Brewery Worker/Bar Person - Galbraith's Alehouse

Galbraith’s Alehouse requires a fit and motivated person to assist in the day to day running of our small brewery and to help out on the bar in our busy pub. Initially 2-3 days will be spent in the brewery with the rest of the week being spent on the bar. Bar work will require some nights to be worked.

Full Details

Salient Beer Columns

This year I am writing a regular beer column for the Victoria University student magazine Salient. This allows me to write about beer for a very different auidience and make a few more jokes. Here are the columns to date:

Beer and Politics - find out which Cabinet Minister admits to loving Radler!

[Hint: It is not who you think!]

Summer beer - to help students look like they know what they are drinking

A review of Beerfest: The movie - Rocky IV with Lager!

A guide to what is not just cool, what is beer cool right now?

I warned you there would be more posts when I got Google blogger working!

Cheers

Neil

Update 1: Broken links are not cool. So I fixed it. The beer cool link should now work.

Update 2: Forgetting to acknowledge the source of the computer picture below is also not cool. So - Belated Glass Tip - Kate.

Computer issues

I know that have been awfully quiet on this blog in recent months.

That does not mean that nothing has been happening in the world of beer - far from it - it just meant I had a few computer issues upgrading to the new Google blogger.

However, as the picture below shows I think my computer is now set up just the way I want it so expect a lot more posts real soon!

Cheers

Neil

Hallertau Hop Harvest Festival

Hallertau Hop Harvest Festival
Saturday March 24, 4pm till 11pm.

An Oktoberfest in West Auckland with eight piece Oomph Band complete with song sheets, singing and general merriment. We have a special Bavarian menu including traditional Kassler (smoked pork) and Bratwurst sausage with sauerkraut.

The band kicks of at 5pm; tickets are $20 on the door. This includes your commemorative German stein to keep and first stein of beer.

We have brewed a special Bavarian Kellerbier to help celebrate the occasion. The Kellerbier is a 5 % German amber lager that is served un-filtered, directly from the barrel on the bar!

It pours with a big, creamy, long-lasting, head; has a golden-bronze colour; a wonderfully fresh, perfumy hop aroma; a remarkably smooth, almost oily, malty palate; very fresh flavours; and a soft finish. It is beautifully balanced, but leans to the dry side. This is a delicious, appetising beer and a true salute to Bavaria’s fast-vanishing artisanal tradition.

Hallertau Brewbar & Restaurant

Lion Nathan Gives Beer Drinkers the Ability to MASH

[Will MASH go the way of Hopper?]

Their new line up, dubbed “MASH”, offers three new brews that will be introduced in the New Zealand market shortly. The MASH lineup consists of MASH Golden Lager, MASH Citrus Lager and MASH Energy Lager. MASH Golden Lager is a smooth and refreshing beer, MASH Citrus Lager is similar, yet offers a hint of lime flavor and MASH Energy Lager contains guarana, a supplement used as an energy boost.

If this is the first and last time you hear about MASH, I’ll bet Lion Nathan gets a new marketing manager.

Full Story

Brewers want better bottle

Nelson breweries want a bottle washing plant in the region and a standardised bottle to be produced in New Zealand.

Mr Duncan said Founders produced about 200 bottles a day, and 30 percent of them were returned to the brewery. Each bottle had a 5c refund.

He said hand-washing the bottles was too time-consuming.

Bays Brewery owner Peter McGrath did not back his fellow Nelson brewers. He questioned the quality of reused bottles, saying, "You don't know if there's been paint thinner in them".

Mr McGrath said plastic rigger bottles were the "ultimate recycling vessel". Some of his customers had reused their riggers 100 times.

Full Story

Mussel Inn seeks to sell takeaways

Golden Bay's the Mussel Inn is applying for an off-licence to allow customers to buy its beer to take away, but faces opposition from Transit New Zealand.

The popular cafe-bar currently has a licence to sell alcohol to 50 customers at its Onekaka site.

But owners Andrew and Jane Dixon want to extend this licence to allow it to sell riggers of their beer and other alcohol made on-site for people to take away.

Full Story

Amazing Beer Glass Trick

Test Your St. Patrick's Day IQ!

For hundreds of years, the Irish have been stereotyped as beer-swilling, potato-eating louts, but in a 2005 survey by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development, Ireland's obesity rate clocked in at 13 percent, less than half the rate of the reigning obesity champs, the U.S. of A., still holding strong at 30 percent. (And that survey excluded leprechauns, who always bring the averages down.) So maybe there is something to the Irish diet and lifestyle that we could learn from. There are a number of things the Irish are doing better than the Americans to keep off the pounds. Here are a few.

7 Tips to Slim Down the Irish Way

4 Cures for the Beer Belly Blues

Test Your St. Patrick's Day IQ!

Oregon beer production up 16.5%

Facts below from RealBeer.com & Oregon Brewers Guild

Oregon brewers made 16.5% more beer in 2006 than 2005. That’s all craft beer because since the Blitz-Weinhard Brewery closed in 1999 the only breweries in Oregon are craft producers.

Portland, Oregon has 28 microbreweries within its city limits which is more than any other city in the world. [population of 562,690]

The Portland metro area is the largest craft brewing market in the United States (U.S.). It is the only area to sell more than 1,000,000 cases of micro brewed beer.

Portland has more breweries than any other city in the world.

He also cited the fact that almost 11% of all beer consumed in Oregon is Oregon-brewed craft beer. The national market share for all craft beer is 3.5%, according to the Brewers Association.

[note: Oregon has a population of 3.5 million people]

EPIC, the Beer Drinker of the Year, and a good shag!

[photo: Waikato Beer Drinker of the Year - Greig McGill]

On Wednesday 28th February at the Cock & Bull in Hamilton there was the inaugural Waikato Beer Drinker of the Year, which Epic sponsored. I was one of the judges along with Bruce Holloway who is the beer writer for the Waikato Times. Bruce has a recent article which covered this event as well as the New Zealand Beer Festvial

This is a fantastic couple of lines from his article:

But sole female entrant Denise had the best line of the night when asked to nominate her favourite beer.

"If I've been mowing the lawns an Export Gold is okay," she said.

"But after a good shag I need an Epic."

Epic is currently the sponsor of Tuesday Trivia Nights at the Cock & Bull pubs

NZ Beer Festival on One News

Photo of JP Judging Beer

This is a great photo of how I knew JP. Most of the time I spent with JP was during judging at the last two years of BrewNZ. He was a fantastic guy to have on a judging panel, not only for his amazing palate, but because whenever things got a bit too serious, or like hard work, he could always come out with a fantastic one liner, with his dry sense of humour that would make everyone laugh.

JP's death is a huge loss to all that met him and got to know him. He contributed a great amount to the NZ brewing industry and I am please this contribution was acknowledged at last years Awards Dinner with JP getting the Lifetime Achievers Award.

BrewNZ 2007

Yes, BrewNZ is going ahead in 2007

Just to let you know that planning is well under way for BrewNZ for 13-15th September 2007.

There are a number of changes with the Brewers Guild of New Zealand ( http://www.brewersguild.org.nz ) taking ownership of the BrewNZ event. There will be no direct involvement by the Beer Wines & Spirits Council or Lion or DB.

We have an executive committee of Richard Emerson (The Emerson Brewing Company), Luke Nicholas (Epic Brewing Company), Martin Bennett (The Twisted Hop), Craig Cooper (Limburg Beer Company), David Cryer (Cryer Malt), Geoff Griggs (Beer Writer) and Colin Paige (Mac's Brewery). Each committee member has been allocated an area of responsibility to help make the BrewNZ event happen.

There will be an Awards Competition and Awards Dinner, similar to what we have had in previous years (we have our head judge David Logsdon confirmed for judging again), also there will be the Beer Show which will be an opportunity for the brewers to showcase their beers to the public and the trade.

The Brewers Guild of New Zealand is a non-profit organization formed to represent the interests of the New Zealand brewing industry. We now have the support of over half of the New Zealand brewing industry via expression of interest and paid membership.

Please be patient as we have our next Executive Committee meeting in Wellington on the 11th April. From this meeting we will be announcing more details relating to BrewNZ 2007 such as venue, delivery addresses and timing for the beer awards entries, and the Beer Show.

BrewNZ is now an event for the brewers, run by the brewers, for the benefit of the brewers and the brewing industry. The ultimate winner though will be the consumer.

Cheers
Luke Nicholas
Vice-Chairman
Brewers Guild of New Zealand

Lion Nathan strengthens push into RTD market

Brewer Lion Nathan Australia (LNA) has bought Queensland-based brand Inner Circle Rum and its distillery operations to extend its push into the ready-to-drink (RTD) market.

Beer and RTDs "are both brand driven products requiring marketing investment and targeting a similar customer and consumer."

Full Story

Prof. Dr. Jean Pierre DUFOUR - UPDATE

Prof. Dr. Jean Pierre DUFOUR

suddenly died on 26 February in the age of 54 as the result of a heart attack. He was attending the Institute of Brewing and Distilling conference in Nigeria.

Jean Pierre has been member of the EBC Brewing Science Group since 1996. He was a regular presenter at EBC Congresses and Symposia, and was scheduled to present a paper at the coming EBC Congress in Venice.

Jean Pierre is survived by his wife, Lysiane, and their four children.

The University of Otago has posted an obituary for Jean Pierre on its website:

The 'real' craft beer

[could the New Zealand craft beer industry be starting to show signs of this?]

Call it The Little Engine That Could. Or The Mouse That Roared. It's the American craft beer industry, which keeps chugging along each year at a healthier clip than bigger players. Look at the numbers. While mainstream beer has been stagnant for several years, the craft beer segment has been growing steadily -- by 7.2 percent in 2004, 9 percent in 2005 and -- just announced -- 11.7 percent last year.

Granted, the craft beer category is growing on a very small base (under 5 percent of all beer consumed in this country) while the big guys are losing a small amount on a very big base (everything else we drink except imports). But growth like this has the whole industry paying attention.

Full Story

Historic brewery may move

One of New Zealand's most historic breweries is likely to be sold because the land it is built on has become too valuable.

The Lion Nathan site in the fashionable Auckland suburb of Newmarket has been producing beer for 150 years but its days are numbered.

The prime piece of real estate is estimated to be worth between $155 and $175 million.

Full Story plus Video

Biggles - on tap now at the Cock & Bull

Biggles - Fuggles with Bubbles

If you want to try some Fuggles that is carbonated, it is now on tap at the Cock & Bull pubs. It has been put on the new special tap.

Beer Launching Fridge

The Hole - video powered by Metacafe