Epic Adventure Part 6 - MadeFromNewZealand

Summary of Luke's trip to the UK to brew a batch of Epic Pale Ale at Everard's Brewery in Leicester for the JD Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival

Anti-beer bias in the mainstream media?

Having been recently accused of being quiet due to living in Hamilton, I thought it was time I climbed up on my soapbox once more.

Yes, the Herald are at it again. At least this time they're simply regurgitating an article from the Independent. Either way, it's another example of the Herald continuing to paint beer as the devil in terms of alcohol. Wine, of course, gets all the good press, while beer is demonised.

Perhaps they could consider being part of the solution instead of part of the problem? How about providing a regular "Beer" section as well as wine? At the very least, how about discontinuing their policy of having shots of beer next to any story involving negative effects of alcohol? Beer lovers are not all booze hounds, any more than wine or whisky aficionados are all angry violent alcoholics.

They could follow the excellent example of the Marlborough Express, with Geoff Griggs' regular columns, or the Waikato Times, featuring Bruce Holloway, and now Wellington's Capital Times, featuring beer-o-phile and blogger Kieran Haslett-Moore.

Come on Herald. Get with the times. Beer has come of age, why can't you?

Sunday Fun - English Beers, Pub Reviews and Moose Hunting

Things at the Real Beer Blog have been a bit quiet of late with Luke working in England, me being in Melbourne and Greig living in Hamilton. However, with the Impish Brewer back on board with 1,374 photos and 877 tweets about his brewing and quaffing exploits still to post, there should be a lot more activity here in coming weeks.

To kick things off, my latest Wellingtonian column looks at the unlamented demise of POD and the new Green Man pub which comes complete with moose shooting mayhem:

POD was a restaurant which never suffered from self-confidence issues but perhaps should have. It was pretentious without actually being any good and had so little atmosphere you may as well have been dining on the moon or, even worse, at Eden Park.

Finally, a write up of the recent Cellar Vate tasting of English beers where 4 proper English beers went up against 4 antipodean pretenders:

As much as it may pain us to admit it, New Zealand owes much of its beer culture and beer history to England. It was Englishman Captain James Cook who brewed the first beer in Australasia and for many years our breweries produced their own colonial takes on classic British beer styles.

Glass Tips - The Wellingtonian and Cellar Vate

Beer Style - Radler - Trademarked in New Zealand by Heineken

There is some heated debate currently on the RealBeer.co.nz Forums regarding the trademarking of the beer style 'Radler' by Heineken/DB/Monteith's in New Zealand.

Back Story Here by NBR


Should a company be allow to trademark a beer style?

Beer Haiku Friday and Mayhem on the Dancefloor

Today's post has a dancing theme with the Beer Haiku called "So what":

I’m not a rock star
But beer makes me feel like one
So check my rock moves…

From the Malthouse blog, "Mayhem on the Dancefloor" discusses dancing, Paul Mercurio and Cooper's Sparkling Ale.

Although Paul has appeared in seven movies and numerous television shows, I must confess to having seen only one of his performances before meeting him at Brew NZ - “The First Nine and a Half Weeks”, an ill-fated sequel to the racy “Nine and a Half Weeks” minus all the original stars. I watched this at age 17 and now have the unshakeable feeling that I have seen Paul with no pants on.

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily, Mr Mallon at the Malthouse and Mr Mercurio on the Dance Floor

EPIC TALE

The Epic beer brand had pride of place on Campbell Live this week with an item extolling the virtues of the beer and its improved sales in the face of the economic downturn. "Packs a punch", noted the Campbell Live reporter approvingly.

Separately, John Campbell promoted free tickets to the Munich Oktoberfest as a part of a competition for the New Zealand Beer Festival - whose other major sponsor is Liquorland.

The details for the competition listed TV3 owner MediaWorks as a promoter for the competition.

We wondered if the two matters were connected, but TV3 news and current affairs director Mark Jennings said they were not.

Executive producer Carol Hirschfeld says she was indeed told to put "promoter" on the website by TV3 legal counsel Clare Bradley.

"In essence I suppose we are promoting a competition to our viewers for a trip to the German beer festival but we are not promoting any beer brand or liquor company.

"I'm not sure what the issue is here ... from what I understand, you think it is a problem that the competition followed a story on a boutique brewery? This was basically coincidental."

We wondered if the advertising folk had any role in the line-up.

"The sales department have not had and never do have any input into these things.

"Organisers of the competition had rung us [with the idea for the Epic story] and Carol agreed. The competition was already running," Jennings said.

TV3 marketing boss Roger Beaumont said Campbell had presented other competitions on air in the past.

Full Story

Alcohol in pregnancy may give kids a taste for booze

Alcohol may taste sweeter if you were exposed to it before birth, suggests a study in rats. The findings may shed new light on why human studies have previously linked fetal alcohol exposure to increased alcohol abuse later in life, and to a lower age at which a person first starts drinking alcohol.

Alcohol's taste is a mixture of sweet and bitter components. To test whether prenatal alcohol exposure could affect the perception of these components, Steven Youngentob at the State University of New York in Syracuse and John Glendinning at Columbia University in New York measured how avidly rats consumed ethanol, sweet water or bitter water.

Full Story

Campbell Live TV3, Epic Beer Interview & Brewery Tour

Epic Beer's hoppy brew an economic success

Mr Nicholas cannot compete with the big-boys financially but is determined to remain independent.

He does not think the major brewers could afford him anyway.

“Probably not because I think any of the big brewers that would look for acquisition, would look at how much it would cost to make Epic and how much I have to spend on hops to get that flavour and go ‘that’s insane’.”

See Video On Demand

See 3News.co.nz

See Scoop.co.nz

Mystery ale sparkles despite lack of fizz

It's not your average message in a bottle, but its contents got the noses and palates of Blenheim's beer boffins mildly aroused.

But somebody, for whatever reason, discarded a bottle of the amber fluid on the Wairau Hospital grounds presumably decades ago. During excavations for the hospital redevelopment the bottle was found one and a half metres underground by excavator Owen Kennedy of Simcox Construction.

The Marlborough Express asked our beer expert Geoff Griggs for his opinion on the bottle's age and viability.

"It might taste OK," he said. "After all beer, like wine, should be cellared at a cool, even temperature, away from light." The bottle was embossed with the ABC logo, the Auckland Bottle Company which had bottled beer since the early 1920s. Mr Griggs suggested a tasting might be in order so enlisted the help of the brewers from Renaissance Brewery.

But exposure to the air may have been too much for the old bottle, as the fizz was now gone. Peeling the corroded cap off, Mr Griggs noted the carbonation had already evaporated through a rusty hole. "I've got an idea this isn't going to be pleasant."

First impressions of the brew drew comments from Mr Griggs like, "some sherry quality", "like chewing on cardboard". Brewer Andy Dewchars' verdict? "Not particularly pleasant but not terrible."

Full Story

Beer on a Monday Morning - Cellar Vate Tasting and the Porter Story

Regular tastings have resumed at Cellar-Vate with the first of this year called "The Best of the Best for 2008"

The first Cellar Vate beer tasting of 2009 was the always coveted “Best of the Best” session. Forty-five tasters gathered to sample eight beers which were voted first or second in each of the eight tastings I ran last year. Our aim was to select the Cellar Vate Beer Tasting Club Champion Beer and Champion Brewery of 2008.

Over at the Malthouse blog, the latest post talks about beer and storytelling, the best beer story in the world and Tuatara Porter. It is called "The Porter Story":

Beer and storytelling have a long, interwoven history. The ancient Sumerians, sipping their beer through long straws, probably whiled away the hours with exaggerated stories of hunting prowess and how they totally could conquer Egypt but just didn’t have the time these days. That tradition has continued unabated.

Glass Tip - The Malthouse Blog and Pete Brown's Blog

Beer Haiku Friday - The Hop God

This is the best beer Haiku I've ever read. I wish it was written about me. It is called "The Hop God":

“More hops! Add more hops”
So commandeth the Hop God.
He is great and wise.

Glass Tip - The poetry gods at Beer Haiku Daily

The Late Edition of Beer Haiku Friday and Pouring Beer the Traditional Way

To bring some belated class to this blog, here is a Haiku about Shakespeare and beer entitled "Sorry Bill":

When suffering slings
To beer, or not to beer? Duh!
What a dumb question

Glass Tip - The good folks at Beer Haiku Daily

The latest installment on the Malthouse blog takes a look at Invercargill Pitch Black and "pouring beer the traditional way":

New Zealand bars tend to serve their beer at a universally cold temperature as Kiwi drinkers largely expect them to. Our beer almost always has added carbon dioxide to increase the bubbles and, as a rule, New Zealand beer has tended to be on the sweet side by international standards. Customers from the Motherland have been known to frequently point out that even today our beer is too cold, has too much head and is “not like they make at home, by thunder.”

Glass Tip - The Handsome Scotsman Colin Mallon and the Malthouse blog