Beer tastings, so many beer tastings...

On friday night I ran a beer tasting for the good people at Telecom and the report and results are now up on the site:

The hardest aspect of last Friday’s beer tasting was finding the right building. There are five identical units on the site and I spent several awkward minutes in the wrong one. After locating the correct Telecom office, I had the chance to talk thirty enthusiastic punters through a selection of Kiwi craft beers and an iconic Belgian strong ale. One of the staff even produced some great food matches for the beers with his culinary feat made all the impressive by the fact he had to Google a few of the beers to because he’d never heard of them.

The night before I had run my third tasting at Thomson Reuters and the results are also in:

It is always a good sign when a company starts calling their beer tastings “an annual event.” Last Thursday I visited Thomson Reuters to run their third annual tasting session. As always, their questions and comments kept me on my toes as we worked through a selection of New Zealand craft beers and the traditional big Belgian closer. At the end of the evening the popular vote was very close with one beer making the podium for the very first time.

Recession bites grog sales

"People have said for a long time that beer is recession-proof. Well, that's not the case," said DB Breweries corporate affairs manager Mark Campbell.

"People are trading down. Where they were spending $20 on a pack of premium beer, now they'll spend $12 on a budget beer. So the margin that was there 12 months ago is certainly not there now."

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Beer Haiku Friday - Here for the beer

Today's beer haiku pretty much sums up my travelling philosophy. It is called "Here for the beer":

Rolling into town
Seeing the sights is nice, but…
We’re Here for the Beer

Glass Tip - Beer Haiku Daily

Tuatara refutes the decline of the Global Economy and a Tasting

From the Malthouse blog, an update on the speedy evolution of Tuatara Brewery and some political jokes in "Tuatara refutes the decline of the Global Economy":

This means that, theoretically speaking, a mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex (if they still existed, which they don’t) could today go to a Police line-up and easily recognise a humble Tuatara (if the Tuatara had done something illegal, which seems unlikely). The Tuatara is, in many ways, an eloquent rebuttal to the old adage “evolve or die” having seen many of its proudly evolutionary colleagues completely disappear (The Moa, The Dodo, Georgie Pie and the Progressive Party to name but four).

Continuing the economic theme, over at Real Beer NZ there is a report from my latest tasting at Baldwins:

One of the lesser-known economic side-effects of the global recession is a growing interest in corporate beer tastings as a social event which is both different and doesn’t break the bank. On Friday, I ran a one-hour tasting for twenty five people at Baldwin’s law firm in central Wellington. It was an introductory style tasting menu with all the beers receiving good support.

Glass Tip - PJ O'Rourke for the title.

A Trip to the Malthouse Vaults and Beer Haiku Friday Faces the Facts

Today's beer haiku is direct and to the point. It is called "As a Matter of Fact":

“I like beer” he said
As if an explanation
Was necessary

Over at the Malthouse website, "From the Beer Vaults" looks at the six o'clock swill, old drinking regulations, Palmerston North's historic spelling problems and Fuller's Vintage Ale:

The Palmerston North delegates had typed a late remit calling for a full enquiry into women in bars, but unfortunately in their haste they had made a small typing error. Delegates were circulated with a typewritten remit calling for a ‘full enquiry and review of women in bras’ much to the mirth of the predominantly male audience.” Clearly 1954 Palmerston North was not the “Knowledge City” we all admire and love today.

Glass Tips - Beer Haiku Daily and the Malthouse Blog

That's a nice beer, if you can get it

McKinlay is the co-founder of Yeastie Boys, a cheeky craft-beer company that unleashed its fourth commercial brew upon the beer-loving public on Tuesday.

The result? "Beers that push the envelope a little, educate drinkers about style and history, and challenge people's ideas about what can be done in the brewing world," said McKinlay.

The boys will be releasing their first bottled beer at Wellington's Beervana festival in August, but McKinlay wasn't giving much away about this one.

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Beer Haiku Friday -

Today's Beer Haiku sums exactly how I feel about playing golf. It is simply called "3-iron":

I don’t want to talk
About why my club is bent
Just pass me a beer

News has reached the Secret Headquarter of Real Beer New Zealand that a selection of Brew Dog beers are currently on the ocean heading for our shores. Brew Dog is an amazing Scottish micro-brew which not only makes great beer but has a fearless, irreverant attitude. You can spend hours laughing away on their website. I particularly enjoyed their response to the Portman Group's criticism of their bottle labels:

If I wanted to encourage anti-social behaviour my labels would state: Step 1: Drink bottle of Punk IPA

Step 2: Blow up a goose with a foot pump and use it as a Harmonica to play various Celine Dion hits.

Glass Tips - Beer Haiku Daily and Colin the Handsome Scotsman

New beers about to hit the shelves

Next week not one but three new beers are going to be available for New Zealand drinkers. Over at the Malthouse blog there are details of the launch of Yeastie Boys' 2009 Pot Kettle Black and Hallertau's version of Steve Baker's award-winning home brew Take Your Daughter to the Porter. The title is, of course, "The Porter's Daughter's Kettle Calls the Pot Black":

The brewer’s tasting notes say "We could go into fanciful descriptors but it can be simply summed up as rich, hoppy and far, far too easy to drink.” Having read Stu and Sam’s reviews on the Rate Beer website, this author is happy to confirm that they are more than able to go into fanciful descriptors. Between them, they appear to have about eleventy billion different ways of saying a beer is good

From Emerson's Brewery, details of the 2009 JP Belgian special have been announced:

The annual JP release, in honour of the late University of Otago Professor Jean Pierre Dufour, or JP as he was affectionately known, pays homage to the Belgium style beers, which Master Brewer Richard Emerson says, is one of the world’s quirky styles. The beer is based on the Dubbel style, like a true Belgian there are many variations on the style as we have added a hint of star anise to the brew. A purist may consider our style to be a Belgian Strong dark ale. This year’s release packs a whopping 8% alcohol. Invited industry guests will launch this years vintage at The Inch Bar, Bank St, North East Valley, Dunedin from 3.30 – 4.30 pm on Thursday 11 June and the beer will be on sale from Monday 15 June.

Costs and Benefits of alcohol

If we look carefully through BERL’s numbers, about three quarters of their listed costs fall almost entirely on the drinkers themselves. Heavy drinkers are more likely to be absent from work; their forgone labour income (and income tax revenue for the government) then count as costs. However, heavy drinkers will earn less because they’re less productive: they bear those costs themselves. Heavy drinkers may have some associated health problems. To the extent that government pays for health care, taxpayers bear those costs. But, total excise taxes collected outweigh the health costs to “harmful” drinkers: those health costs are already defrayed by excise taxes on alcohol.

What are we left with after netting out all of the costs that drinkers bear themselves, either directly or via excise taxes on alcohol? Costs on victims of drunk drivers and costs of alcohol-related crime. Those are real external costs of alcohol abuse. It’s important that the Law Commission come up with some real proposals to alleviate these problems. But it’s also important that they weigh up the costs of their proposed solutions on the millions of New Zealanders who reasonably enjoy the moderate consumption of alcohol. Any per unit tax on alcohol aimed at recouping costs generated by a few hoons will always overcharge moderate drinkers while undercharging the folks who generate most of the problems. Geoff Palmer recommends increasing the current tax, but that will only further punish moderate users.

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NATIONAL PETITION TO SAVE NEW ZEALAND’S CRAFT BREWERIES

Sweeping changes to the way alcohol is bought and consumed in New Zealand could be enshrined into legislation if recommendations by the Law Commission are taken up by the Government. Proposed changes included increasing the price of alcohol. Commission president Sir Geoffrey Palmer outlined some of the preferred policy options it would be releasing for the public to make submissions on, in a speech at a Nelson pub recently. One of the issues tagged ‘for later discussion’ was the substantial gap between the taxes the country received from alcohol purchases, $ 795 million, and the estimated social cost of harmful misuse of alcohol of $ 5.296 billion.

This petition argues that a 'one size fits all' increase in taxation will have a disastrous effect on New Zealand's boutique breweries - and that these brewers are the ones we should be rewarding not penalising.

Why? Because small boutique and craft breweries emphasise taste, flavour and create environments that encourage sensible and responsible drinking, whereas the Big Two brewers (DB and Lion Nathan - both foreign-owned) discount their beers to gain market share. They tend to target their advertising towards young people and encourage buying decisions made on the basis of price - bang per buck - not beer quality.

Sign the petition

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Beer Haiku Friday and the pub with no (Loaded Hog) beer

From the dusty archives of Beer Haiku Daily, a poem from - and I am not making this up - Creepy McGritts called - and I am not making this up either - "Contribution Friday":

The kettle boils
Hops aroma fills the air
New life has begun

From The Wellingtonian, my latest column gives a much maligned bar another look in "The pub with no (Loaded Hog) beer":

It’s a fantastic-looking venue but ultimately disappointing. I left feeling like Jeremy Clarkson if he had been admiring a beautiful new Jaguar only to find the V8 engine had been replaced with the motor from a Tickle Me Elmo.

Glass Tips - Beer Haiku Daily and The Wellingtonian

Beerly Blogging - Toasting Great Beer and Great Pubs

Over at the Malthouse blog, my latest post looks at Maurice Bennett, Bennetts Beers, toast art, Beervana and alpine-dwelling, hollow-horned ruminants of the genus Capra from the family Bovidae. It is called "A toast to great beer":

On his websites Maurice has been listed variously as the Toastman, the Toast Master, the T-Man and “New Zealand’s most renowned artist”. That last claim may be somewhat contested by Goldie, Colin McCahon and perhaps the Right Honourable Helen Clark.

Legendary beer writer Pete Brown blogs an insightful review of the Pub du Vin concluding:

So there you go - great food, great beer, pretty good surroundings, and moronic, ill-informed conversation conducted with great conviction. Everything you could want from a pub.