Cinderella

So it seems I’m the only person involved in the New Zealand Craft Beer Industry who isn’t about to jet my way to Melbourne for A.I.B.A.
It sounds like it going to be a hell of a party and I’m certainly a touch sad that I won’t be there.
However the pint of Brooklyn Bulldog E.S.B. that I took from the last pilot batch of beer to be brewed before I do it for real at Emerson’s is making me feel better. I have just racked it into a keg to cask condition, and filled 3 bottles so there is a sample of the pilot for Richard to try on brew day. I think it’s one of the best beers I have ever brewed, certainly the best draught beer I have brewed. A good omen I think.

Weekend Warrior

Every homebrewer has that moment when they nail their first successful ferment or their first smooth mash and run off where they fantasise about doing it for real running a real commercial brewery. Most small commercial brewers warn the fool hardy amateur off, saying it’s a hell of a lot of hard work and a good way to make a small fortune out of a large one. Then there are the well meaning yet totally clueless bystanders who taste your beer, like it and ask when you are going to go pro like it’s as simple as converting another stockpot or ten and buying in few more sacks of malt. Others like Stu McKinlay have used the contract brewing model to launch a pro career while still holding down the day job. For me I have found my own way into the beer industry through retailing, judging and writing, it’s a pretty good place to be and I only have to clean stainless when I feel like it. One day in a perfect world (and sometimes the real world can provide a little perfection) I would like to run an outfit like the Wassail Brauhaus where I could brew what I wanted and share it with people for a modest financial return towards the brewing costs, time will tell. Anyway I digress, every homebrewer dreams of doing it for real and next month I will get to play at being a real brewer. I will be flying to Dunedin and with Richard Emerson I will brew a version of my Brooklyn Bulldog E.S.B recipe on the 200 litre pilot plant at Emerson’s Brewery. To say I’m excited is to say the Popes a papist. The beer will be a strong English style bitter brewed with New Zealand Pale Malt, English Crystal and Belgian Crystal Malt, New Zealand Goldings and New Zealand Styrian Goldings hops and the Fullers yeast. It’s the sort of beer I want to see more of through the Autumn and Winter months, its also the sort of beer I love!

That's Epic

My latest Column from www.captialtimes.co.nz

BACK in February I attended a very special tasting. Kelly Ryan, an ex-pat Kiwi and head brewer of English craft brewer Thornbridge, presented a range of his beers at The Malthouse. Having studied food science and brewing for DB in New Zealand, Kelly set off on his O.E. finally landing the job of head brewer at what is widely regarded as one of England’s most exciting new generation brewers. Thornbridge Brewery started out in an outbuilding at the Thornbridge stately home in Derbyshire. Now with production split between a larger new brewery and the manor house site, Kelly and his brewing team including ex-Wellingtonian homebrewer James Kemp, produce some fantastic beers including a spectacular New Zealand hopped pale ale, their hoppy aromatic flagship IPA called Jaipur, a black IPA which gives more than a nod to the Yeastie Boys Pot Kettle Black, a number of barrel aged imperial stouts, and my favourite, a strong chestnut honey infused dark ale called Bracia.
Unfortunately none of these wonderful beers are imported into New Zealand, however, thoughtfully Kelly dropped in on his mate Luke Nicholas from Epic before heading back to the UK and the two of them came up with a Stout for our winter. While Kelly often showcases NZ hops in the beers he brews in the UK, for this brew he and Luke used a lot of English ingredients. Weighting in at 6.8%abv Epic Thornbridge Stout was brewed with English Maris Otter, Brown, Crystal, & Munich malts, Roast Barley and English Target and Brambling Cross hops. Pouring a pitch black Epic Thornbridge Stout has a fruity zesty hop aroma with a hint of roasty malt, which continues in the mouth leading to a dry smooth finish. Epic Thornbridge Stout is available from The Malthouse and will soon to be available in bottles from Regional Wines and Spirits. Cheers

Harvest Ale 2010

Homebrewers are a charitable lot. Today I got a call from Brendon asking if I wanted 100gs of green hops. What could I say but yes?
Without anytime to brew up a beer and no yeast in stock to ferment one anyway I decided to add them as dry hops in a batch of O.S.B. I had conditioning. So that makes it dry wet hops just to show how oxymoronical our brewers lexicon can be!
So this years Harvest Ale unlike the slightly aborted 5 and a ½ % abv strong ale attempt last year is a 3.8%abv wet hopped Ordinary Bitter.
After 3 hours in contact with the hops there is already a pronounced NZ hop character showing through, I suspect it won’t be to long before I rack it off into a keg.

Changing Expectations.

A few things have made me muse on how things have changed recently. First Pete Brown wrote his piece ‘I remember when it were all fields round here’ , then Dr Mulchin, now a resident of Liverpool, sent me a package of MerseyAle the Liverpool and Districts CAMRA magazine, then I started thinking about the area of my job that involves helping restaurateurs, café and bar owners put together beer lists and how what we expect from a good beer list has changed.
The two issues of MerseyAle the Dr sent both had features looking back to the past. One of them contained a piece on the first Good Beer Guide (1974), detailing the Liverpool pubs it listed and what has become of them now. The other piece looked at 30 years of the CAMRA Liverpool Beer Festival and 30 years of JDW. In both pieces it was driven home how what was at stake was the survival of traditional amber bitter and mild in a cask conditioned form, many of the beers have disappeared but also many of them are still around, and are today dismissed as ‘boring brown’ and viewed much today as Red Barrel and Double Diamond were then. Yes these beers might have declined in quality but I suspect there is something more going on. The ‘Activists’ are expecting something different now from what the ‘furious four’ originally were striving for. Today there seems to be a desire to see a range of styles , not just another traditional bitter on the handpump. While sometimes I think like Zak Avery that this move to demand different styles is at the cost of acknowledging how good some of these “boring brown’ beers are its probably a positive sign of a maturing beer culture.
Here in NZ we are facing our own developments. A decade ago, no actually make that 5 years ago, we would have been pleasantly surprised to open a menu in a restaurant, bar or café and see a beer from an independent brewer. The fact is that the beer would probably be an interpretation of a style the big brewer’s trade in, a standard golden lager, a New Zealand Draught or perhaps a dark lager. Today however I am being approached by more and more restaurateurs wanting to improve their beer lists, wanting a range of beer styles (even if the Golden Lager sections of their lists are still by far the largest) from a range of brewers. The really positive aspect is in large part these are restaurateurs who don’t have an interest or knowledge of beer, they are improving their lists because the punters are demanding it and their competition are doing it.
I guess I remember when it were all fields round here, its no high rise yet but the building site is raging!

The picture is from the dreadful days of New Zealand 6 o’clock swill where the country came very close to prohibition and pubs had to close at 6pm each night meaning punters binge-drinked their watery tasteless beer down as fast as possible before heading home. Its a period in our history that still has implications on our drinking culture.

The last brew

Well it all did go to plan. It was a wonderful thing to witness. The heady aromas of green fruity Motueka hops being pummelled in the hopback by hard working brewers all for the sake of creating a special harvest ale. . It was also sad. The loss of Macs from Wellington is bad for Wellington undoubtedly, but also I fear it may spell the end of a craft ethos for the brand. Witnessing the brewing of Brewjolias drew it all into perspective, watching the brewers sweating away working the wort from the kettle through the hop bed was like some scene from a Victorian brewery, it was pure daft labour intensive work all in order to create something special. In short it was the sort of thing that a craft brewery would do, but not the sort of thing a large brewery would do. I hope I am proved wrong and Christchurch carries on the craft ethos that undoubtedly existed at Wellington. I will cross my fingers but I wont hold my breath.

The Hop Back