Big Weeks

It’s the end of a pretty big week and I’m shattered. Having coordinated and attended one and worked the other of the 2 monthly tutored tastings, organised and catered the Belgian in-store beer festival and made it out for a couple of late night beers I’m feeling it today.

The theme of tutored tastings this month was Back from the Best comprising a slide show and tales from Geoff Griggs experiences at the WBC and his travels through America and England before and after. We showed pictures taken while touring both the water wheel powered Donnington Brewery and the shinny new Thornbridge, quite a juxtaposition! English brewing in variation!
The Belgian Beerfest yesterday was a huge success, with me turning out platters of Moules Escargo and Pommes Frites and Aioli all day. The beers were tasting good, particularly La Chouffe, Chimay Blue 06, and the Steam Brewing Wit Bier.

Today I will chill the two fermentors holding last weekend’s parti-gyle bitter brew (1/2 Berhampore Best ½ O.S.B.) ready for them to be racked into conditioning tomorrow. Then it’s a short week before a long weekend in Auckland with Sarah. I haven’t made it up to our dirty metropolis for about two years now (apart from a quick day trip for the Cheese Awards last year) so I’m seriously looking forward to some quality time at Galbraith’s with Sarah (and two or three of my all time favourite beers of course! Bob it’s been way to long)

Then I’m back for a fortnight before heading down to Dunedin to brew with Richard, back to host next month’s beer tastings and then hitting the kitchen to cater food for the SOBA Matariki Winter Ales Fest.

BrewNZ and Beervana Photos

Ok, it’s been along time coming but I finally got round to salvaging the photos from my ruined camera. Here are some snap shots of judging at BrewNZ and the extremely successful Beervana Festival that followed courtesy of Adam as my camera was history by that point. Cheers

Manning the Taps…

…Well we will be in a week’s time. I have spent today rearranging the bar for next weeks festival and setting up the extra beer engines that I have borrowed for the event. 6 of the seven engines that will be used next week are now in place. Time for a pint of Revival Stout to reward me for my work I think. There is something very satisfying about running a beer festival, I highly recommend it!

Valley Summer Ales Fest 08

What a fantastic night. Good beer, good food, good people. Thanks to all who brewed and to all came to drink and to Dave Batt who designed the Menus and then was to ill to attend. Cheers.

Beerlist

O-Street Festive Gold 4.6%abv (dry hopped Golden Ale)

O-street Somerset 5%abv (Golden Ale)

O-Street Chilka IPA 5.8%abv (Hoppy IPA)

Brendan’s Kitchen Sink Lager 5.3%abv (fruity lager)

Front Porch APA 6.7%abv (strong New World hopped pale ale)

Front Porch 60 4.2%abv (Scottish style session beer)

Emerson’s Bookbinder (NZ hopped New World Ordinary Bitter, pro brewer)

Plus various bottles from Ed.

SOBA Homebrew Fest

On Sunday we ran the first SOBA Homebrew festival, which also happened to be the first beerfestival run by our organisation. It was a fantastic success, all our worries about liquor license infringements, violence and assorted other troubles proved to be unfounded. On offer was a range of craft brewed beer and one cider, and homebrewed beer. There were six beer engines in action which I suspect is more than were employed at the recent Hops and Glory Real Ale festival. There was even a pin of Twisted Hop IPA sent up from Christchurch for the event. I served my Chilka IPA, while other highlights included Brendan’s Smoked Porter, Stu’s American Stout and a very popular Automotivly themed Belgian ale from organiser Rob Owen.

The festival served as a prize giving for the recent SOBA National Homebrew Competition. The competition gathered some outstanding entries including a barley wine which had 10 years of bottle age on it. I took out best in class English style IPA with a silver medal for Chilka IPA.

A great day and a lot of hard work for a good cause, great beer.