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.

The oldest pub in the nation and the beer of the people

From the Wellingtonian, my article on the "trouble brewing over the oldest pub claim":

It is an article of faith for Wellingtonians that the Thistle Inn on Mulgrave Street is the oldest pub in the country. After all, it was built way back in 1840 and, until the harbour was reclaimed in 1876, sat right on the shoreline. The Thistle has poured pints for parched sailors, sundry Governor-Generals and, according to legend, Te Rauparaha himself.

Over at the Malthouse blog, in the spirit of true blogging we throw the floor open to real people (and accountants) for their take on the best beers in the fridge. Welcome to the first "People's Blog":

A conveniently unknown author once wrote that “a blog is merely a tool that lets you do anything from change the world to share your shopping list.” Blogs can polarise readers perhaps more than any other medium. John Jay Hooker, veteran political gadfly, is on record as saying “I sincerely believe blogging can save America.” National Business Review publisher Barry Coleman does not believe it will even save New Zealand.

Finally, I love this sign spotted recently outside Hope Bros in Wellington: "Urgent! Customers needed. No experience needed. Apply within."

Glass Tip for the sign - Peter McCaffery

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.

Small brewer scores epic festival effort

When it comes to success in the art of beer making, brand recognition can mean everything, so the significance of winning a slot at a British ale festival dubbed "the world's biggest" is not lost on Kiwi brewer Luke Nicholas.

Over the next fortnight, the Poms will be sipping their way through 100,000 pints of multi-award-winning Epic Pale Ale after the 38-year-old was invited to showcase his brew at the International Real Ale Festival.

Epic's founder and head brewer has landed one of only six international taps at the annual event hosted by British pub giant JD Wetherspoon which he says could provide the company with the springboard it needs to maximise its potential.

"The Wetherspoon chain has 720 pubs and my batch will be selling in all of them overnight that's more than twice the number of outlets I can get into here," Mr Nicholas said.

"Of course, it's not just about selling the beer. It's about seeking publicity, pursuing potential avenues, exploiting brand recognition and putting Epic on the map something that's not easy back home."

Full Story

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

Beerly Writing: Ruffling Some Feathers

In my first Wellingtonian column of the year, I have a look back at my locals over the years and in particular the recently refurbished Featherston Tavern. The column is called "Ruffling Some Feathers":

It is apparently compulsory for all marketing and communications professionals to spend a lot of time in bars and our regular was The Feathers on, unsurprisingly, Featherston Street. This was a friendly place but a bit threadbare round the edges. The decor would not have been out of place in an old episode of Emmerdale Farm.

Glass Tip - The Wellingtonian

An ale of Epic proportions

It's a sad fact that one of this country's most highly awarded beers of recent times, Epic Pale Ale, is available from just 250 outlets. Soon, however, that number is set to quadruple to around 1000; but it won't be Kiwis benefiting.

Full Story

2008 Beer Awards, Imps and Trappists

From the Wellingtonian, my now traditional end-of-year beer and bar awards:

I have continued my fledgling tradition of putting together an assessment of the best New Zealand beers for 2008 and some beer-related awards for venues around Wellington. These are, of course, simply the opinions of one beer writer but, rest assured gentle readers, they are based on extensive and intensive research.

From the Malthouse blog, a long look at Epic Pale Ale and its impish creator:

His brewing style is ashamedly hop-fixated. Luke has made a decision to use all imported hops for his beers as they give him the flavour and power he is looking for. While this approach can be controversial with his peers, the resulting beers are highly regarded. Epic Pale Ale was crowned Supreme Champion Beer of New Zealand just weeks after it launched. Metro called it the “Best Beer in Auckland” (by which they mean New Zealand) and the Listener also had it as the best beer of 2007 though their sole source for that assessment was me.

Also from the Malthouse blog, an entry on our old friends at Chimay:

Extensive research has unveiled exactly one joke about the monks at Chimay. Actually, it is not really a joke, merely a witty quote which may or may not have actually happened. As semi-silent monks in The Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance (which is understandably shortened to Trappist) there probably isn’t a lot of opportunity for verbal comedy and word play.

NZ Beer Festival Tickets On Sale Now

The event will take place at Waitangi Park in Wellington in February, before returning to its birthplace at Auckland's Ellerslie Racecourse in March.

The New Zealand Beer Festival is less about swilling the cheap stuff, than it is craft brewing, featuring the likes of the hop-laden (15 per bottle) Epic Pale Ale and Mexicali's chili beer.'

Tickets for the Auckland and Wellington festivals go on sale from nine a.m on Thursday from Liquorland and www.iticket.co.nz

Full Story

Ale Files - The Beer is Out There

The latest post on the Malthouse blog is now up and is titled "All Hail Pale Ale". It is a balanced look at why pale ales rule.

Of course, New Zealand’s most famous self-proclaimed East India Pale Ale is Tui. It is also on tap at the Malthouse if you absolutely insist. Now, there is no such style as East India Pale Ale and Tui is not an India Pale Ale. It is not a Pale Ale. It is not even an ale. It is a lager.

I was recently asked by Chef Martin Bosley what Tui had in common with real IPAs. My considered reply was “they are both liquids.”

Speaking of which, Martin Bosley's restaurant has unveiled it's new beer list. The chef became a real fan of craft beer after running beer and food matching session at this year's Brew NZ. The craft beers on his list are:

Invercargill Biman
Three Boys Wheat
Tuatara Pilsner
Epic Pale Ale
Tuatara Ardennes
Pitch Black

You can read about Martin's conversion to craft beer here.

Beer News and Goss - 2 November 2008

This is a reminder that the Great Christchurch Beer Festival 2008 takes place this Saturday (Election Day) at the most excellent The Twisted Hop in Christchurch (6 Poplar Street) from 11am to 11pm. Admission is free and there will be a BBQ and live music. More importantly, the beer list looks awesome:

Pink Elephant Mammoth
Tuatara IPA
Renaissance Blonde
TTH Skull Buggery
Mussel Inn Bitter Ass
Emersons Brewers Reserve
TTH Twisted Ankle
Galbraiths Mr G's
Invercargill Boysenbeery
Townshend No9
Croucher Pils
TTH R.N.A
Epic Pale Ale
Brew Moon Dark Side Stout
Lighthouse Dick’s Dark
Wigram Hefe
Green Man Pils
TTH Golding Bitter
Harringtons Rogue Hop
TTH Challenger
Three Boys Golden

Sadly, I won't be able to attend because I will be judging at the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition. It will take a little explaining to the electoral flunkies about why I want to cast an early vote...

In other news, a new low-carb beer has entered the market with the recent launch of Export 33. It joins Spring Tide and Haagen Blonde in this growing market segment.

How Salient for October

The final three Salient columns for 2008 begin with a review of the Best Beers in the Land:

It is a simple fact that the winners of proper competitions are decided by proper judges. Text voting from the masses probably makes “New Zealand’s Got Talent”, Telecom and Vodafone truck loads of money each week but the results are hardly based on merit. By reducing the judging to a phone-in popularity contest, an expert’s considered verdict is worth exactly the same as “Sonny” from Victoria who texts in “OMG tht dancin dog tht thru up on stage wuz the coolest! LULZ 2008!!! Vote Labour!”

Then, an objective look at the Best Places to Drink Beer in Wellington:

One of the best aspects of being a beer writer – apart from the master key to every brewery in the country and being called a “hero” in a letter to the editor – is all the research. Now, the extensive research required for beer writing is not like legal research (“find the case of the person who first got shafted by this particular law”), chemistry research (“record precisely what time you caught fire”), political research (“rephrase Nicky Hager in your own words for extra credit”) or even sociology research (“Wikipedia does so count as an academic source”).

Finally, the final Salient beer column pompously titled Some sober reflections on beer:

After an introduction so tangential it would make Professor Nigel S Roberts exclaim “my word, what an awfully tangential introduction,” it is time to announce that this is my final beer column for Salient. Perhaps next year another writer will step into the breach and produce three-part exposes on “Flame Beer – Why it Rocks.” Judging from the mailbag, there is a strong demand for that article from at least one student with a blue crayon and poor spelling.

Glass Tip: Salient Magazine

Hits and Misses in the World of Beer

This new feature will discuss some of the big and not-so-big issues in the beer scene and provide a positive spin (hit) and a negative interpretation (miss) for each. There is a vague intention that this will be a fortnightly column but the chances of that actually happening are about the same as Parekura Horomia taking up parkour. The links in the column will generally be worth a click too...

HIT: My guests round watching Wellington win the Ranfurly Shield from Auckland each bought Tuatara beers.
MISS: My guests round watching Wellington win the Ranfurly Shield from Auckland each drank Tuatara straight out of the bottle.

HIT: Going away drinks for Mac's Head Brewer Colin Paige.
MISS: The fact that Mac's Head Brewer Colin Paige is going away.

HIT: The Corona foosball ball table at Mac's Bar 22 where one team is little bottles and the other team are little limes.
MISS: I don't have one yet.

HIT: The Yeastie Boys Pot Kettle will be the next guest beer at D4 in Wellington. Pot Kettle was won the random draw which will be used to select future guest beers (within reason - no Leon Rouge for example.)
MISS: D4 owner Dermot can persuade leprechauns to start fights with Mike Tyson but even he is struggling to convince people that it really was a random draw.

HIT: Epic Pale Ale is now in 500ml bottles.
MISS: I don't have one yet.

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!

September Salient Points

This Salient magazine column casts an Eye Over the Monteith's Beer and Wild Food Challenge results:

Over at the Southern Cross, their wild boar loin was guarded by a “jelly which will stare you down.” Like a scene from Lord of the Rings, the plate was crowned by a single all-knowing sheep’s eye encased in Pilsner jelly. Suspending the eyeball exactly in the middle of the Pilsner cube is apparently no mean culinary feat. There may well be a thesis in there for a science student with a particular interest in jelly.

Next, an in-depth look at Beer and Politics in the most intelligent electorate in the country:

Politics and beer go together like VUWSA and financial mismanagement. With the general election approaching, it seemed timely to put the genuinely tough questions to the candidates standing for Wellington Central. This column is not distracted by peripheral issues like tax cuts, mysterious trusts or secret agendas. No, the key issue is what beer the candidates like and where they like to drink it.

Lastly, a glimpse of the Beers of Asia:

An unkind critic once claimed that saying that your country’s beers were better than Japanese beer was like saying your country’s food was better than English food. That is a tad unfair. The Japanese do make very drinkable pale lagers and many of them reach our shores (albeit with hefty price tags).

Beerly Writing - July

From the pages of The Wellingtonian newspaper, a column on beer at the Wellington food show:

Once through the gates, the first question facing every attendee at the Food Show is “left or right?” My decision to go left was immediately vindicated as virtually the first stall I saw was the Epic Brewing Company from Auckland. The impish brewer Luke Nicholas was handing out samples of his crisp Epic Lager and massively hopped Epic Pale Ale to big and appreciative crowds.

From The Salient, a short but intense look at stupid beers:

While many students live by the creed that the best beer in the world is the one right in front of them (preferably that someone else paid for), there are some beers which are simply stupider than Paul Holmes in a burka.

Finally for this update, The Salient column on dark beers:

A surprising number of people have absolutely no idea how beers get a dark colour. Depressingly, the majority seem to think that artificial colour is simply added at some specified point in the brewing process and – hey presto – instant dark beer. Tragically, that is precisely how a couple of breweries do it.

Beer and Food Match of the Month: Proper French Roquefort cheese and Invercargill Smokin Bishop - magic.

Beerly Writing and Beerly Tasting

The latest column from the Wellingtonian newspaper looks at some of the beers that didn't make it.

New beers continue to spring up to take their place and the overall selection for consumers is steadily growing. That does not stop me occasionally pausing to raise a glass to some of those beers which didn’t make it.

In the Free Radical, an article on beer and food including a recipe from that annoying guy who hosts the otherwise excellent Iron Chef:

It is unclear exactly when New Zealander’s decided that pouring a bottle of wine into a stew was classy but using a cup of ale in a sauce was not. Certainly, the Belgian, Germans and French would laugh at our notion that only wine could be used as an ingredient when cooking. When the Germans are laughing at you then it is clear you have a problem.

Finally, a full report from the All Hail Pale Ale tasting at Cellar Vate which featured two guest presenters.

The voting was briefly interrupted by an unscheduled appearance from Rodney Hide MP who was in the building for a television show. While seemingly baffled by proceedings, he was adamant that everyone in the room had to vote for Act.

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.

NZ brewer going it alone

One of New Zealand's top beer brewers is going it alone. Multi-award winner Luke Nicholas has bought the Epic Brewing Company and with it the Epic brand, from his now former employer the Steam Brewing Company.

Nicholas is planning to take Epic worldwide, after it won best in class at last year's BrewNZ International Beer Awards. It also claimed a silver medal this year, behind another of his beers, Monk's Habit, a Steam Brewing Company product. Epic Mayhem was awarded bronze.

Nicholas says he will be taking Epic to the world in measured steps. The first is the launch of Epic Lager in February next year.

Full Story
Newstalk ZB
NZ Herald

The Best of New Zealand - Epic Pale Ale - Best Beer

We have so much to be proud of in New Zealand, but you might be forgiven sometimes for thinking that our main pastoral industry was tall-poppy lopping. So here, with a wide-ranging but by no means exhaustive list, the Listener happily celebrates the best of New Zealand – and invites you, the reader, to celebrate, too, with your own contributions.

The full text of this article appears in the NZ Listener
(August 4-10 2007), on sale now.





The full text will be available online on Aug 25, 2007.

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