CT Column15/12/2010 : A year in beer

LAST year I wrote that choosing a list of favourite beers for the year was like “choosing a favourite child, difficult, dangerous and sure to end in controversy!”.
As that statement is no less true a year later, I have decided to review the year that was by writing about the themes that have characterised craft beer this year rather than picking favourites.
This year the craze for big aromatic hoppy India Pale Ales developed to encompass a range of highly hopped but also richly malty amber ales. These ‘India Red Ales’ were particularly popular through the winter where their bigger body seemed to suit the cooler weather. Emerson’s carried out a comprehensive investigation of the style by releasing three different Brewers Reserves on the theme. Hoppiest Indian, Oreti Red and Last of the Mohicans were all incredibly well received and hopefully we see something along those lines again next year. 8 Wired’s Søren Erikson has just released his interpretation of the style, named Tall Poppy. It’s sure to be as big a success as his other beers have been.
Another theme from 2010 has been the emergence of collaboration brews where a brewer from one brewery has travelled to another to brew a beer with them. Epic’s Luke Nicholas started the trend by brewing with Kelly Ryan at the Thornbridge brewery in the UK in 2009. In February this year Kelly returned the favour by travelling here and brewing the Epic Thornbridge Stout. Later this year Luke travelled to Delaware in the US and brewed a festive brew with Sam Calagione at the Dogfish Head Brewery for BrewNZ. A second batch named Portamarillo was brewed in Auckland just before Beervana. Discovery Channel filmed both brew days, and Beervana and will screen the Brewmasters series here next year sometime. I made my own foray into collaboration brewing by brewing a beer with Richard Emerson in Dunedin.
This trend seems set to continue next year. We might even see collaboration between the Yeastie Boys and 8 Wired, a union that is sure to create something wonderful.
Finally, we have seen a number of beers that have taken conventional styles and have fused them together. The Yeastie Boys have led this charge by taking Belgian yeasts and using them on other styles of beer. Return to Magenta took the hoppy amber ale style and gave it a spicy yeasty twist, Her Majesty 2010 gave the same treatment to a strong brown porter and any day now His Majesty 2010 will be released blending the fruity rounded English strong ale style with the piny citrus like hop character of an American IPA. Richard Emerson also got into the style bending mood by making this year’s Belgian JP release an American double IPA fermented with a tart fruity Belgian Golden Ale yeast.
All in all it’s been a great year for interesting beer and next year promises to be even better. Cheers

CT Column 1/12/2010 : Seeing the light

I FIRST met Kirsten Taylor while judging at BrewNZ in 2009. At that point she was helping Lion Breweries to formulate the malt extract homebrew kits produced at their Christchurch Brewery. By the time we judged together again this year Kirsten was working on something much more interesting. Having decided that she wanted to move into the craft brewing part of the industry Kirsten teamed up with Richard Fife, a brewer with over 20 years experience. They formed a company called KJD Brewing and released a dry crisp cider called Eves NV. Now they have come up with their first beer.
KJD Chocolate Cherry Porter is a very grown up, original and complex fruit beer. It’s a beer that combines the complex smooth richness of a porter with the deep fruitiness of cherry brandy. The beer starts its life as a rich smooth chocolaty beer brewed broadly in the Baltic porter style, a branch of the porter family that developed in the Baltic States using smooth lager yeasts rather than fruity ale strains. On the second day of fermentation 80kgs of Marlborough cherries were added to the fermentor adding their own complex ‘red’ fruity character. Chocolate Cherry Porter offers up aromas of caramel, toffee, dried berry fruit and a hint of Christmas spice, in the mouth the beer offers up loads of sweet malt, toffee, chocolate, dried fruit and cherry fruit flavours with a surprisingly lean mouth feel. At 6% the beer is robust enough to match with food. Kirsten recommends serving it with Christmas Cake, beef and cranberry stew, and Maasdam or blue cheese. I think it’s a perfect match with traditional northern hemisphere Christmas fare, try it with a slice of rich fruitcake and a generous wedge of Stilton cheese. Both Eves NV Cider and Chocolate Cherry Porter are available from Regional Wines and Spirits, while the Porter might be making an appearance at Hashigo Zake sometime soon.
Cheers.

http://www.capitaltimes.co.nz/article/3636/Seeingthelight.html

CT Column 24/11/2010 :The whole package

I DON’T usually write about the packaging beer comes in; brewery marketing departments do more than enough of that for everyone. For big mainstream brands, innovation is often a new brightly coloured label or a slightly longer bottleneck. I like to use the opportunities that I get to write about beer to talk about what’s in the bottle rather than the bottle itself.
However, packaging does have a level of importance. As a beer retailer I know that the way a beer is presented can drastically influence its sales, and as a drinker I know the size of the bottle that a beer is sold in affects the situations it gets drunk in. There are many arguments for and against various sized bottles that retailers and brewers make, but really all that should concern you, the consumer, is what you like buying. For me personally, the 500ml bottle is optimum bottle size for ‘session strength’ beer while smaller bottles are better suited to high strength brews.
But recently there has been a move towards an even larger bottle for high strength beer. I recently realised that New Zealand craft beer had achieved a small record when I noticed I had six different New Zealand craft beers for sale packaged in 750ml sparkling wine bottles. Yeastie Boys, Hallertau, Moa, Golden Bear and mikes all have taken up the 750ml format for their strong special releases. Moa have actually gone one better and you can buy 1.5 litre magnums of their St Joseph Tripel. Yeastie Boys has adopted the 750ml bottle for its His and Her Majesty releases and the forthcoming PKB Remix.
Yeastie Boy Stu says that they chose the bottle because the size encourages sharing, and that the wine bottle makes them more likely to be put on the table with food. Another plus for the coming festive season is that beer packaged this way makes great gifts. I think the increasing numbers of beers packaged this way and the fact that they are selling is a sign that our craft beer culture is maturing and I will certainly drink to that!
Cheers.

CT Column 17/11/2010 :Weekend warriors

AT THE end of last month I travelled to Hamilton to judge the 2010 SOBA National Homebrew Competition. Organised and run by beer consumer group the Society Of Beer Advocates, the NHC is run each year to celebrate and improve the New Zealand home brewing community.
Home brewing in New Zealand is currently in vibrant good health with many home brewed beers rivalling the quality of those commercially produced. Gone are the ‘bad old days’ when most home brewing revolved around saving money by producing cheap beer from malt extract - many home brewers now brew to create striking characterful beers full of aroma and flavour. Home brewers now have access to all the raw ingredients that our professional brewers do. As a result, the division between home and pro brewing is increasingly blurring with brewers like the Yeastie Boys and 8 Wired scaling up home brew recipes and producing them commercially.
This year’s competition received 294 entries with beers entered in 68 of the 77 different style categories with 84 of them earning medals. For the second year in a row Dunedin’s Richard Pettinger took out the Champion Brewer Trophy as well as the Best Lager ward, Nelson’s Dale Holland took out Champion Beer with a Belgian Pale Ale while the Best Ale Award went to Richard Sherrit. Every year the prize for the Champion beer is that the recipe is brewed commercially at the Hallertau Brewbar in Auckland’s rural hinterland. Look out for an incredibly complex and well balanced Belgian Pale Ale under the name of Dale’s BPA that should briefly feature on the taps next year sometime.
Many medals headed back to the capital. Of particular interest was Hashigo Zake barman David Wood who took three bronze, three silver medals, and a best in class trophy for some very idiosyncratic beers that included a beetroot infused IPA and a fantastic intense chipotle chilli infused porter. Check out www.soba.org.nz for the full results. Cheers!

CT Column3/11/2010 :The New Vintage

IF YOU ask someone what beer is made of chances are they will answer ‘hops’.
While in reality malt, yeast, water and the processes the brewer uses are equally important to the herbaceous flowers of the Humulus lupulus vine, it’s the hop that has won the PR battle.
To the casual observer it might not seem it but in many ways hops are very similar to grapes. They both grow on vines, they both are susceptible to variations in climate, and they both get harvested as a vintage each year. As with grapes, hops will vary each year depending on how much rain and sun there has been. They also change their character as the vines mature.
This year the hop that has displayed the biggest change is the Nelson Sauvin variety. Nelson Sauvin was developed in the late 1990s by HortResearch and was named for its distinctive gooseberry and passionfruit aromas, which were likened to the Sauvignon Blanc grape variety. Nelson Sauvin is gaining a serious reputation amongst craft beer drinkers around the world. Brewers in the UK, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, America, Australia, Japan and of course New Zealand have leapt at the chance to use this hop to create striking aromas and flavours in their beers.
This year’s vintage has seen a bit of a change in the Nelson Sauvin character. The variety has always been pungent with huge bold exotic fruit characters, but this year they seem extra tangy, with an over ripeness to the fruit character and even a hint of savoury green onion creeping in alongside the fruit salad! While this might sound odd we often talk of picking up herbal notes, asparagus, green pepper and perhaps even onion in Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, so it’s perhaps not so surprising to pick it up in the Nelson Sauvin hop variety.
If you want to experience this year’s vintage, 8 Wired Hop Wired IPA, Twisted Hop Sauvin Pilsner, and Three Boys Golden Ale are all showcasing the 2010 Sauvin character well.

CT Column 27/10/2010 :Coals to Newcastle

HOPS are a vintage crop, which is harvested once a year in the autumn. Increasingly brewers are producing beers that highlight the harvest by producing green hopped beers, which use fresh un-kilned hops to create striking fresh hop aromas. Here in NZ we have several examples. Brewjolais from Macs has been the most high profile but there have also been examples from Emerson’s in Dunedin, Nelson’s Sprig and Fern and from Galbraith’s in Auckland. We will have to wait till next year to see whether the now Christchurch based Macs brews Brewjolais again after the closure of the Wellington Brewery.
Harvest ales are big in America. On the periphery of Americas west coast hop fields brewers seize the opportunity to pack the zesty pithy resinous character of green hops into their beers.
America’s largest craft brewery Sierra Nevada releases three harvest ales each year. Two of these beers are produced using un-kilned American hops. Northern Hemisphere Harvest is brewed using un-kilned American hops from Washington, Estate Harvest is brewed using hops from Sierra Nevada’s own hop garden situated in the grounds of its brewery in Chico California. The third Harvest beer Sierra Nevada brews uses New Zealand hops that are quickly flown from the hop fields of Motueka to California. Southern Hemisphere Harvest uses whole flower Motueka and Southern Cross hops. The hops are dried as un-kilned hops would not survive the trip across the Pacific without perishing however they are extremely fresh meaning they retain a lot of their ‘green’ character. Southern Hemisphere Harvest pours a golden red hue with an enthusiastic white head. The aroma features a good amount of tangy slightly grassy citrus, tangerine and mandarin along with a good dose of biscuity malt. In the mouth there is more fresh citrus, nutty malt flavour and a long tangy finish. In a classic case of sending coals to Newcastle Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest is now available in New Zealand at Regional Wines and Spirits and The Malthouse.
For those planning a traditional Christmas now is the time to make your Christmas pudding. Iconic English foodie Delia Smith has a fantastic recipe on her website www.deliaonline.com that uses barleywine, stout and rum instead of brandy. If you’re keen to try the recipe I suggest using Fullers Golden Pride and Invercargill Pitch Black. I have already sold my first bottle of Golden Pride this year for just this purpose. Cheers!

CT Column 20/10/2010 : The Taste of Spring

A FORTNIGHT ago I wrote about the beer writer Michael Jackson and the memorial of his life. Jackson’s writing was a huge influence on me as I learnt about beer. Michael always stressed how different types of beer suited different situations and different seasons. For spring Michael always recommended drinking the Doppelbock style as this is what the Germans would often drink in their beer gardens when they first opened after the worst of the winter frost had thawed but the warmth of summer was yet to arrive. Doppelbocks are a style of dark lager that combines a big rich bready, toasty malt character with warming alcohol and a smooth rounded note from a long cold conditioning period. These beers are warming, rich, hearty and smooth, making them the perfect style for drinking during the spring when the weather is uncertain. In fact, the Germans have a special name for the Doppelbocks they release in spring; Maibock named for May when the northern spring arrives. While down here in NZ we certainly have the uncertain weather, there is a distinct shortage of Doppelbocks. There are a couple of local examples including an unusually hoppy example from Christchurch’s Harrington’s Brewery and a roasty chocolaty interpretation from Nelson’s Spring and Fern. Tragically there are currently no regularly imported German Doppelbocks; however there is a very good one from the north of Italy.
Moretti La Rossa pours a reddish amber with a thick white head. Aromas of bready toasty malt and caramel blend with a hint of dark fruit and a hint of herbal hop. In the mouth the beer is rich and toasty with a sweet bready malt flavour and a warming rounded smooth finish. This style makes a fantastic accompaniment to aged Gouda cheese and muscatel raisins. I have served La Rossa with Meyer Old Gouda at tastings and the combination is absolutely stunning, Mr Jackson however mused that La Rossa might just be the perfect pizza beer, and that combination is pretty good too.