CT Column 2/02/2011 :Europa, Rapture and Tally Ho!

GOLDEN ales are a relatively young style of beer dating from the early 1980’s. Independent English Ale brewers decided they needed a style of beer to compete with the pale lagers that were becoming increasingly popular with the masses. They devised a beer that was pale, and hoppy with a rounded fruity note from the ale yeasts they employed. These beers were ultimately a far more interesting and satisfying proposition than the mass produced lagers they were trying to rival. Today, both in the UK and here in the Antipodes, golden ales are increasingly being seen as a crucial element of the perfect summer, or at least they are a crucial element of my perfect summer! Over the next few weeks there will be three seasonal golden ales hitting the local taps.
Never ones to do things by halves, Wellington’s own Yeastie Boys are releasing two golden ales. The beers will be identical apart from the yeast that has been used to ferment them. Both beers comprise a very simple recipe of pale malt, wheat malt, and Nelson Sauvin and NZ Cascade hops. The first of the two beers is called Europa after a Blondie song although there have been whispers that it may in fact also be a reference to New Zealand’s local and now defunct oil company. As descendent of a former Europa employee I side with this far less likely theory! Europa has been fermented with a clean crisp Kolsch yeast which has highlighted the subtle malt flavours and lightly fruity hop aromas. At 4.2%abv it makes for a fantastic session beer offering just enough fruity hop character and nutty malt flavour to keep the drinker interested. Rapture which is most definitely named after a Blondie song has been fermented with the Belgian Abbey Ale yeast strain that originated at the Chimay brewery. It will be released early Feb, and is sure to be an altogether spicier more peppery proposition than Europa.
The new Emerson’s Brewers Reserve has been named ‘Tally Ho!’ after The Clean’s 1981 single. Tally Ho! is a golden ale that has been brewed with NZ pale malt, caramalt, English grown Challenger and East Kent Golding Hops and a fruity English yeast strain. At 4.9% Tally Ho! is a little stronger than the Yeastie Boy offerings but I’m sure it will be equally drinkable.
All these beers are sure to start popping up at the now considerable range of good beer outlets that Wellington is blessed with. Keep an eye out for all three at Hashigo Zake, Malthouse, The Hop Garden, Bar Edward and Regional Wines and Spirits.

CT Column 26/01/2011 :Sacred vows

Last week I was very kindly given two very rare bottles of beer from the Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren Abbey in Belgium. In the low lands of Europe there are seven beer brewing Benedictine abbeys where the monks are known as Trappists. While at first the image of monks brewing beer might seem somewhat strange, Benedictine Monks are in fact expected to support themselves and their charitable activities ‘by the works of their hands’, and this tends to take the form of brewing, wine making, liqueur production or cheese making.
While some of the Trappist beers such as Chimay and La Trappe are well known and readily available at supermarkets at this end of the globe, the Westvleteren beers from Saint Sixtus are intentionally produced in very limited amounts and their commercial availability is actively discouraged by the Monks that brew them. The beers are only officially available from a serving hatch in the wall of the abbey on certain days through the month with only one type of beer being available at a time and a limit on how many cases each customer can take. If all that doesn’t sound un-commercial enough customers are required to book in to purchase the beer by phone prior to queuing at the Abbey wall. The beers themselves have no labels and are identified by different coloured caps. All these discouraging practices are aimed at limiting the production of the brewery so that it serves the Monks needs but does not impact upon their monastic way of life. Despite all customers to the Abbey being told that the beer is not to be resold a healthy black market has developed around the world no doubt fuelled by the fact that the beers are so hard to come by and thankfully taste fantastic. The beers are identified by a number that refers to an old way of calculating strength. All the brewery’s beers are brewed from pale malt, and northern brewer variety hops with the dark beers that I tasted having a healthy dose of Belgian ‘candi sugar’ added to provide colour and flavour. Westvleteren 8 was exceptionally fruity and warming with a suggestion of plum brandy, toffee and a long dry hoppy finish. Westvleteren 12 offered up a rich complex aroma that reminded me of a fine ruby port, with a rich velvety malt character and a smooth rounded finish. Both beers scream out for a cheese board of pungent washed rind cheeses and dried fruit. While a certain NZ beer retailer does have black market Westvleteren 12 for sale at a black market price those wanting to respect the Monk’s wishes and try something similar should try the Rochefort beers from the only slightly less reclusive Trappist Abbey of St Remy. St Remy Abbey survived pillage and plunder during the Eighty Years War, The French Revolution, and a large fire in December of last year. Rochefort 10 offers up a whole range of ripe fortified fruit and rich malt aromas and flavours and is available with the Monk’s blessings from Regional Wines and Spirits

CT Column 19/01/2011 : Beer from the wilderness

I’ve become reacquainted with a beer that has been out forging its own stylistic path for the best part of the last decade. Moa Methode is a very original beer which starts its life as a zesty fruity New Zealand style pilsner before it is bottled with an addition of priming sugar and champagne yeast, the alchemy that then occurs in the bottle turns it into something completely unique. When champagne yeasts are used in beers and ciders they create spicy fruity aromas and flavours that are reminiscent of the character you might expect to find in Belgian ales. When young, Moa Methode is brimming with aromas of tropical fruit with a hint of Christmas spice and rich nutty malt, as the beer ages it becomes drier and more peppery and spicy.
The Moa brewery was developed by Josh Scott, son of Marlborough winery owner Allan Scott, and has always used wine making methods in the production of its beers. It’s easy to see where the inspiration came for using the champagne style bottle conditioning process on the Moa beers. While the brewery has long used the contacts of its sister wine company to gain access to export markets a recent investment of both money and expertise from Geoff Ross, the man originally behind 42 Below Vodka, is sure to catapult the brand to a new level.
Moa Methode is available in both its bottle fermented incarnation and in a champagne yeast free keg version offering the drinker to opportunity to compare the two and taste exactly what effect the yeast has. Look out for keg Moa Methode at Bar Edward, Pollux, Regional Wines and Wellington’s newest beer outlet The Hop Garden. The Hop Garden is the latest venture of James Henderson, the man who brought good beer to Newtown in the form of Bar Edward. Situated in the funky premises that used to house the Greek Taverna in Pirie St, The Hop Garden will be offering a great range of local and imported craft beers, a relaxed atmosphere and some great beer friendly food. Most importantly to me it will be exactly 350m from my office. The Hop Garden will be open from Friday 21 January.
See you there!

CT Column 5/01/11 : The Crystal Ball

At the end of each year beer writers like to reflect on the year that has been and wax lyrical about the beers that have excited them through the months: I did that back in December. Now that it’s January and the New Year headaches have eased I thought perhaps it would be worth writing a little about the year to come. In the interests of transparency I should add that I actually asked NZ craft brewers what they would be doing over the next year and I don’t in fact own a crystal ball!

Many of the brewers I talked to were incredibly loose lipped, far more so than I expected them to be. So in many ways you can view this first column of the year as a gossip column for Kiwi Craft Brewing!

First up Wellington based Yeastie Boys have some big things on the agenda this year. The most exciting is the establishment of a second permanent bottled beer to sit on the shelves next to Pot Kettle Black. Last year I was privileged to taste a test batch of what will be called Rex Attitude and it absolutely blew me away. Brewed against all brewing advice with 100% peated Islay distilling malt of the sort used to make single malt whiskey, most brewers will tell you that 15% should be an absolute maximum, fruity New Zealand hops and an American yeast strain ,its one of the most beguilingly complex yet approachable smoked beers I have ever had. There will definitely be a column devoted to this beer when it gets released.

Across the Cook Strait to Blenheim and 8 Wired’s Søren Erikson has some big plans for the coming year. He has inherited the oak barrels that Epic’s Luke Nicholas used to produce the Barrel Aged Armageddon and Thornbridge Stout. He currently has some Big Smoke Porter and a 13% Russian Imperial Stout aging in them which will be released this year. He also has plans for a 2%abv flavor packed session beer.

Also in Blenheim Renaissance have plans for a barleywine which will be a welcome addition to the New Zealand beer scene as it’s a style we have precious few examples of.

In Auckland Epic has provided a home to one of our most skilled and highly respected young brewers. When Kelly Ryan succumbed to the siren call of a Kiwi summer while brewing at the Thornbridge brewery in the north of England he didn’t have a job to come home to. There were concerns that perhaps he would end up brewing at one of the large breweries and his skills would be lost to craft brewing. Luckily Luke has found room for him at Epic and I’m sure there will be some awesome beers that will come from the partnership.

The Emerson’s crew have a whole host of exciting beers lined up which will be released as Brewers Reserves through the year however Richard Emerson just turned his hearing aid off when I asked for details! However one bit of news is that Emerson’s Pilsner, one of the nation’s biggest selling craft beers, will no longer be organic from mid January on. The supply of Organic Riwaka hops became finite while the beers growth seems to be most definitely infinite!

Things are looking good for an exciting year of beer, I can’t wait!

Cheers

CT Column 22/12/2010 : Christmas beer

LAST December I wrote a column on what I would be drinking and eating on Christmas Day. That column obviously captured the imagination of the drinking public as many people approached my family wanting to know if we really eat and drink that well at Christmas: we do.
This Christmas Sarah and myself will start the day with a Haslett-Moore family tradition, salmon, hollandaise and croissants accompanied by a glass of 3 Mont Bier de Flandres , a golden spritzy malt accented ale from the north of France. 3 Mont has a hint of earthy tangy cellar character and a high level of carbonation, which helps it cut the richness of the salmon perfectly.
At midday we will break out the Christmas mince pies and cream with a champagne flute of Three Boys Wild Plum. Wild Plum is a very individualistic fruit beer that uses wild plums from the Three Boys family farm in North Otago to create striking aromas and flavours of tart stone fruit and a prune note. With the mince pies Wild Plum taste dry and even more fruity with the prune character adding complexity to the fruit mince.
Late afternoon our families will arrive and the barbeque will be fired up. On the menu will be a boned out lamb leg marinated in cumin, coriander, paprika and peach and habanero sauce accompanied by a glass of the classic dry spicy Saison from Dupont, Paua fritters packed with garlic and coriander with a touch of chilli with the extravagantly hopped aromatic 8 Wired Tall Poppy, a garden herb marinated split chicken with the fruity hoppy rounded Emerson’s JP2010, and porterhouse steaks rubbed down in Richard Emerson’s own spicy beef rub accompanied by a glass of Yeastie Boys His Majesty 2010.
Then if we have any room left it will be time for a slice of Christmas cake with a nip of Fullers Vintage Ale 2009 a beer that absolutely bursts with marmelady orange fruit and rich fortified malt flavours.
After all that I think it will most definitely be time for a cup of tea!
Cheers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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