CT Column 4/08/2010 : A Cup of Old Stingo

FOR the last 18 months contract brewing has been the leading trend in New Zealand craft brewing.
With the release of their first beer “Stingo”, the Malthouse has now entered the beer brewing game.
To modern ears Stingo might seem an unusual name for a beer however it’s a very traditional Northern English term for strong ale.
What is unusual about this particular Stingo is that it’s not all that strong. Malthouse proprietor Colin Mallon decided he wanted the first Malthouse brew to be in the style of the beers he remembered from his youth in Scotland.
Stingo is a malt accented light golden coloured session beer brewed in a Scottish style known as 80 Shilling. Colin says many people were surprised that he chose such a malt accented subtle style when big hoppy beers are all the rage at the moment.
Colin says he wanted to provide something different from his suppliers, the sort of beer he could drink all day.
Stingo has a nutty malt aroma with a hint of spicy hop. In the mouth there’s light caramel, sweet whole grain malt flavours and a firm drying finish. Stingo is limited release that only available from the Malthouse. Get a round in while you can.

CT Column 28/07/2010 : Great culinary experience

LAST week there were two events that celebrated how beer can have a place at the table. On Tuesday night I was involved in The Emerson’s Degustation Dinner at Logan Brown.
The event showcased just how well fine food and craft beer can work together. Logan Brown Head Chef Shaun Clouston, and brewer Richard Emerson worked together to match six of Shaun’s courses to six of Richard’s beers.
We happily eat and drunk our way through Oysters and Pilsner, Sauté Paua sweet braised Pork and Old 95, Maltose Roasted Duck Game Sausage and 1812, Porter Braised Lamb Shoulder Rack and London Porter, Black Pepper & Walnut Meringues Gorgonzola Cream and Taieri George, and Blackboy Peach Cobbler Salted Caramel Ice Cream and JP 2009.
The very first match, Marlborough Tio Point Oysters served in the ½ shell with Sherry Mignonette served with Emerson’s Pilsner proved to be one of the most amazing culinary experiences I have ever had.
This match was incredibly simple and yet so effective that Richard said he dreamed of it later that night.
The oysters were almost as fresh as if we were eating them on the wharf. The fruity passion fruit and citrus notes in the pilsner found a perfect zesty harmony with the fresh briny character of the oysters.
The other match that really stood out for me was the Sauté Paua with sweet braised Pork and Old 95, all the more amazing considering I don’t like pork!
The rich malt character of the Old 95 worked with the oily richness of the pork while the spicy Chinese sautéed paua found harmony with the bright orangey hop character of the beer.
The next day I continued the culinary theme. Richard, Geoff Griggs and I ran a Beer and Food matching master class for members of the Wellington hospitality trade at Crazyhorse in Willis Street.
We presented six courses each matched with one of Richard’s beers, and a wine that would typically be recommended as a good match.
The event sparked a lot of debate and got those in attendance thinking about how beer works with food in different ways to wine.
Many of those in attendance were not beer drinkers which made it all the more surprising and for me satisfying, that the final vote proved a landslide to beer as the better match to the food on offer. Cheers

http://www.capitaltimes.co.nz

SOBA NHC 2010

This weekend the judging of the 2010 SOBA National Homebrew Competition takes place. I will be flying to Hamilton to help judge over 300 beers in two days. This is a pretty staggering task, at the pro brewing competitions I have judged at we would usually do 60-80 beers a day , even with three tables working independently we will have to be knocking off far more than that a day.
I always look forward to judging the NHC (even if I didn’t really want to this year as I wanted to enter!) as the range of beers on offer is always far more interesting than in pro comps. The overall standard might be lower but the standard rises each year. Several years ago the most common fault was bacterial infection with some absolutely intense infections still featuring in some judges nightmares, however more recently it has been the more subtle faults of the sort you find at commercial competition. The best beers are always absolutely fantastic and a tribute to the standard of homebrewing culture that is developing in this country.

Good luck to all who have entered and wish us judges luck in the task ahead!

Pub Jukebox

Ok this is revolutionary stuff, after posting nothing since September now I’m going to deliver two on the same day as I’m laid up with a chest cold on a cold stormy Spring Monday. This one os vastly less serious than the one before.

So here I go jumping on the current beer blog band wagon. Firstly I would like to say that I am sceptical about pub juke boxes. I don’t trust my brother man and sister woman to select music that won’t put me off my pint that said this is all about my ultimate listing so I can certainly live with my own choices!

• The Pogues "The Sick Bed of Cúchulainn"

For me The Pogues exemplify everything that is exciting and appealing about setting out on a session with friends. Yes in reality the band (including Shane himself) ended up glamorising the hopeless alcoholism of MacGowan but the music is fantastic and booze soaked nature just seems right with a pint in your hand.

• Tom Waits "Goin' Out West"

Hell yeah! The soundtrack to that single malt at the end of the night that you will regret tomorrow! Mr Waits is a musical genius, and stars in the best jukebox scene ever in jim jarmusch’s “Coffee and Cigarettes”

• Nick Cave “Cannibals Hymn”

A stomping crooning solid catchy glorious crescendo of a song. I remember playing this at O-Street during Thursday Night drinks.

• Nick Cave “Rainy Night in Soho”

MacGowen meets Cave , beautiful.

• The Dubliners “Finnegan’s Wake”

Takes me back to a wonderful night at the Mean Fiddler in Nelson. Great drinking music and when you find an Irish pub that goes past the plastic paddy bollocks and captures something of the essence of a proper community boozer (and when you can find one with something better than the blackstuff to drink! ) it’s a very good thing.

• Grinderman “No Pussy Blues”

Not exactly PC but pure genius and incredibly good. Yep another Cave track, hell why bother with the Juke Box let’s just put all his albums on the CD player on shuffle! (Ipod, what is that?)

• Johnny Cash “Wayfaring Stranger”

I’m a sucker for a fiddle played right, and on this it’s played perfect.

• Jack White “Great High Mountain”

I guess I am ‘meant’ to be embarrassed about liking blue grass but I’m not. I like Mild to. At least others in the pub might recognise this one from the movie.

• Alison Krauss “Down to the River to Pray”

Another film track. It’s always good to take in some salvation as you sin, I find it saves time that way.

• Black Sabbath “NIB”

The greatest rock band on earth, no question, and very much where my musical roots lie. I started out drinking beer to this and it still sends shivers down my spine. Classic.

Are we importing the wrong beers? - IPA not really a traveller

With the current big thing in the NZ craft beer scene being heavy use of hops it’s hardly surprising that imports of big hopped craft beers from overseas are on the rise. Big hopped IPA’s and Double IPA’s from America, England, Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Japan are increasingly popping up around Wellington. I’m as involved as anyone in the import of these beers through my position at Regional where I range these sorts of beers and direct importers to source them. However recently in private I have started to wonder if these sorts of beers are really the best ones to ship the length of the earth.

What’s that I hear you say? But IPA is historically a travelling beer style?

Well there are two issues here. Firstly while the IPA’s of the India trade used to make the arduous journey to India they most likely bear precious little resemblance to the beers we call IPA today. While Martyn Cornell and Ron Pattinson are better qualified to talk about what historic IPA’s were like, I think I can safely say that the beers we call IPA today, heavily late hopped with modern resinous hop varieties, are a far cry from the IPA’s of the colonial era.
Late hop characters (i.e. flameout, whirlpool, and dry hopping) create striking aromas and flavours which are wonderful when experienced fresh, however these un-isomerised hop characters are moments in time. These beers fade really fast, they fall out of balance quickly as the stabilised hop compounds fall away and the considerable malt that was required to balance the hops is left sitting bold and prominent, the hop compounds oxidise and turn minerally leaving acrid unpleasant flavours.
The second consideration when thinking about IPA’s being a travelling style is that once the beers of old reached their harsh tropical destination the expectations were probably significantly low, any ale that didn’t resemble vinegar was probably hailed as a success and worthy of fetching a premium price. Today in an environment where we have some very good fresh locally produced options and are paying a premium price for these beers our standards are and should be higher than the ‘doesnt resemble vinegar’ threshold.
So often when I taste these modern imported IPA’s they are either heavily oxidised, or pleasant enough but obviously shadows of their former selves when compared with reports of them from their countries of origin.

What’s the solution?

I don’t know. I’m not suggesting we stop bringing these beers into the country, there is a market and it will be supplied one way or another. There are brewers who attempt to prevent their beers from being exported, Stones Greg Koch for example but to little effect considering despite his best efforts I could buy 7 of his beer brands right now if I wanted to. Small scale imports that will move through quickly are also a good idea but this often prevents the economy of scale that helps these imports work financially.

Hhmm.

The New Kit

As payment for catering the SOBA Winter Ales Festival I received a sexy new 80 litre stainless steel kettle. Dion formerly brewer at Tuatara and currently full time dad and casual welder fitted a ball lock tap and suddenly my brew set up is a dam sight more professional.

This morning I christened the new kettle with a 40 litre batch of Somerset, my golden ale recipe. It went better than I could have hoped for, usually new bits of kit cause all sorts of unexpected problems but today went smoothly with the brew being completed in record time.

I used the kettle as a hot liquor tank for the strike. It was a luxury being able to mash in with hosed in boiling water rather than the usual ladling. The kettle was set up on my electric hot plate that was connected to a timer so the strike liquor was boiling away when I woke at 5am.

For the boil the kettle was set above 2 gas burners. This worked so well that I had a rolling boil 20mins after the end of the run off. I whirl pooled for the first time and it worked just like it did at Emerson’s which I must admit surprised me.
I used to cool my old small kettles by giving them a water bath, the new kettle posed the problem of finding a new form of wort cooling. In the end I decided to carefully run the wort off hot into corny kegs and place them in barrels of circulating cold water. I had the wort down to 18c in 60min. I then used co2 to pump the wort out of the cornys through a hose into the fermentor cornys making sure to aerate the cooled wort as I went.

With a forty litre batch under my belt next I will have a crack at a 60 litre batch of something. There is also this year’s batch of Merchant and Alfred’s Audit to brew.

R.S.B. Homebrewed vs Probrewed

The last rigger of Regional Special Bitter is about to go to a good home so I thought it was about time to talk about how the home brewed version and the probrewed versions differed.

Probrewed R.S.B.
Aroma : light fruit esters, a slight berry fruit hop aroma, some citrus (David Wood described it as grapfruity) and a hint of nutty slightly mocha malt.
Palate: A rich malt body, caramel flavours and moderate orangy hop flavour, before a great big assertive bitter finish.

Homebrewed R.S.B. (aka Brooklyn Bulldog ESB)
Aroma: Red apple esters, light citrus and berry fruit , warm caramel malt. More integrated, hoppy and fruity than the probrewed version.
Palate: Rich malt with hints of toffee and caramel, red apple fruitiness, tangy earthy lightly citrus hop flavour and a long moderately bitter finish. Rounded, rich and integrated .

The two beers are identifiably similar, the biggest difference being that the English yeast culture in the home brewed one gives a much fruitier rounded character and the Belgian Special B crystal malt gives slightly chocolaty lightly roasty notes to the probrewed version. Also the bitterness in the probrewed version is significantly higher than the homebrewed one.