.S. West Coast hop notes in residence — intense, but not as ‘aggressive’ as some of its relatives can be. Surprisingly drinkable, given its weight and the forcefulness of the initial flavours.
Verbatim: Lagunitas ‘Little Sumpin’ Sumpin” Ale 31/12/10 $9ish @ Rumbles. 355ml 7.3% had on the occasion of Halena’s return from California, and especially because she brought me some heavily-Franked bbq chicken wings. No idea why the upside-down label, but I like it, the art and the name. Very fun to say, heavily accented. It’s quite pale + peachy gold, nice soft bubbles + a big blunt fruity nose. To me, the bitterness starts big and eases off. Which might be a nice change, or might be the hot sauce talking. Stonefruity + light + tasty — with that underlying hopwallop + boozewarmth.
Lagunitas 'A Little Sumpin' Sumpin'', right-way-up, to save your necks
Diary II entry #50, Lagunitas 'A Little Sumpin' Sumpin''
So yeah, our Christmas Offerings at work included a beer which had burnt pohutakawa1 as part of the process, and a beer named after Jesus for no readily-apparent reason. I just loved the irreverence of that. Of course, it didn’t hurt that both beers were really rather lovely, in their very-very different ways.
Martin Townshend’s teeny-tiny brewery outside Nelson is almost exclusively occupied making same pretty-damn-traditionally-English styles of beer. They’re always well made, and many of them have made very popular guest appearances on one or other of our ‘beer engine’ handpulls.2 ‘J.C.’ is a fair touch stronger than its traditional relatives, but hides that extra oomph worryingly-well in a body of nicely complex, steadily-building hoppy fruit flavours.
Diary II entry #42, Townshend 'J.C.' IPA
Verbatim: Townshend ‘J.C.’ IPA 16/12/10 on handpull @ MH, shouted by a regular (from my horrid old pub, in fact) — and how much more Christmassy can you get than a beer named after Jesus? This and the previous do make for nicely irreverent Holiday Beers. This is a bit hazy, but a nice muted paleish orange colour. Easier to drink than it should be @ 5.8%, the hops are fresh and light in the body but build a nice big bitter finish.
1: Note for aliens: The pohutakawa is the ‘New Zealand Christmas Tree’. It blooms around the right time, and does so with cute bright red flowery things, and so nicely hits the stereotypical colours.
2: We used to always have two dark beers — ordinarily Tuatara Porter and Invercargill ‘Pitch Black’ Stout — on handpull, which always struck me as a bit of a waste. We’ve lately settled into a pattern of one dark (porter / stout) and one brown (IPA or bitter) — much better.
This totally managed to stump a few people and cause a minor nerd-riot, it did. We had two kegs of it at work, and the first went on through a Hopinator crammed full of mandarins1 — à la the rather-successful batch of fruited-up Twisted Hop IPA we’d previously done.
When it was all naked and alone on a regular tap, though, it was totally different. Without the citrus (elements of which you’d ordinarily expect in a big IPA), its massively yeasty self was uncovered. The Overboss just assumed the as-yet-unlabelled tap held a wheat beer from Emerson’s Brewers’ Reserve series (which was due to go on soon), and one Proper Beer Nerd absolutely insisted that it was Croucher’s Hef (also a wheat, perhaps obviously) instead. A quick double-check of the keg fridge assured us against the first possibility, and a side-by-side tasting eliminated the second. I’d been standing there pointing out that none of us had ever had a wheat beer with this level of bitterness before, but was also happy to indulge in a little bit of Science, just to be sure.
What we have, instead, is a very different type of Big IPA. And I’m quite fond of very different, sometimes. The fruit flavours in here, to me, were all rockmelony and summery and ‘uppy’ in that barely-definable way. The funky yeastiness was surprising, but people have been IPA-ifying big Belgian tripels for a while now, so just think of this as taking a run at that same idea from the other direction, perhaps.
Verbatim: Croucher ‘October’ IPA 4/12/10 guest @ MH. 7.5% We had this Hopinated a few weeks ago, on mandarins (or tangerines; there was some dispute, for which I — uncharacteristically, but with good reason — absented myself). It was a pretty tasty + worthy echo of Twisted Hop IPA — and this has the same light uppy fruit side all on its own, too (though obviously the oily bitterness isn’t there / as big). The big fruit note, though, is rockmelon. In a nice way. The Dior of beer, says Amelia, since it goes so well with Natalie’s new perfume. The body is surprisingly light, for its strength. Quite a different Big IPA; more summery.
1: Actually, this beer caused two near nerd-riots. The first centered on just whether the things in the Hopinator were mandarins, or tangerines. As my Diary entry notes, I largely absented myself from that argument — an unusual move, for me, but a running joke among my friends (very much of the “funny because it’s true” kind) is that I know basically nothing about food. I had a niggling suspicion, though, that the argument was poorly-stated; I thought there wasn’t a difference. In the non-embarrassing safety of my laptop on my break, I checked. And was alarmed to find myself nearly right; fighting about the difference between a tangerine and a mandarin is like fighting over the difference between a greyhound and a dog. Mandarin is a higher-level term — they come in many varieites (including tangerine and satsuma).
A common complaint of mine is that overstrong beers are too much in fashion (or habit), and that midstrength, sessionable numbers are sadly neglected by the local brewing scene. Granted, the stalwart exception to that trend is the utterly bloody marvellous Emerson’sBookbinder, but still; more options is more good.
A smattering of other sessionable goodies have shown up over the years1 but none so face-meltingly awesome, if you ask me, as Hallertau’s ‘Minimus’. (The name comes from its over-strength IPA sibling, ‘Maximus Humulus Lupulus’.) We had it last summer, motored through it in short order, and continually begged Steve for some more. It’s just lovely; either a very pale pale ale or a massively-hopped golden ale, and is totally sessionable at 3.8% — a statistically-insignificant nudge stronger than Bookbinder, it makes for an awesome summer counterpart to that wonderful stuff. Fresh, light but stonkingly flavourful, it has both thirst-quenching zip and interest-keeping yum in healthy quantities, appropriately hitting some Maximus-esque hop notes quite heavily. Its second incarnation, which came with a ludicrously-beautiful tap badge, is billed as a “Breakfast Pale Ale” — but even if that is a stretch, it’s not by very much.
Speaking of the badge — which is done in bas relief, and goes wonderfully with Hallertau’s gorgeous pseudo-classical rebranding — I actually had to re-scan this Diary entry to capture the amendment I had to make to note that some complete fuckpants stole it, one busy night. If you’re thinking — as I briefly was, I’ll admit — “hey, fair play, that is pretty cool; you don’t secure it well, you’re asking for it to be stolen”, I should add that they also stole all the other badges from that bank of taps, so their haul includes such pieces of naff as a Tiger and an Export Gold badge, I believe. So I doubt they’re some over-keen beer souvenier collector with whom I might sympathise — well, would sympathise, would consider being, even. More just a random fuckpants, as I say.
Verbatim: Hallertau ‘Minimus’ 18/11/10 3.8% back on tap @ work, with a gorgeous new bas-relief sculpted tap badge. Hallertau’s pseudo-classical branding overhaul is awesomely done. And this stuff is lovely. The world needs more good midstrength. It especially needs midstrength this freaking good. [30/11/10: The badge got stolen!]
Hallertau 'Minimus'
Diary II entry #36, Hallertau 'Minimus'
1: A few with their own Diary entries, even, but there’s still quite a backlog of historical things in the Not Uploaded Yet pile. Apologies.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and its tragically-unused tap handle
I’m not going to get properly into the whole “grey market” (or “gray market”, if you’re American) debate here. I’m sure I will do so more fully at a later time, when it inevitably flares up again. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to both sides — which is rare.
My own particular concerns are these:
“Grey market” strikes me as an unfair term, which loads the dice against the “unofficial” importers, since it carries its connotations of being kinda black market — but grey market imports are legal.1 It certainly doesn’t seem like a neutral term that both sides would use, so it’s probably not a good phrase for commentators to go on using as a label for the debate.
The quality concern should be paramount, but I often get the suspicion that it’s used as window-dressing for a more knee-jerkish desire for good old-fashioned control.2 The opposition to parallel importing often seems oddly dogmatic — I just can’t imagine some of the most-vocal opponents actually changing their tune and make an exception were some perfect, quality-guaranteeing dream importer to emerge.
And finally, I’m just not invested enough in this debate to become someone’s martyr. I don’t see the “anti-grey” side as being so obviously right that I’d be willing to join a boycott and deprive myself the change to try something I might never otherwise be able to sample. Yes, yes, I know there may be quality issues — but I’m accustomed to navigating them with everything else as well and can accomodate those possibilities as part of the tasting experience.
Anyway: Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale, on tap in the Little Country. This is a “grey market” import, in case you were wondering why I went for a spin along that particular tangent — it was basically a “test keg”, actually, to see if kegs of Sierra Nevada would start heading this way just like bottles have been for a good few months now.
I thought it travelled very well, though some local Beer Folk seemed to bubble towards the opinion that it’d been beaten up a bit — I suspect an element of that was the somewhat regrettable pack mentality that sets in when someone “noteworthy” makes an early pronouncement (negative or positive), with maybe also a touch of that phenomenon where it becomes moderately fashionable to knock something once it reaches a certain level of success. In the main, it went down a treat; we blammed through that pilot keg in very short order (possibly helped too much by me, on one particular night).
The only let-down was that we didn’t make enough of a fuss about it, and I don’t even really know why we didn’t. It turned out that we actually tapped our keg — the very first in the country — on the actual goddamn thirtieth birthday of the beer. How neat is that? And it was totally accidental, weirdly. I tried to lobby for the awesomely-ostentatious oversized tap handle to be installed, too. The reasoning was that one big silly handle would look out of place among all the normals — but surely that’s precisely why you do it. Sigh. That said, Peter’s note on the blackboard — written “in Californian” — was awesome.
Verbatim: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale! 15/11/10 apparently the first keg to make it to the Little Country. A bit of a travel test, after which it may become a fixture on tap here @ work. Some of the Beer Snobs have already yeah-yeah-ed themselves into agreeing that it hasn’t travelled well. I say nonsense; is lovely. Maybe, maybe slightly muted. But still its delicious self. I suspect people are confusing it with its gruntier relatives.
— and then a lot / too many more the next night. I discovered that the 15th is the brewdate Birthday; so we tapped ours on its 30th! Worth celebrating, so we did.
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale announcement
Diary II entry #35.1, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Diary II entry #35.2, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
1: Greg Koch, one of the founders of the Stone brewery, made a spectacularly arse-faced appearance on the RealBeer.co.nz forum in which he characterised a parallel import of his beer as “black market” and “illegal” several times in a short span. That lost him a lot of my sympathy, and it was very hard not to read his comments without uncharitably starting to think they were decidedly sour grapes, given that they were spurred by a negative comment about his beer. Illegality is a serious accusation to fling at someone so casually — even if there’s a question of whether one of the middlemen had broken a no-exporting deal, that’d just be an issue of breach of contract, not the proper breach of statute that his terminology and outrage imply. 2: To return to Greg Koch (from footnote 1), he quite-casually throws around the phrase “fresh-and-as-intended, or not at all”, which does set me wondering just where he wants to get off that train; what else gets smuggled into “as intended”? I really hope he took Stu’s quoted song lyrics to heart, and calmed down a bit.
My friends and I became very fond of the West Coast beers when we stopped for a night in the tiny town of Blackball, and had more than a few at the ‘Hilton’. Their lager and dark are certainly nothing socks-knocking in craft beer terms, but they’re well made, tasty, and acquired a lot of ‘bonus points’ from the situation and setting, of course. This happens a lot with beer, sociable thing that it is.
Years later, the brewery did a bit of a share float to raise money for some expansion plans. My friends who’d been there at the Hilton — who all have day jobs and who all earn, you know, actual money — bought in. Then it seemed a bit odd that I, as the Beer Nerd, wasn’t in on it, too. So I bought one share off one of them, for the princely sum of 31¢.
So this is how much of a stickler I am for some sort of ‘journalistic’ integrity in beer writing. I have thirty-one cents in a brewery and feel obliged to say so. It drives me bonkers that this basic impulse to declare conflicts of interest isn’t much shared. I can think of several instances of people writing professionally about a brewery or a beer without divulging such probably-pertinent facts as close friendships, occasional employment, or other such potential or actual conflicts. It’s something I’ll have to make more of a stink about sometime soon, and then maybe just start naming names and ‘outing’ the offenders.
Anyway, West Coast recently hired a new junior brewer, and one of his first tasks was to take a crack at a pale ale. I think they did pretty admirably; it’s not overwhelming, but not all pale ale needs to be, and given the ‘pitch’ of their other beers, this will make for a nice little stepping stone without freaking out their core customers. It’s quite moreishly sharp and citrussy, though some Nerdier people did pick out some faulty flavours kicking around in there, too — but this is a first batch, and they do have some seriously-refined brewers’ palates, rather sensitive to these things.
Diary II entry #33, West Coast Pale Ale
Verbatim: West Coast Pale Ale 1/11/10 on tap @ MH ?% I feel I have to declare my official conflict of interest, in that I’m the smallest shareholder of West Coast Brewery. Got to know Darryl, the bosses’ son a bit over the years, and he mentioned this was headed our way when he was here at Festival time. It’s pretty damn nice; not aggressive, but more in the Creatures / Croucher mold — the sharpish, in a nice way. Very citrussy, but not one-note. Slightly hazy, nicely tart + refreshing + moreish. I had some of this here on Hallowe’en Eve, when we all dressed up; but I was in no state to make a proper note, then. So I had this while watching the Zombie Episode of Community. Neat.
Saturday brought an end to my Hamilton Expedition, but did compensate me with a lovely drive home down State Highway 4 — I decided I’d done SH1 too often, so thought I’d go around the other side of the Lake. And when I got home, I had a house full of people getting ready for a day-early dose of Hallowe’en craziness.
Peter and I were relatively-lazy with our Hallowe’ening (though him much moreso than me), so we had a bit of time to kill and therefore a beer. We’re both big fans of Croucher’s Pale and I found the new bigger 500ml bottles up the road at Regional. They’re now also brewing at Steam in Auckland, which gives them some extra capacity with which to meet their (deservedly) increasing demand and have a crack at some export markets. These bottles are labelled up ready for the U.S., and I was chuffed to see that Paul’s original (and accurate) tasting note of “delicious burps” has been left intact.
And the beer is just as good as it ever was. Possibly a tad better, if anything. If I had to pin down a difference, I think the fresh, fruity (Cascadey) hops are even more present in the aroma than they were last time I had one. It’s a delicious beer, and was just what I needed.
It deserves to do well overseas, and I think it (and the Pilsner) are a good bet. Exporting to places like the U.S. from little old New Zealand is a tricky proposition. Tuatara took a crack at it a little while ago with their IPA, which I thought was vaguely mad — would the Americans really go for such a relatively-sedate take on the style, given their hop-mad craft beer sensibilities? And Tuatara had their U.S.-labeled beers around a time when they were already stretched to capacity and seemed to be sacrificing conditioning time to meet local demand. Don’t get me wrong, I like their IPA, but it just didn’t seem like the right beer or the right time. Croucher’s more-individual Pale and Pils could well be a better fit.
Verbatim: Croucher Pale Ale 30/10/10 500ml ÷ 2 w/ Peter $6 from Regional 5% At my house after a long drive back down SH4, and while the girls are upstairs getting all Hallowe’en’ed. Apparently production has shifted to Steam, possibly after Kaimai re-took their kit. They’re bottling for the US market now, too. And more power to them. The awesome original “delicious burps!” tasting note has survived, and the beer hasn’t changed much — if at all, for the better. Lush, fruity, yum. Bigger fresh-Cascadey nose, perhaps.
Mikkeller is a wonderfully-mad roving brewer. He’s Danish, but this beer is properly tagged as ‘from Belgium’ — he brews all over the place, the absolute reigning rockstar of collaborations and experiments and (more than occasionally) ludicrously whacked-out beers.
As an exploration / demonstration of the individual character of different hop varieties, he did a ten-member series of single-hopped IPAs, each using an identical base recipe and just one cultivar for its bittering and aroma to really show it off. And then — because, frankly, why the hell not? — he made a 10-hopped IPA with that same base and a bit of everything.
Tasi, one of our regulars and a bartender at Hashigo, kindly gave me a bottle, the mad rainbowy design of which has a section of each of the single-coloured labels from the earlier series — like a tolerable version of that absurd EU “barcode” flag proposal. The colour of the beer itself was gorgeous, and you’d have to assume that was true of the ‘singles’, too — the nose, however, was naturally something else entirely with a hell of a lot going on. The masterstroke was just that, though. It’s very easy to overdo things, with beer, and this could’ve easily tasted like the sound of a jazz band falling down a flight of stairs, if you’ll excuse my recurring synesthesia. But it absolutely didn’t; it had balance, and style, instead.
Verbatim: Mikkeller ‘10’ 23/10/10 gift from Tasi + the peeps @ Hashigo 330ml ÷ 2 w/ Scotty, who has revived that black + red shirt we all like so much. 6.9% Really pretty peachy hazy appearance, in a madly colourful bottle, presumably echoing all of the ‘1’ releases at once. (These were a series of single-hopped beers; this has all ten at once.) A suitably complex nose, but not the cacophony it might easily have fallen into. Easily avoids that jazz-band-falling-down-stairs problem of overdoing things. Nothing really stands out individually against the crowd, but that’s probably the point.
8 Wired continue to be a sure thing in the local beer scene. Whenever the almost-aggravatingly-talented Søren Eriksen releases another beer, just try it. Worry about details like style, strength and price later. It’s going to be good, whatever the hell it is, you can basically rely on that.
This pint of ‘Tall Poppy’ is from a preview keg that was at Hashigo. Dave Wood, one of their bartenders, recommended it to me when he stopped by my pub — all ‘suited up’ in honour of the great Barney Stinson. I finished work pretty early (by my standards) that night, so wandered over for a pint, and was very glad I did.
Tall Poppy is pitched as an ‘India Red Ale’ — big, strong (enough that I put ‘Imperial’ in my notes, accidentally), hoppy, and definitely red. The latter comes from the richer malt and is a wonderful signal of the flavour and balance that are lurking within. We eventually got four kegs for our pub, and blammed through them in deservedly short order. It’s popped up in (really gorgeous) 500ml bottles, so you should bloody-well grab some of those if you’re at all able.
‘Red IPA’ is a developing trend, too; Emerson’s did a ‘Brewers’ Reserve’ of them late this year which produced a couple of lovely beers. Black IPA is certainly a stronger trend in terms of emerging styles, but I’m very fond of both. The pale ale scene has lately been dominated by a gone-too-far (I think) fashion of More Hoppiness Whatever the Consequences, and I’d like to believe that increasing appearance Red and Black IPAs might be an antidote to that, if not an intentional reaction against it.
Diary II entry #24.1, 8 Wired 'Tall Poppy'
Verbatim: 8 Wired ‘Tall Poppy’ Imperial Red Ale 13/10/10 preview keg from the pilot batch @ HZ Dave recommended it when he was at my pub, earlier, all suited up in honor of Barney Stinson. 7% $10.5 Murky reddy amber, flat as a pancake (but not on a handpull). Lovely hoppy nose and malty body. Red is the synatheish word from both, really. Good initial whack of fruity bitterness. Almost alarmingly-well suited to the Japanese Chicken Curry pie they made for me, too. Resolved: visit more often.
— long-range addendum, 20/11/10. The actual batch, on tap @ MH. Remains a thing of Bloody Lovely-ness. Big, but not off-putting after a few. And the colour is just bloody gorgeous.
8 Wired 'Tall Poppy' tap badge at Hashigo
8 Wired 'Tall Poppy' at the Malthouse
Diary II entry #24.2, 8 Wired 'Tall Poppy' (addendum)
George (the gifter of the original Diary) organised a little tasting session at his house for a few friends of ours, with me playing the Informative Nerd. I’ll be the first to admit that I made them all run a bit of a marathon, but we hit most of the Big Styles, did some Interesting Comparisons, and had a whirlwind tour of the Long and Rambling History of Beer.
There’s a lot more variation in beer than there is in, say, wine or whisky, so a fairly zoomed-out overview can go a long way towards making people more ‘conversant’ in the basic styles, why they are what they are, how to figure out what they’re in for by looking at the bottle, and to help people discover what is (and isn’t) Their Thing.
I can’t help but notice, though, that I utterly failed to fulfil Jessie’s request / demand for a “super-awesome” Diary entry. I’m definitely more of an improvisational entertainer than an on-demand one — and that curry was seriously distracting. Especially after all that beer.
Verbatim: Beer 101 10/10/10 I have to write something super-awesome, says Jessie. No pressure. Tasting session & history lesson at George & Robyn’s, with Jessie + Simon + Pip. Great chance to get my nerd on, and evangelise to Robyn. We had: – Wigram Spruce Beer – Hoegaarden – Hofbräu Munchner Weisse – Köstritzer – Pilsner Urquell – Mussel Inn Golden Goose – Tuatara Porter – Invercargill Pitch Black – Emerson’s Bookbinder – Fuller’s IPA – Epic Pale Ale – Three Boys Golden Ale – Chimay Blue – Kriek Boon. And now, George + Pip have wrangled us a curry. Bloody marvellous.
