The Session- Beer Evangelism

The start of my beer evangelism can be traced back to the winter of 1998, I was in Dunedin train station waiting for the Taieri Gorge Tourist Railway to depart. I was in the south on a family holiday, the next time I would visit would be in the quest of beer. I took the train with my mother who is always keen for a beer or two. We scanned the menu to make our selection, up until then the drinking on our trip had been dominated by the ubiquitous CD and Speights. The name Emerson’s immediately took our fancy as it shared its name with the street where my family home is located. One sip and my experience of beer changed utterly. Unlike the sweet unchallenging New Zealand Draughts I was used to this beer had a strong malty presence, a marmity yeastyness and definite roasty finish, in other words it had character. Upon returning home I started hunting out more beers like this one, first ones from the big two like Monteiths Black, Guinness and Speights Old Dark, but soon beers from smaller breweries like Founders Long Black, Emerson’s Oatmeal Stout and pretty much anything the supermarket or off license had that was dark and rich.

It wasn’t until I stumbled across a copy of Michael Jackson’s 1988 New World Guide to Beer that I started to hunt out and learn about styles of beer that weren’t dark. At the same time I was starting to homebrew and like fact that music never sounds the same after you have worked in a music studio, so to my understanding of what I was tasting in beer developed changed.

My taste in beer developed again dramatically in 2001 when I tasted my first pint of real ale at Galbraith’s in Auckland. This was beer at its most drinkable, glorious peak, extremely complex, and yet utterly sessionable, my fate was sealed.