{"id":19483,"date":"2017-10-27T17:55:27","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T04:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=19483"},"modified":"2017-10-28T00:16:50","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T11:16:50","slug":"tpils","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2017\/10\/27\/tpils\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuatara Pilsner’s new origin story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tuatara<\/a>
Tuatara Pilsner \u2014 I still can’t quite bring myself to say the other name<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had three beers yesterday\u00a0\u2014 all of them pilsners and two of them that one right there from Tuatara. Shortly before they were bought out by DB \/ Heineken, they changed its name to ‘Mot Eureka’ and gave it a new look. I’m not at all a fan of\u00a0either<\/em> move,<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but\u00a0it was still tasting lovely and it was nice to get reacquainted with what once was the default beer of Wellington.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0I couldn’t help notice, though, that the new blurb on the label was complete bullshit and shamelessly revisionist nonsense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m not sure exactly who wrote it \u2014 it probably predates the buyout, but I haven’t had one for a while and so haven’t been reading the labels very often<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> \u2014 but it says:<\/p>\n

Long ago in 2001, we had a eureka moment. We’re miles away from Europe down here, so why copy their beers? Using all local hops from the Motueka area, we perfected this 100% NZ pilsner. Crisp, firm bodied with notes of citrus, is spawned a whole new style of beer, now proudly sent offshore to faraway places like Europe.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Tuatara<\/a>
100% your RDI of nonsense<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And that, quite frankly, is wall-to-wall bollocks. First, there’s the minor point that Tuatara can’t seem to figure out how old they are:\u00a02000 and 2001 both get used occasionally<\/a>, and it doesn’t seem a good sign that they can’t decide. Worse is that they’ve forgotten \u2014 or, you know, chosen to lie about \u2014 the fact that their\u00a0entire ethos<\/em> at the outset was to look to Europe and “copy their beers”. Tuatara was\u00a0famously<\/em> all about faithful recreations of classic styles with their core range of Bohemian Pilsner, Bavarian Hefe, London Porter, and India Pale Ale.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> There’s not a damn thing wrong with that, either; they were all reliable, frequently fantastic, and deserve huge credit for opening up the minds and palates of a generation of New Zealand beer drinkers \u2014 including me.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> How could you forget that? Or why would you lie about it?<\/p>\n

The internet always remembers, anyway. It’s trivial to bring up Tuatara’s website as it was in early 2010<\/a> and see them still banging on endlessly about tradition and the overseas origins of ingredients suitable to each style.\u00a0It was only around then \u2014 with the brewery a decade old \u2014 that things started to shift away from that model; their APA\u00a0was given\u00a0an NZ-hopped “Aotearoa Pale Ale” twin during the US hop shortage and the brewery got more comfortable with the “putting a local spin on\u00a0x<\/em>” way of talking about things. With very little effort, you can watch that happen right in the way they talked about the pilsner, online: from it being all about history and calling it ‘classic’ in 2010<\/a>, to dropping the backstory and listing local hops in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Things get unforgivable, though, when the blurb presumes to give Tuatara credit for “spawning” the “whole new style” of New Zealand Pilsner.\u00a0That<\/em> honour is usually given to Emerson’s Pilsner, first brewed around 1995<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and so predating Tuatara’s mere existence, nevermind exactly when they changed their mind about brewing ‘true to style’ or with a local twist.\u00a0Plenty of NZ-hopped pilsners existed between Emerson’s original and Tuatara’s revamped recipe; Three Boys and Croucher come immediately to mind and almost certainly weren’t alone.\u00a0There’s a nicely tangled bit of big-brewery politics going on here, too: Tuatara, recently acquired\u00a0by\u00a0DB, are stealing glory from Emerson’s, now part of their arch-rival Lion,\u00a0while\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0papering-over the work of Mike Neilson, who’s widely credited with the ‘modernisation’ of Tuatara’s beers \u2014 including exactly that move away from “copying” styles so faithfully \u2014 and would later go on to start Panhead, now\u00a0also<\/em>\u00a0a Lion subsidiary.<\/p>\n

The beer was good. And the brewery who made it deserves its place in local brewing history.\u00a0Is it really so much to ask that they just focus on\u00a0that<\/em>, rather than making up bullshit and annoying me while I’m trying to have a nice\u00a0pilsner\u00a0in the sunshine?<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had three beers yesterday\u00a0\u2014 all of them pilsners and two of them that one right there from Tuatara. Shortly before they were bought out by DB \/ Heineken, they changed its name to ‘Mot Eureka’ and gave it a new look. I’m not at all a fan of\u00a0either move, but\u00a0it was still tasting lovely … Continue reading Tuatara Pilsner’s new origin story<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":661,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/01\/13\/croucher-pilsner\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":0},"title":"Croucher Pilsner","author":"Phil","date":"January 13, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"We'd been lucky enough to have this and the Pale (which is further back in the Diaries) on tap at work once, so I already knew I was a fan of this, and it seemed like the perfect consolatory beer after a bit of a Day. It's lovely, really. (They\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Croucher Pilsner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Croucher-Pilsner-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":636,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/12\/29\/twisted-hop-sauvin-pilsner\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":1},"title":"Twisted Hop ‘Sauvin’ Pilsner","author":"Phil","date":"December 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Brother and stable-mate of the previous IPA, and further magic out of the usually-all-bad city of Christchurch. It's a very different sort of a pilsner, and as such might not be liked by people who are regulars to a pint of the (perfectly good) Tuatara Pilsner or whatnot. But I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Twisted Hop 'Sauvin' Pilsner","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Twisted-Hop-Sauvin-Pilsner-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":677,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2009\/01\/17\/three-boys-pils\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":2},"title":"Three Boys Pils","author":"Phil","date":"January 17, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A keg of this arrived at work, so I gave it another go, and was grateful I did. It will taste a little different off tap, of course -- but my last try of it was also after a long day of dark beers; not the best sampling conditions. It's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Three Boys Pils","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Three-Boys-Pils-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":569,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/11\/08\/tuatara-ardennes\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":3},"title":"Tuatara ‘Ardennes’","author":"Phil","date":"November 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Verbatim: Tuatara 'Ardennes'. A belgian-style strong golden ale from local favourites Tuatara. Just recently back on tap at work, and thereby eligible for staff drinks. Huzzah. One of our regulars (a formidable Beer Nerd) rates it as the #2 All-Around Best Value Beer Buy on the Planet, which isn't a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Tuatara 'Ardennes'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tuatara-Ardennes-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1079,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/11\/19\/tuatara-x-anniversary-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":4},"title":"Tuatara ‘X’ Anniversary Ale","author":"Phil","date":"November 19, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Still (mysteriously) Wellington's only local brewery, Tuatara recently arrived at their tenth birthday and celebrated (as breweries understandably tend to do) by making themselves a beer for the occasion. Essentially, they blammed \u2018Ardennes\u2019 up a few notches, landing it at a suitably1 anniversary-ish 10%. It debuted at Beervana and was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Tuatara 'X'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Tuatara-X-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1008,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/30\/croucher-pale-ale-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":19483,"position":5},"title":"Croucher Pale Ale","author":"Phil","date":"October 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Croucher Pale Ale","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Croucher-Pale-Ale-500ml-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19483","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=19483"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19515,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19483\/revisions\/19515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}