{"id":17773,"date":"2016-01-25T16:49:50","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T03:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=17773"},"modified":"2016-04-29T12:08:31","modified_gmt":"2016-04-29T00:08:31","slug":"station-ident-midnight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2016\/01\/25\/station-ident-midnight\/","title":{"rendered":"Station Ident: Midnight Ma\u00df"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A<\/a>
NB \u2014 photo quite-fittingly not contemporaneous. But it’s always midnight somewhere.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Some beers turn out more symbolic than you intend. I’m an avowed fan of the Occasion Beer \u2014 a drink somehow keyed the moment of its drinking by whatever punning or poignant link of timing or theme takes your fancy<\/a> \u2014 and decided I’d end my shift on Christmas Eve with a Midnight Mass of good-old bog-standard German lager. (Geddit? It’s a homonym. A late-night religious observance and<\/em> a one-litre serving size<\/a>, most familiar from Octoberfest. Right? Anyway. I make precisely\u00a0zero\u00a0apologies.) But the day, like a great many of them in the tail end of the year, got busy\u00a0and\u00a0got away from me and left me underenthused at\u00a0the prospect of four standard drinks before bed just for the very-minor joke of it. Midnights, though, do just keep coming around fairly regularly. And so, after a much-calmer shift on New Year’s Eve<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 and a few very-civilised beers at Malthouse on the way home<\/a> \u2014 my first\u00a0Beer Diary<\/em> entry for 2016 was this. On reflection, it nicely encapsulated the year before\u00a0\u2014 it was big, enjoyable, pleasantly exhausting, admirably simple and uncomplicated, and just generally a fine idea delayed (but not defeated) by circumstance.<\/p>\n

\"Two<\/a>
The original plan: Hofbraux and a big-ass mass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>2015 included a great-many wonderful beer-related moments, for me. Not enough of them happened here<\/em> on the blog, for my liking, but still. It’s lovely being back on the front lines and bartending again, there’s a steady stream of people for whom to host tours and tastings<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>, and I had buckets of fun giving talks in front of festival-going beer drinkers and conferences of food writers and historians and such. It’s a privilege to be able to cobble-together a (vaguely) financially-viable life out of all this \u2014 and to remain entirely capable of enjoying<\/em> beer in its many forms from cheerful and companionable to cerebral and challenging.\u00a0And the genuinely-delightful thing is that there’s just always more to do and to learn and to discover. Roll on another year of that<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’m Phil Cook, and I’ve been keeping a\u00a0Beer Diary<\/em> for twelve years. It’s never once felt in danger of being close to finished<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"Diary<\/a>
Diary III entry #69: A Midnight Ma\u00df<\/figcaption><\/figure>Original Diary<\/em> entry:<\/strong> A Midnight Ma\u00df \u2014 31\/12\/15 – 1\/1\/16 @ home, after a work-filled end-of-year. 1L of H\u00f6fbrau Original in a stein, I suppose, rather than a ma\u00df as such. Not sure. That’s a lot of liquid, nevermind a lot of beer. Delicious, though, in its way. RESOLVED:<\/span> Use this more often. Most-recent entry in October is inexcusable. 2015 was an excellent year of transition. More to do. Unfinished. As it ever is. This litre is, but. At last. I feel like a videogame character after a [drinking] montage. The controls don’t respond quite right. Ah well. ’tis the weekend at last.<\/span><\/p>\n
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My plan was to stop by late shortly before midnight, after spending my Saturday night\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Liberty 'West Coast Blonde'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Liberty-West-Coast-Blonde-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5166,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/10\/12\/on-blogging\/","url_meta":{"origin":17773,"position":2},"title":"On blogging, and not blogging, and such","author":"Phil","date":"October 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Well now. It\u00a0has been a while. I've said that kind of thing more than a few times in the course of this ongoing\u00a0Beer Diary project, and here I am again. I was probably due a bit of a break, but I've been meaning to get back to hacking away at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Metablogging"","block_context":{"text":"Metablogging","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/meta\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"James Squires \/ Mad Brewers 'Ginger Chops'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/James-Squires-Mad-Brewers-Ginger-Chops-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":753,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/10\/wigram-imperial-stout-with-mojo-coffee-beans\/","url_meta":{"origin":17773,"position":3},"title":"Wigram Imperial Stout (with Mojo coffee beans)","author":"Phil","date":"September 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Firstly, hopinators. Basically a backwards filter, these are last-minute flavour infusers you can stick in the circuit between the keg and the tap -- making you a great big nerd, and giving you a chance to muck about a bit. Homebrewers make them out of water filters (plugged in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wigram Imperial Stout and Mojo coffee beans","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Wigram-Imperial-Stout-in-and-on-the-Hopinator-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3890,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/05\/08\/molson-canadian\/","url_meta":{"origin":17773,"position":4},"title":"Molson ‘Canadian’","author":"Phil","date":"May 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I do plan on going through the 'backlog' of the pen-and-paper Diary, still. The Great Rethink wasn't me walking away from that\u00a0so much as it's just me giving myself room for other things as well. I'll probably be a little more fast-and-loose with some of the intervening entries -- I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Molson 'Canadian', on Canada Day (Malthouse, 1 July 2011)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Molson-Canadian-on-Canada-Day-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4844,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/23\/croucher-raindogs\/","url_meta":{"origin":17773,"position":5},"title":"Croucher ‘Double D’ and Raindogs ‘Apothecary’","author":"Phil","date":"July 23, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It is, for some reason, traditional that here in Wellington trans-Tasman flights arrive Eastward around midnight and depart Westward just before sunrise. I suppose it makes its own kind of sense, but it does mandate some bleary-eyed mornings and lead to the occasional un-bookable blank evening if you're excitably waiting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Croucher 'Double D', tap badge","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Croucher-Double-D-tap-badge-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17773"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18197,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17773\/revisions\/18197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}