Beer Haiku Friday and The Beer of Revenge

Today's Beer Haiku Friday proves that President Obama has a hard side. Obama loses his bet with the Canadian leader over the Ice Hockey so he has to buy a pack of beer. Look which beer he picks in "The President Pays Up":

The president pays
Up on his Olympic bet.
A case of Molson

Brutal!

The latest Malthouse blog looks at beer legends, Louis Pasteur, his love of yeast and hatred of Prussians, Croucher Cherry Bock and some big up-coming events. It is called "The Beer of Revenge":

“Pasteur is one of the greatest names in science, but this doesn’t mean he was necessarily a very nice person. What particularly got Pasteur hot under the collar was Prussia and all things German… His abhorrence of all things Prussian took two visible forms. First, he insisted that every paper he published would contain the statement “Hatred towards Prussia! Revenge! Revenge!” which must have proved difficult for peer reviewers, but had little real impact. But the second form changed beer as we know it."

Glass Tips - Those excellent fellows at Beer Haiku Daily and Malthouse

Beer Haiku Friday, a New Decade of Quality Beer and The Great Debate: Mild versus Wild

It's summer - which means rain in Wellington and lightning strikes in Northland, Auckland, Southland, Otago and Dunedin. Here is a beer haiku for all those who have lost power - or are about to - "Power Outage":

With the power out
I grab a beer from the fridge
And light a candle

Blogging at the Malthouse site has well and truly resumed with two new posts up already. The first covers my top ten Kiwi beer of 2009 and makes three predictions about the future of beer. It is titled "To a Decade of Quality Beer":

Having looked back longingly at 2009, it is time to look forward eagerly to 2010 and make some bold prediction for the rest of summer. Gazing into my crystal ball (well, actually it is a limited-edition Malthouse glass proposing ‘Cheers For 2010’ filled with Three Boys Golden Ale but the effect is quite similar), I foresee new levels of popularity for cider, wheat beers and pales ales (particularly those in the American style).

Next, a summary of the big debate in world beer, have extreme beers had their day, have Tactical Nuclear Penguins been spotted in New Zealand, Hallertau beers and Burns Nicht this Monday. With apologies to Bear Grylls, the post is titled "Mild vs Wild":

Sometimes you really want a beer that makes you stop and simply go ‘wow’ - you want a real eye opener, a conversation piece, a beer that you will always remember even though you only ever had a single glass. Lagunitas’ marvellously bouncy Hop Stoopid had this effect on my friend Dean late last year. Other times, however, there is a need for a beer that has character and flavour but which accompanies rather than dominates the conversation - a beer which can facilitate a long chat solving the world’s problems or last through a big sporting event.

Glass Tips - Beer Haiku Daily and Malthouse blog

Beer Tasting on the Water and the Year in Beer (USA)

The final beer tasting results for the year come from the session I ran for Jeff Gray BMW:

December 2009 was the busiest month I have ever had for beer tastings. At the final count, I did ten tastings and two tours over a fifteen day stretch. While many of the locations were familiar (Mac’s Brewery viewing platform, the lounge at Malthouse), others were new and spectacular. The venue for the Jeff Gray BMW Christmas function was the Mana Cruising Club up the coast and I ran a beer appreciation session on the spacious balcony overlooking the ocean (and totally sheltered from the rather boisterous wind thankfully).

An interesting perspective on the "Year in Beer" in America was provided by Joshua M Bernstein from Slash Food:

During the first half of 2009, craft brewing grew 5 percent by volume and 9 percent by dollars, numbers made more astounding when you consider that overall beer sales nose-dived 1.3 percent.

Why are microbreweries bucking the economic trend? It's a matter of taste. Increasingly, brew drinkers "are attracted to flavor and variety, new and different products and beers made by small, local and independent companies," says Brewers Association director Paul Gatza.

Glass Tip - Rach from Yellow Brick Road food company (best seafood in the country!)

More tastings with a view and Tactical Nuclear Penguins

At another beer tasting with a view, the MSO Design tasting last week generated the most extraordinary results in years:

The usual vote was anything but usual. There was a clear winner on the first ballot but a record three beers were initially tied for second. A further run-off vote failed to separate them with the beers again tied. The only option was to declare all three tied for second place – a first in over five years of these tasting sessions.

Delightfully deranged Scottish brewers BrewDog have claimed the world record for strongest beer with their new 32% leviathan Tactical Nuclear Penguin. The full release (including authenication of alcoholic strength is on their website:

The Antarctic name inducing schizophrenia of this uber-imperial stout originates from the amount of time it spent exposed to extreme cold. This beer began life as a 10% imperial stout 18 months ago. The beer was aged for 8 months in an Isle of Arran whisky cask and 8 months in an Islay cask making it our first double cask aged beer. After an intense 16 month, the final stages took a ground breaking approach by storing the beer at -20 degrees for three weeks to get it to 32%.

Beerly Promoting - Kapiti Food Fair

The Kapiti Food Fair is on Saturday and will showcase a range of great food, beer and wine from the region which is known as Wellington's Food Basket. Over 5,000 visitors attended this event last year. The 2009 Fair features cooking demonstrations from professional chefs (including Martin Bosley, a local) as well as beer and wine appreciation sessions.

The Beer Boys Beer Appreciation workshops will be conducted by beer writer Neil Miller. This will comprise tastings and commentry on top award winning New Zealand Boutique Beers (including Tuatara, Epic and Croucher).

The Wine Wizards workshops are to be presented by Ex Tall Black, travel and wine writer John Saker.

Saturday 5 December 2009 from 10 am to 3pm
Whitireia Community Polytechnic Kapiti Campus
Lindale Exit, State Highway 1, Paraparaumu

Full details are on their website.

Beerly Tasting - Telecom and DesignX

One of the highlights of last week was a big, energetic tasting at Telecom:

It was a tasting that had pretty much everything: a full range of New Zealand craft beers, over 40 eager participants, a giant plastic pager advertising the event, excellent food matches for every beer from “Iron Chef Jonno”, a close popular vote and, of course, a guy in a full lion suit called “Mr Lion Brown” who had a bottle opener attached to his tail.

Last night I had the chance to run a fun little tasting for a 'book club with a view' which was organised by DesignX:

High in the hills of Northland (the Wellington suburb rather than the northern most region of New Zealand) I ran a beer tasting for a “book club”. Like most “book clubs” around the country, there was no reading involved but there was a lot of banter and good humour. It was hosted and organised by innovative web design company DesignX. The intention was to sample an introductory range of New Zealand craft beers, enjoy some snacks and marvel at one of the best panoramic views I’ve had at a tasting.

Glass Tip - Centre City Wines and Spirits for the supplies

Beerly Writing - The Wellingtonian: Craft beer defies the recession

My latest column in the Wellingtonian covers the state of the beer market in New Zaland and Tuatara's debut on the Deloitte Fast 50 list. It is titled "Craft beer defies the recession":

Brewers are, in general, remarkable people. Given only toasted barley, the flowers of a vine, clean water and a single-cell organism which usually makes bread, they can manufacture delicious, quenching beers. Confronted with those same ingredients, most normal people could only produce a slushy muesli which smelt like a barnyard and tasted of a teenagers sock drawer. Or worse – Victoria Bitter.

Beerly Tasting - Stats and Met Service

Here is the report from the recent tasting at Statistics NZ:

Over the years, Statistics New Zealand has been one of my most regular and favourite beer tasting clients. Last night, I ran my seventh tasting for their staff club. As usual, it was raining. That did not deter thirty two participants who seemed to enjoy trying a range of Kiwi craft beers. The offerings included some of the last Smokin’Bishop in the city. This year’s Three Boys Golden was also making its first appearance at one of my sessions.

That same busy week, I ran my first tasting up at the Met Service:

Last night I ran a beer tasting for the social club up at the Met Service. The venue was perched at the very top of the Kelburn hills and the room was filled with over 30 eager participants. I put together an introductory menu but it was only much later that it was (correctly) suggested to me that including Dux de Lux Nor’ Wester Pale Ale or Sou’ Wester Stout would have been both appropriate and tasty. However, this event did give me the chance to list my Facebook status as “off to run a beer tasting at the Met Service. The forecast is for ale storms.”

The results of the popular vote each night are in the reports.

Putting Beer in Context and A Tasting Report

From the Malthouse blog, a post on "Beer in its proper context" which covers why Fiji Bitter tastes better in Fiji, (Sir) Jeremy Clarkson on Chinese beer and details of the new beers coming on tap in October (including the debut from Golden Ticket):

The thing is, it was exactly the same (awful) beer but they were also quite right that it tasted much better in Fiji. Why precisely that was the case quickly became clear when I enquired about how they drank the beer in Fiji. Essentially, they all drank ice-cold Fiji Bitter in the hot sun, by the pool, relaxing on holiday while being waited on by someone young, attractive and largely naked.

In contrast, the Fiji Bitter they had in Wellington was served cool-ish, the rain was lashing against the spartan meeting room’s windows, it had been a busy working week and the beer was being served by a husky chap in a Hawaiian shirt. It is all about context.

Last week I braved blizzards and public transport to run a beer tasting out at Wallaceville:

I ran my first beer tasting in Upper Hutt last week. It was for the Social Society out at the biosecurity complex in Wallaceville and it turned out to be a great night despite Wellington producing some of the worst weather of the year. What happened to spring and global warming Mr Gore? Anyway, the idea was to offer up an introductory selection of New Zealand craft beer to an audience which contained more than one person who initially thought they ‘didn’t like beer.’

Beer Haiku Friday and A Beer Tasting

This Haiku combines ribs and beer which is more than enough to get it selected for today's Beer Haiku Friday. It is titled "To-do List":

As ribs cook slowly
The only thing left for me
Is to drink this beer

A full report from the MAF Beer Tasting:

This week I had the opportunity to run a beer tasting at the head office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. I brought a range of New Zealand craft beer and they provided gourmet pizzas and assorted chippies. It was a perfect match really. Filled with policy analysts, scientists and even someone who had studied brewing, it was a knowledgeable crowd with some great questions.

Glass Tip - The fine fellows at Beer Haiku Daily

Beerly Tasting - Lawyers and Belgians

Last Friday I ran an introductory beer tasting at DLA Phillips Fox:

As a warm up to the successful Wellington Ranfurly Shield defence against Otago, I had the chance to run a beer tasting for staff and clients of one of Wellington’s big law firms, DLA Phillips Fox. It was an introductory beer selection which was accompanied by an impressive amount of food including paua fritters, chicken wings and ribs. One corner of the table had a big pile of bones which made it look like the Flintstones had dropped in to try some brews.

The July tradition continues with the annual Belgian Beer Tasting at the Backbencher:

July 21 is Nationale Feestdag. This is, of course, the National Day of Belgium and it celebrates the 178th anniversary of the coronation of King Leopold I. I suspect everyone already knew that. He is not still there obviously but I suspect everyone knew that too. More than just a chance to toast the Belgian monarchy, it is an excuse to settle down and sample some of the very best beers from the land sometimes called “the paradise of beer.”

Of Tuataras and The Treasury

Reprinted from the Wellingtonian, my latest column titled "Hatching a new Tuatara":

With the expansion completed, Carl is turning his formidable brewing brain to more new offerings and is planning some special big brews. These, he says, could include a stout, a “nice American Pale Ale” or a “big Belgian triple on the yeast, champagne corked and wired so it would age.”

This week I also ran a beer tasting for The Treasury:

It was in the hallowed halls of The Treasury that I ran my first ever beer tasting. The year was 2003 and the big worry then was bird flu rather than swine flu. How far we have come. It was attended by exactly eight people and around half the beers we tried that night are no longer brewed today. It was a very different event last night when twenty people sat down to a value for money buffet and, more importantly, to taste six New Zealand craft brews.

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.

Beer Blogs

My second Malthouse blog is now up and is titled "From the Ivory Tower to the Brew House." It covers Croucher The Hef and Three Boys Wheat:

Brewers are, on the whole, remarkable creatures. From just toasted grain, the flower of a vine, ordinary water and a single-celled organism, they can produce delicious, sweet, life-giving beer. Given those same ingredients, most people would end up with soggy muesli which smelt of wet grass and tasted vaguely like bathroom mould. Or worse - Mash beer.

Also on his second post, Mr Colin Paige, former head brewer at Mac's, is blogging about his mission to establish a brewery in Saigon. His blog is called Colin Paige in South East Asia:

Of course, getting into the Bia Hoi! (Bia Hoi is the cheap locally produced, unfiltered and unpasteurised beer - most of it is OK, not going to win any awards, and occasionally some diacetyl issues, However the dispense is usually an unpressurized keg with a hose and a womans hand over the end of it, holding beer in with her thumb until someone makes an order) Found a great place about 100m from Apocalypse Now (Saigon CBD) , night Club, that has a fixed rent and so can still offer 2 litres of beer for 16,000 VND, or about NZ$1.20.

Finally, one of my favourite beer writers, Pete Brown, has a blog with many more than two posts. His new book is called Hops and Glory and is due out next year:

This book has ruled my life for two years - I was heavily into it by the time I first started blogging. I can't wait to get the bastard finished and unleashed on the world. I've finished the first draft and it's now with my editor, but it's far too long and we're going to have to cut about a third of it out - expect lots of IPA-themed blog entries to appear on here as they're slashed from the book (a process Steven King refers to as 'killing your babies').

Beer - The only known cure for a case of the "Mondays"

Here is the full report on the latest tasting session at the Backbencher:

The theme for the September session of the Cellar-Vate beer tasting club was the unique “Dark and Ducky.” This moniker was devised to cover a combination of dark beers and the bottled range from the Dux de Lux. The 50 people in attendance had the Dux beers presented to them by the legendary Dick Fyfe. Given Dux de Lux means “masters of the finest”, I speculated in spectacularly poor Latin that this would make Dick the Dux de Dux de Lux – the master of the masters of the finest. I doubt it will catch on and it would never fit on his business card in any case.

Next, the first ever beer tasting event at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage:

On Friday night, I had the chance to run a fun little beer tasting at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage (who I accidentally called the Ministry of Culture and Heritage on the tasting menu and was immediately chastised. You never stop learning in this job.)

Finally, a write up in the Herald of a recent boutique beer tour:

Miller - a beer writer and expert who knows everything you could about beer as well as anyone who matters in the Wellington bar scene - is great company. He must be the only person I've met who carries around hops and barley in his bag.

In my defence, I usually only have hops and barley in my bag when I'm running a tour or a tasting!

A Sunday Beer Sampler

There was a unique theme for the IRD Social Club beer tasting on Friday night:

Although the room was done up in its “traditional” Oktoberfest decorations consisting of German flags and pictures of David Hasselhoff with his shirt off, the actual theme for the tasting was quite different. For the first time ever, I was asked to present a flight of beers with “funny names and/or funny stories behind them.” It turned out to be a great theme.

I'm delighted to be the 23rd inductee into Adrienne Rewi's series "Meet the People – Ordinary and Extraordinary New Zealanders Doing Interesting Things":

When people ask acclaimed Wellington-based beer critic Neil Miller how he became a beer writer, he says he was simply an enthusiastic amateur lucky enough to turn professional. He says that while he had learnt how to research during six years at Parliament and how to speak through university debating, he hadn’t always appreciated good beer.

Bonus points for the use of "acclaimed"!

Beerly Reviewing - The Beer Store

The three question I am asked most often at the beer tastings I run are:

1) What's the difference between an ale and lager?
2) Why does Steinlager give me such a bad headache?
3) Where can I obtain these magnificent libations?

The answer to the third question just became a whole lot easier with the successful launch of The Beer Store - a New Zealand on-line specialist beer supplier.

The Beer Store currently has over 300 boutique beers from New Zealand and the world including many which are impossible to source even in beer-rich Wellington. In my first order, I picked up a six-pack of Croucher Pale Ale and a six-pack of Dux de Lux Nor'Wester. Next time, I can't go past the Brew Moon Hophead IPA - I haven't seen that brew here for years.

The order process is simple enough for me to use (which means it must be very simple) and, despite placing my order late on Wednesday afternoon, the beer arrived in a robust cardboard box the very next day. One of the very nice touches about the site is that provides quite detailed information on every beer. That takes away a bit of the guesswork.

You can colour me impressed with the whole Beer Store experience from start to finish.

Beerly Tasting: It's been too long

Always the biggest tasting session of the year, Belgian Beers at Cellar-Vate:

While some of the 45 keen people packed in the Cabinet Room at the Backbencher may have been marking the national day of Belgium, I suspect more were attracted by a top notch beer list from the land known as “the paradise of beer”. The fact that there was only one beer under 8% did not seem to put any one off!

Tonight I ran a tasting at Statistics New Zealand on what turned out to be a (surprisingly) stunning Wellington evening:

It was also lucky that was it was the people in this organisation who were asked to equally share seventeen bottles of “The Hef” between 36 tasters. That would have stumped many less arithmetical organisations.

Finally, beer makes it to writer and photographer Adrienne Rewi's blog!

Designer Beer Crafted for the NZ University Games

For the first time in its 106-year history, the Uni Games will be held in a non-university town (Rotorua) from 14-17 April 2008. University Sport New Zealand (USNZ) has decided to take the games to Rotorua in hopes of diversifying and expanding the breadth of tertiary competitive sports in New Zealand.

Full Story

Beerly Writing - More Salient Goodness

The Salient beer column takes a look at wheat beers and cricket:

Beer can have a wonderful effect on conversation. Once, it even made Graham Gooch funny. One of England’s best cricketers, Gooch was famous for his solid batting, droopy moustache and a face which resembled a forlorn Basset Hound receiving an unexpected cavity search.

Next was the 2008 version of the now classic university drinking game:

Recently, I invented a drinking game called “Eggplant.” The rules were ridiculously simple – people threw slices of barbequed eggplant up the neighboring hill. The winner of each round did not have to drink – everyone else did. People utilized a wide variety of throwing styles to try to gain an advantage. My personal trademark technique of hurling the vegetable directly into the wall of the house some two meters away was hilarious but ineffective. I consoled myself with the fact that my game, while it may have appeared silly to some, probably saved lives. A person might have eaten the eggplant if it had been left lying around.

Finally, some Saint Patrick's Day reflections on stout, porter and pubs:

Skeptics argue that beer should not be so thick you have to eat it with a spoon nor so dark that it threatens to implode and pull your eyeballs out. These people always seem to sit next to me.