Its a real bottler for city brewery

Fans of Invercargill Brewery beers have long thought it a product worth bottling but demand this summer has exceeded capacity.

Enter the custom-built American Maheen Merlin, which can tackle 2000 bottles an hour, washed, filled and capped.

The Maheen's arrival means Mr Nally will have more time to develop flavoursome seasonal brews in the ilk of Smokin' Bishop, the smoked bock-style beer that won both gold and best in class at the BrewNZ Awards in September.

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Beer Haiku Friday - Small Victories

This week's Beer Haiku is by Captain Hops and captures perfectly the spirit of Fridays. It is called simply Small Victories:

When problems are hard
I try something easier
Beer’s pretty easy

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily

Fire destroys hop kiln

A fire, described as the worst in the town in three years, destroyed a hop kiln shed in Motueka on Sunday morning.

No one was inside the shed at the time and firefighters took about 40 minutes to get the blaze under control, Chief Fire Officer Mike Riddell said.

The building, owned by Northwood Hop Company, contained five kilns and associated processing equipment, as well as part of the season's harvest, all of which was lost, the Nelson Mail reported.

The fire was not being treated as suspicious, Mr Riddell said.

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Good for what ales you

Now they're going even bigger with MarchFest, which will have enough food and craft beers on offer to keep 2500 people satisfied.

"MarchFest will be the first New Zealand beer festival to feature nothing but brand-new Kiwi beers," Dover says.

"The beers have been created by just four local boutique breweries. Each was given the task of creating a new beer especially for the festival, and it had to include locally grown hops."

MarchFest takes place on Saturday, March 29 from 1am-9pm at Founders' Heritage Park in Nelson - rain or shine. Tickets are $25 each. See www.MarchFest.com for more details.

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Monteith's - gone from focus to greed

My issue is that the people at DB Breweries (Monteith's owners) have gone from focus to greed. The brand seems to have done well as a 'mass-boutique', positioning on its authentic West Coast origins and its crafting of a very likable beer range. Now they've launched 'Monteith's New Zealand Lager' and all of a sudden the brand focus is shifted from authentic west coast to premium national lager, including jumping on the naturally brewed band-wagon!

The brand gurus are quick to point to big brand disasters after the fact but slow to predict mistakes before they happen. Well I predict this latest addition to the Monteith's family won't work because it's not focused on the brand's core success factors.

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Long Weekend Beerly Reading

The Southern Cross Tavern is a striking example of the change in attitudes to drinking and beer in New Zealand. This article - reprinted with the kind permission of the Wellingtonian newspaper - charts the evolution from booze barn to beer bar:

In my first year of university, the Southern Cross Tavern was a drinking establishment of near mythical stature. Virtually every day, a line of hopeful, nervous students would queue up to the door hoping to partake of $2 jugs of Lion Brown, complete the epic ‘Round the World’ beer challenge or even endure the exquisite horror of the ‘bladder buster’ – cheap drinks until some unlucky person went to the bathroom.

The Salient Beer Column returns for 2008 and the first column can be read here:

“Beer” and “university” go together as naturally as “essay” and “leaving it to the last minute.”

The second column details the various beers and bars which continue to vex me - My Beer Nemeses if you will:

My first real Beer Nemesis was the lamentable range of Fruit Hopper beers. Many gentle readers will be too young to recall these beers (at least legally), but they were generic lagers mixed with what tasted very much like different flavours of Raro and then over-carbonated in a Soda Stream machine. Shortly after a press release went out extolling their strong sales, they were quietly taken off the market and possibly re-released as Lift Plus.

Beer Haiku Friday - Sweet

Good Friday - the day that gives you the time to enjoy a beer in the afternoon but denies you the opportunity to purchase it.

Today's haiku celebrates a day when the beer flows freely and everyone at least pretends to be a little Irish - St Patrick's Day.

The Haiku is called Sweet and is by Captain O'Hops:

Chewing on Guinness
A sweet way to celebrate
One fourth of my genes

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily

Wyeast Deadline TODAY

A reminder that TODAY, Friday 21st March is the deadline for the current Wyeast order

Please contact Tony with your orders

P. 09 272 3995
F. 09 272 2335
E. tony at realbeer.co.nz

The current catalog is available at
http://realbeernz.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=1500433%3ATopic%3A7067

Top 6 - Best Beer Supermarkets in New Zealand

Yes it has been a few weeks since the last Top 6, and yes Neil you were right, a weekly post is harder than it seems. I think the Top 6 Beer Towns was too big for the format, too much information, on top of that, coordinating the release of Epic Lager, I just haven't had the time or focus.

Anyway back into it with Top 6 Best Beer Supermarkets

The Top 6 are.....

Wine is worse for brain than beer

The damage is done to the hippocampus, the part of the brain which controls memory, navigation and spatial awareness.

And they will come as a blow to middle class drinkers who turned to wine, particularly red wine, for its supposed health benefits.

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Beer Haiku Friday - Saving the World

In today's edition, poet Captain Hops salutes organic beer in his haiku "Saving the World":

It didn’t take much
To help save the world a bit
I just drank a beer

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily

Beer Haiku Friday - Competing with Fru Fru Drinks

Today's Haiku is from Captain Hops and is titled "Competing with Fru Fru Drinks". Many of us will have been in the situation he describes but I'm not entirely sure it is an entirely bad result for the beer drinker!

an unshared pitcher
purchased for all to enjoy
but they sip cocktails

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily

Sensible Drinking

Worldwide Recommendations on Alcohol Consumption

See Table

Dominion Breweries, or...

It seems MP Damien O'Connor has upset DB by labelling them "Deceitful Bastards" over their not-really-a-west-coast-brewery-anymore Monteiths brand sponsorship of the new Wild Food in the City event to be held Christchurch. Some West Coast locals see this event as an "ambush" of the Hokitika Wild Foods festival.

Readers should always, of course, decide for themselves which side of the fence they fall on, but as an editorial aside, whenever I read anything in the news from a big brewery they never seem to defend their beers or describe them with any passion. Flavours are never mentioned. There's no pride in the beer drinking experience. Unlike with wine prducers, It's all just about "brands". With that in mind, go and read the full story.

Green gamble pays off

The region's hop harvest is in full swing with the aromatic flowers being stripped from the vines to add flavour to beers around the world. Anne Hardie talks with a Tadmor family who took a punt nearly 20 years ago to grow organic hops and are now reaping the rewards.

"People said, `No one wants organic beer'."

Now their organic hops are fetching three times the price of those grown conventionally, and while their costs are higher, it's giving them more market choice.

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There's Moa to this expo beer than hops

Mr Scott said the idea of making a blackcurrant beer was something different and interesting.

Moa already makes Harvest Moa, a cherry beer that Mr Scott said had been a big success.

The only problem was there was only 10 days to develop the blackcurrant beer, a process which normally took about a year, but he was still happy with the result so far.

"This is just a prototype. We can make it heaps better."

The beer will be tinkered with for the Japanese expo, but it probably will not be available in New Zealand supermarkets for at least a year.

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Mac’s Top Notch

This week sees the launch of a new limited release beer from the Mac’s range of great beers: Mac’s Top Notch, a mid-strength bitter style beer with great character and fantastic drinkability.

Inspired by English style bitters, Mac’s Top Notch is premium in flavour with a great malt and hop balance. The inclusion of large amounts of vienna, and crystal wheat malts ensure this beer has plenty of malt depth, aroma and flavour, as well as creating a pleasant amber/brown hue. The hop aroma comes from the use of Riwaka hops only, typically producing a big passion fruit hit, the malt sugars in Top Notch have been fermented with an American ale yeast, producing a whole other dimension of fruit characters.

Full Press Release