{"id":1864,"date":"2011-02-28T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2011-02-27T11:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2011-03-16T11:43:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-15T22:43:36","slug":"moa-%e2%80%98five-hop-winter-ale%e2%80%99","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/02\/28\/moa-%e2%80%98five-hop-winter-ale%e2%80%99\/","title":{"rendered":"Moa \u2018Five Hop Winter Ale\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Moa<\/a>
Moa '5 Hop'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve railed about it before, but Moa’s appalling <\/a>brandwank<\/a> annoys me sufficiently that it still buzzes in my brain as I enjoy something like this<\/em>, one of their actually-rather-lovely offerings.<\/p>\n

Praise first, praise first; stifle the rant for a moment. \u20185 Hop\u2019 is a delicious E.S.B., richly flavoured and deftly balanced. It’s warming without being so stodgy you’d only<\/em> want it on a cold evening, and nicely pitched at 6.2% — strong enough to warrant taking your time with.<\/p>\n

So, wait, why the hell<\/em> is it called “Five Hop Winter Ale”? That name manages to evoke two different things that this beer isn’t<\/em> — it’s neither hop-focused, nor particularly wintery. It’s an E.S.B.. That’s a thing. You can call it that. You do<\/em> call it that, in an afterthought buried at the end of the label or in the tasting notes on the website. Were you just trying to stick the word “hop” on something, since you launched this at the height of the “more hops = more good” fad?<\/p>\n

While I’m at it, this sort of crap is an ongoing problem with the Moa Brewery, and it will be very<\/em> interesting to see what does and does not survive the currently-underway ‘retooling’ of the branding. Given the prominent appearance of the nonsense phrase “super premium”1<\/sup> on the new tap badge, I’m not massively hopeful things will get much better — though I’m fascinated<\/em> to find out which bits will get worse<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Setting aside for the moment such annoyances as their daft implication that they’re the only brewery in the country (in existence<\/em>, perhaps?) to bottle-condition their beers,2<\/sup> let’s focus for a moment on just\u00a0one<\/em> part of their labels: the arch of text over the logo. Moa ‘Original’ premiered with a banner of “Premium Lager of New Zealand”, with ‘Noir’ then heralded as “Premium Dark Lager of New Zealand” and ‘Blanc’ cleverly cast as “Premium Wheat Beer of New Zealand”, subtly brushing aside the apparent reality that their wheat beer is also a lager, rather than the ale you’d almost certainly otherwise expect. Things then go all a bit whack. ‘Harvest’ (a lager with cherry flavouring) gets “Premium Alcoholic Harvest Beer”, which seems to imply three<\/em> falsehoods — i.e., that the previous three aren’t<\/em> alcoholic, that this isn’t<\/em> made in New Zealand, and that “Harvest Beer” means anything at all.3<\/sup> Then, ‘Five Hop’ and ‘St. Joseph’<\/a> get lumped together and mysteriously relegated to the less-descriptive category of “Premium Alcoholic Beer”, before things utterly<\/em> collapse into a singularity of oddness when their ‘Weka’ lager is billed merely as a “Premium Alcoholic Beverage” — what, is it not actually a goddamn “beer” at all, any more? Just how worried should I be that they so studiously avoid that word, all of a sudden?<\/p>\n

This kind of barely-coherent buzzword salad drives me nuts. And makes me sad when I think that it actually probably works<\/em> often \/ well enough that some people can convince themselves that it’s worth it. To me, this is brandwank<\/em>, and I detest it — particularly when it’s so clumsy and contradictory as this. Dear whomever: If you’re going to be an Evil Advertising Bastard, could you at least be a better writer<\/em>, please?<\/p>\n

Verbatim:<\/strong> Moa \u20185 Hop\u2019\u00a028\/2\/11 @ Malthouse, w\/ Mike the rep.. I’ve always thought this was just oddly-named. Why emphasise the hops, unless you’re going all-out pale ale? It’s a very nice ESBish kinda thing, really. Rich + malty, nicely fruity hops. They’re in the middle of a brand redo, and a push into Australia. Must try and see if the journalist hat fits me…<\/p>\n

\n
\"Moa,<\/a>
Moa, new tap badge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Moa<\/a>
Diary II entry #69.1, Moa '5 Hop'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Moa<\/a>
Diary II entry #69.2, Moa '5 Hop'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

1: Seriously, can marketing people stop pretending that “premium” really means anything, here? The only way for it to ring true at all is to take it at its literal meaning of “more costly”. So maybe this really is an “exceptionally rare” (to hijack Moa’s current<\/em> slogan)\u00a0example of honesty in advertising.<\/span>
\n2: The phrase “New Zealand’s native Moa is the only beer to be fermented in the bottle, like French champagne” appears on their current homepage<\/a>. A longer blurb on the section labelled “Discovery” also implies the same, describing the brewing process and ending with “The result is a beer unlike any other — clear, exquisite and bottle-fermented” — the first adjective is outright false, the second subjective and the third hardly unique.<\/span>
\n3: Well, it almost<\/em> means something. If you said those words to any normal \/ sane kind of Beer Nerd, they’d think you were talking about a pale ale made with as-fresh-as-possible hops, a “wet-hop” beer like Thornbridge ‘Halcyon’<\/a> perhaps — just to pick the first one I found in my Diary<\/em>.<\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve railed about it before, but Moa’s appalling brandwank annoys me sufficiently that it still buzzes in my brain as I enjoy something like this, one of their actually-rather-lovely offerings. Praise first, praise first; stifle the rant for a moment. \u20185 Hop\u2019 is a delicious E.S.B., richly flavoured and deftly balanced. It’s warming without being … Continue reading Moa \u2018Five Hop Winter Ale\u2019<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,36,6,14],"class_list":["post-1864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-ale","tag-brandwank","tag-pages","tag-nz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1397,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/03\/23\/moa-st-joseph\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":0},"title":"Moa ‘St. Joseph’","author":"Phil","date":"March 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Moa brewery in Blenheim is the work of Josh Scott, son of winemaker Allan Scott. And it really does have a significant \"wanky side-project of spoilt rich kid\" air about the whole thing. The beers are particularly expensive, nobbishly marketed -- and unforgivably naff all too often. I suppose when\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa 'St. Joseph'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-St-Joseph-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1107,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/01\/08\/moa-pale-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":1},"title":"Moa Pale Ale","author":"Phil","date":"January 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Hearken to a saga of two beers.\u00a0Two 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa Pale Ale","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-Pale-Ale-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3438,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/06\/16\/moa-imperial-stout\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":2},"title":"Moa Imperial Stout","author":"Phil","date":"June 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It looks rather frightful, that Moa, doesn't it? Maybe even sufficiently angry-faced that it hardly seems like a herbivore at all, in fact. I honestly still can't tell if I like the kitsch of it, or if I just think it's hideous. Something similar happens with the ludicrously-extravagant coasters --\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa Imperial Stout","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-Russian-Imperial-Stout-scary-Moa-face-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2773,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/05\/07\/moa-black-power\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":3},"title":"Moa ‘Black Power’","author":"Phil","date":"May 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It really is difficult to separate the thing-itself from its surrounding fog of incidentals. This is your old-school philosophy headache, right here; what are the properties, and what are the mere relations -- and which are the essential properties, and which are just accidental? What the philosophers seem to have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Moa 'Black Power'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Moa-Black-Power-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2641,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/04\/16\/beer-diary-podcast-s01e02\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":4},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast episode 2: Fat Yak and Beer Marketing","author":"Phil","date":"April 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Back for a second round, we have a beer which George discovered purely from its advertising. Which leads to a discussion about beer marketing in general; the history, the good and the very-very-bad indeed. We touch on a few recent controversies and try to make some sense of them from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":773,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/16\/racecourse-phoenix-golden-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":1864,"position":5},"title":"Racecourse ‘Phoenix’ Golden Ale","author":"Phil","date":"September 16, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Re-creating old recipes is a neat idea, I think. There are some wickedly wonderful bookish types and homebrewers who archive old brewery notes and get themselves the chance to resurrect and sample long-dead brews. There are also outfits like Dogfish Head who tee up with archeology boffins and go distinctly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Racecourse 'Phoenix' Golden Ale","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Racecourse-Phoenix-Golden-Ale-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864","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=1864"}],"version-history":[{"count":34,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1977,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1864\/revisions\/1977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}