{"id":4739,"date":"2012-07-22T20:32:29","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T08:32:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=4739"},"modified":"2012-07-25T00:19:31","modified_gmt":"2012-07-24T12:19:31","slug":"liberty-yakima-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/22\/liberty-yakima-monster\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty \/ Galbraith’s ‘Yakima Monster’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Liberty<\/a>
Liberty \/ Galbraith's 'Yakima Monster' handpull badge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That<\/em> right there is a real contender to win the Outstanding Achievement of Awesomeness in Tap Badge Design award.1<\/sup> It’s fair to say the craft beer scene in our little nation punches well above its weight, but it’s worth also pausing to celebrate the easily-arguable notion we’re also rather spoiled in the design<\/em>\u00a0department.2<\/sup> Beer’s a weird thing, art-assets-wise; it’s some peculiar mix of the bland, the offensively naff, the apparently-homemade, the fine-but-boring, the showy and overblown \u2014 with, at the top end, plenty of cleverly-done and extremely effective\u00a0designs and occasional moments of pure freakin’ genius<\/em>.3<\/sup> Liberty’s main run is definitely of the clever-and-effective sort, and this<\/em>\u00a0comes from that final bracket of brilliance.<\/p>\n

I’m a comic-book nerd from way back, and I just love how this takes the larger format of a pumpclip (compared to a tap badge) and crams the space full of a shambling horde of wonderfully classic-looking hideous beasts, who are familiar and yet not just copyright-infringingly lifted from somewhere else. If you were so inclined, you could stretch that into a nice metaphor for the beer itself, since \u2014 in this incarnation as the most-recent installment of Galbraith’s utterly-genius cask ale series \u2014 it’s assuringly recognisable and excitingly different at the same time. And you can enjoy that interplay from either direction, depending on whether your default position is closer to the world of handpulled pints in a nice quiet pub (making this nicely supercharged) or bigger and brasher U.S.-style hoppy pale ale (in which case, the low-carbonation delivery makes this one quite charmingly sedate).<\/p>\n

\"Liberty<\/a>
Liberty 'Yakima Monster', handpulled<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The beer’s big, but it’s definitely a friendly giant \u2014 just like the brewer, if you were keen to needlessly pile on metaphors purely because they work. The booze is high \u2014 relative, particularly, to things usually served off the pump \u2014 and the hops are plentiful, but the way they’re put together makes the whole thing lush, fat and delicious. The fullness of it and the fruitiness of the flavours made me think of pineapple barley sugars \u2014 if such things exist; are the yellow ones intended to be pineapple? I can never quite tell \u2014 and it made for an incredibly satisfying pint on a lovely night at the pub. “Queen’s Birthday weekend”4<\/sup> makes for a predictably-quieter-than-usual Friday evening in town and that, to me, is a marvellous thing. There was a veritable boatload<\/em>\u00a0of Liberty on tap in addition to this thing \u2014 which also<\/em> existed in a cask-conditioned gravity-pour version, perched on the bartop.<\/p>\n

I don’t have the kind of hyper-palate that found the cask and handpump versions massively different. That said, I only had a little sample of the former, which proved queue-inspiringly popular when it was tapped, though now I wish I’d taken the chance to side-by-side pints of the two. I was definitely at the bar in a celebratory<\/em>\u00a0rather than investigatory<\/em>\u00a0mood; my notes went largely neglected as I just enjoyed the company and the beer. The quieter-than-average night and the Liberty-packed taps upped the proportion of “beer people” in the room, and it was great<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 like an End-of-Week Bumper Edition of Tuesday’s long-standing Beer Geek Church<\/a>. Jo seemed to be having a great time, and was definitely in fine form when George and I sat down with him (and Mike, from Tuatara) to record a podcast the next day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The local craft beer community is fortunate to have Jo; he seems really generous with his time and his expertise (which includes wonderfully-minute details of brewing and engineering), and he’s possessed of a worryingly unique sense of humour. And the beer-drinking public is damn lucky<\/em> to have his beers on the market. I can’t remember ever having one that seemed naff or wide of its target. There’s a very-credible rumour \u2014 though no official confirmation, yet \u2014 that there are soon to be much great numbers of Yakima Monsters roaming the world, with a vastly-more-voluminous contract brew coming up.<\/p>\n

Yakima Monster was born, together with Yeastie Boys’ Motueka Monster, out of a nice little meta-competition run between their brewers alongside Malthouse’s long-running West Coast IPA Challenge. The two pit American- against locally-grown hops, and the latter has already been promoted to full-scaled production as ‘Digital IPA’.*\u00a0That<\/em>\u00a0beer has a regular place in my cupboards and provided the perfect ‘occasion beer’ with which to mark my own nerdy observance of Alan Turing’s centenary<\/a>. If I can readily stock my beer-stash with bottles of Yakima Monster, my house will be even more of a home.<\/p>\n

* Correction, the next morning:<\/strong>\u00a0As Joe (with an -e!) notes in the comments below, Digital IPA wasn’t originally Motueka Monster, it was Motueka Warrior<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 the Yeastie Boys half of their head-to-head from a different year’s IPA Challenge.<\/p>\n

Original Diary entry:<\/strong>\u00a0Liberty \/ Galbraith’s ‘Yakima Monster’ 1\/6\/12 6% on handpull, and a smidge from the cask on the bar, thanks to Steph. After a day in the Garage with Joe5<\/sup> + Mike, now hanging with Hadyn6<\/sup> + Narelle. Oodles of Liberty! It’s everywhere. So is Joe. This is lush. Not scary at all. Like pineapple barley sugars. Fat and delicious. Not a huge difference from the cask \u2014 just a little more apparent bitterness, maybe? It’s a quiet-ish evening (“Queen’s Birthday” weekend), but a lovely night at the pub. And suddenly there’s a Yakima Scarlet in front of me. Huzzah.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Three-of-many<\/a>
Three (of many) Liberty tap badges<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Diary<\/a>
Diary II entry #222, Liberty 'Yakima Monster'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\"Yeastie<\/a>
Yeastie Boys 'Digital' IPA, on Turing's Centenary<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
\n

1:<\/strong> Which admittedly doesn’t yet exist, but should.<\/span>
\n2:<\/strong> Thanks to the work of \u2014 among many others \u2014 Barry Hannah<\/a>, Anton Hart<\/a>, and the folks at Deflux<\/a>.<\/span>
\n3:<\/strong> Examples? Off the top of my head, per category: 1) The Peak beers or Stoke’s main range, 2) anything from Pumpclip Parade<\/a>, and possibly things like Wanaka Beerworks’ ‘Lady’ and the Bennett’s beers, 3) Mussel Inn (though not, in that case, in a bad way; it suits<\/em>\u00a0them, charmingly-odd hippies that they are), 4) Sprig & Fern, maybe, 5) Moa, naturally \u2014 and 6) Three Boys, Renaissance, Yeastie Boys and Hallertau’s Main Range \/ Numbered Four, then 7) things like Garage Project’s ‘Day of the Dead’a<\/sup> and especially Hallertau’s ‘Heroic’ Range<\/a>, i.e., the big 750ml bottles with the mock-classical relief art. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and I honestly think ‘Stuntman’ might just be the Best Beer Label Ever, Anywhere; it’s gorgeous, classy, and understatedly\u00a0hilarious<\/em>\u00a0at the same time.<\/span>
\n\u2014 a:<\/strong> Again: disclosures, disclosures<\/a>.<\/span>
\n4:<\/strong> Scare-quotes made necessary by a) it not being the actual birthday<\/a> of Elizabeth Alexandra Mary\u00a0Saxe-Coburg-Gotha<\/a>, and b) by me being the sort of Republican (in the philosophical<\/a> \/ small-r<\/em>\u00a0\/ non-U.S. party political history sense) who’d rather not celebrate these things at all.<\/span>
\n5:<\/strong> It wasn’t until I was writing up the podcast we recorded the next day that I checked around online and found that the preferred \/ consensus abbreviation for Joseph is, in this case, just \u201cJo\u201d.<\/span>
\n6:<\/strong> Hadyn<\/a>\u2019s got an uncommon-but-not-unheard-of spelling for his name, and I occasionally blank out on just how it goes. I’m rather pleased with the little trick I came up with, in my handwritten notes, to split the difference between my two best guesses.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That right there is a real contender to win the Outstanding Achievement of Awesomeness in Tap Badge Design award.1 It’s fair to say the craft beer scene in our little nation punches well above its weight, but it’s worth also pausing to celebrate the easily-arguable notion we’re also rather spoiled in the design\u00a0department.2 Beer’s a … Continue reading Liberty \/ Galbraith’s ‘Yakima Monster’<\/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":[6,14,31,12,49],"class_list":["post-4739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-pages","tag-nz","tag-irrelevant","tag-pale-ale","tag-2012-06"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4296,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/06\/16\/beer-diary-podcast-s02e03\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":0},"title":"Beer Diary Podcast s02e03: Jo Wood & Mike Neilsen","author":"Phil","date":"June 16, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"George and I ventued into the (not really) wilds of Upper Hutt to have a chat with Jo Wood (of Liberty Brewing) and Mike Neilsen (of Tuatara); two homebrewers turned professional brewers (in very different capacities) who still love to get together on a weekend and knock up a random\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Podcast episodes"","block_context":{"text":"Podcast episodes","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/podcast-episodes\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Part of Mike's brew kit","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Mike-Nielsens-brew-kit-150x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":897,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/05\/three-boys-golden-ale-on-handpull\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":1},"title":"Three Boys Golden Ale (on handpull)","author":"Phil","date":"October 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Three Boys Golden is an absolute favourite of mine. So after the heartbreak that was the Hopinated version of\u00a0 Twisted Hop's 'Sauvin' Pils -- another beer whose deliciousness is closely-tied to its simplicity -- I was a little nervous to try this. Especially after Martin had some and found it\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 Golden Ale, handpulled","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Diary-2021-Three-Boys-Golden-Ale-handpulled-300x166.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3098,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/05\/26\/rescue-red\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":2},"title":"Renaissance \/ 8 Wired \/ Yeastie Boys ‘Rescue Red’","author":"Phil","date":"May 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Around a year ago, Luke Nicholas was talking to Sam Calagione and was able to apparently-accurately say that their 'Portamarillo' would be New Zealand's second-ever collaborative brew -- after the also-with-Luke Epic \/ Thornbridge Stout. Now, they're everywhere. To maybe-needlessly hammer the point: Galbraith's Alehouse is currently hosting several brewers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Renaissance, 8 Wired, Yeastie Boys 'Rescue Red'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Renaissance-8-Wired-Yeastie-Boys-Rescue-Red-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3501,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/06\/25\/liberty-mikes-taranaki-pale-ale\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":3},"title":"Liberty \/ Mike’s ‘Taranaki Pale Ale’","author":"Phil","date":"June 25, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"If it weren't for that Firestone, we'd have just had ourselves a three-peat of Liberty beers here in my Diary. Unlike the others, though, this has Liberty's Joseph Wood in Collaboration Mode. It's an\u00a0emerging trend in the local scene, and Joe's one of the keenest participants, it seems -- he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Liberty \/ Mike's 'Taranaki Pale Ale'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Liberty-Mikes-Taranaki-Pale-Ale-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1848,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2011\/02\/26\/liberty-brewing-west-coast-blonde-amarillo\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":4},"title":"Liberty Brewing ‘West Coast Blonde: Amarillo’","author":"Phil","date":"February 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"On February 26th,1 Hashigo Zake hosted an amazing fundraising night, donating all of their takings between 6pm and midnight to raise money for a local mental health charity and the Red Cross effort in Christchurch. 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":4513,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2012\/07\/06\/left-coast-the-wedge\/","url_meta":{"origin":4739,"position":5},"title":"Left Coast ‘The Wedge’","author":"Phil","date":"July 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"It appears I might have \"Black IPA\" on the brain. Or hoppy porter, at least \u2014 the question of whether the one is the other is an enjoyable piece of modern beer taxonomy for me to ponder as I have a nice glass of something-dark on a wintery evening. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Actual Diary entries"","block_context":{"text":"Actual Diary entries","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/category\/diary\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Left Coast 'The Wedge'","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-content\/uploads\/Left-Coast-The-Wedge-225x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739","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=4739"}],"version-history":[{"count":48,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4929,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4739\/revisions\/4929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}