My Secret Alter-Ego

Posted on 28/08/2014 by Dylan J

Eagle eyed readers may have noticed a slight change in the blolg’s appearance a while back. Instead of luscious, yet slightly generic shots of beer bottles and taps, my site now has a quicky graphic of a megaphone, constructed from the silhouette of a bottleneck. It’s been christened ‘The Megafoam’ (by Phil) and damn, now I wish I’d thought of that for the blog’s name…

Anywho, I’m sure you’re all wondering how I could afford to hire a professional designer for what is essentially a hobby-blog. The answer is: I didn’t; I designed it myself. Ok, so it doesn’t look that professional. Humour me. I got bored whilst having a staffie, and started playing with some graphic design software on my work laptop. It came out ok, but I have plans to tinker with it in the future.

But to get back on topic, I do have a second secret career that few know about: graphic designing tap badges for the beers on tap at Golding’s.

Alright I’m being slightly obtuse here. What I mean is, I print out all the tap badges that go in the light boxes in Golding’s tap-banks. I could legitimately call this a second career though, because I probably do more actual design work that is actually used and seen by customers than most graphic design Interns in major companies could ever dream of.

You see we have rectangular tap badges at Golding’s and frequently small New Zealand breweries don’t have artwork that fits these. Garage Project are the notable exception to this. Which is why their tap badges frequently look rather sexy:

Click to enlarge.

In other cases, some they have circular tap badges which look a little small and silly in the light box. High res versions of these can be scaled up sometimes to a good result. Frequently you can also get away with using a digitised bottle label. Sometime the brewery has no artwork In rare cases, the brewery’s branding is so hideous that Sean won’t allow it in the bar.

Whatever the reason, I frequently have to knock up tap badges for a range of beers and breweries. So I thought I’d share a few of my favourites.

The ParrotDog Pixel Series

This badge series began with searching ‘Dead Canary’ and amongst the more morbid images was a pixel-art canary, which I fell in love with. And boom, a series was born!

Since I started these, ParrotDog has begun creating more poster art for their beers, which is great. It means I will probably phase this series out eventually. They remain however, some of my favourites, because these particular badges take a basic idea and adapt it to suit the beers across the entire brewery. Sometimes though, you have a concept that suits a specific beer, which leads to great one-off badges. It just so happens that two of my favourite creations are from the same brewery…

Funk Estate Oh Kamiyo & So’Fisticuffs

Click make big.

The concept behind the Oh Kamiyo badge was to capture the feel of a bootlegged VHS box, complete with mistranslation in the Japanese characters (that was *totally* intentional…). Going to say I nailed that one. The So’Fisticuffs on the other hand, I was aiming for a vintage boxing poster. Whilst I captured the feel adequately, I would have liked to included more bombastic flavour text, but the limit of the medium frequently means simpler is better.

None of these though are my favourite tap badge I’ve ever created. Oh no. That honour goes to this little fellow. My masterpiece…

Yeastie Boys/Panhead/Firestone Walker Engelbert Pumpernickel

Click size huge.

Here we see (the wrong) Engelbert Humperdinck with a loaf of pumpernickel for a head. I love this tap badge. From a design point of view, it’s not perfect by any means, but god-damn, it captures something about the beer and the people who made it. It was also immensely fun to Shop bread over the face of a historical figure…

I all seriousness, making tap badges is one of my favourite aspects of my job, but it really shouldn’t be. New Zealand’s Small breweries really need to brush up on brand promotion customer service (because that’s what this falls under ultimately) from a brand point of view.

It so happens, that I have the skills and technology to play with basic graphic design, but a lot of other bar managers don’t. As a result you frequently see poorly made, often handwritten (and sometimes barely legible) tap badges. This really doesn’t do anyone any favours; bars, breweries and certainly not customers.

This topic deserves a more focused and detailed post, which hopefully I will get around to (one day…). Suffice to say that two of my friends who are starting breweries in the next few months have consulted with me on the topic and I’ve told them the following:

Premade tap badges are best.
Three versions is ideal: circular, rectangular and square (in that order).
Printable A4 .pdf files (that don’t require scaling) are great for the average customer that doesn’t have access to design software.
Downloadable brewery logo files are my favorite (particularly .png files with transparent backgrounds).

Until everyone gets this right though, at least I get to play with Photoshop and CorelDraw and get paid for it.

Running the Numbers. AKA: That Time I Drank a Whole Keg Myself.

Posted on 24/06/2014 by Dylan J

Have you ever stopped to consider how much you’ve drunk? I don’t mean at the end of a night, when the bar staff are giving you that look that says “are you really going to make me cut you off?” I mean all together. In your life.

Well, that’s exactly what I was wondering. So broke out the back of an envelope and ran some numbers:

I drink an average of 2 pints of beer every day.

Sometimes I drink two pints simultaneously to save time… Photo: HK

This is a very rough estimate, but reasonable considering that I get a staffie every night I work. It’s also reasonable considering that some days (about once a week) I drink a lot more, but other days (also about once a week) I have a day off from alcohol altogether.

Very occasionally, I drink things other that beer. I’m including cider with beer, but frequently, I drink gin and whisky. Occasionally I drink wine. Just occasionally. We won’t factor these occasions in.

I have done so for 4 years. This is roughly how long I’ve been working in the beer industry. I’ve been legally allowed to drink for a few more years. Before that my drinking was almost negligible (It amounts to ~1 year of my current consumption). I couldn’t afford to. When I was a student being able to have a ‘craft’ beer was a serious treat.

Now a ‘pint’ is ~425ml, in New Zealand anyway. Some of them were imperial pints (568ml) but some of them would have been 330/500ml bottles, and so on. It probably evens out (also, I’m not interested in a discussion of what a ‘proper’ pint is. I’m not a CAMRA member).

Given that a keg contains ~117 pints (fill levels may vary):

2 pints x 365 days
= 730 pints per year

730 pints x 5 years
= 3650 pints

3650 pints / 117 pints per keg 
= 31.2 Kegs

For the sake of being generous, lets round up and say I’ve drunk 32 kegs of beer.

Now a lot the people reading this will be saying: “Holy shit, you’re an alcoholic!” Well perhaps, but lets take a quick look at the national average.

I drink ~310 litres of beer in a year. The national average beer consumption is ~64 litres per capita. Sure, I’m a hell of a lot higher than the average, but in that statistic is presumably a whole bunch of kids who don’t drink (well, they’re not supposed to, anyway), a large group of people who only drink wine, spirits and Woodstock ‘Bourbon and Cola’ on Saturday nights before starting a fight on Courtenay Place. There’s also some teetotallers, and a few people that just aren’t that interested in alcoholic beverages.

Now also consider that someone who had two glasses of wine a night is consuming roughly the same amount of alcohol, but would never be considered an alcoholic (yay, double standards).

So yes, I’m in the upper percentile, but I’m by no means an outlier. But before this becomes a desperate attempt to justify my career choices, lets focus on a much more interesting question:

How much of that was Tuatara APA?

I’m serious. You see, the other day someone my colleagues and I were pondering the question: what beer do you reckon you’ve drunk the most of in your entire life? The answer we all came up with was Tuatara APA: It’s affordable, reliable, EVERYWHERE in Wellington and a damn good beer.

I seriously love APA. The number of times I’ve walked into a bar/cafe/liquor store/supermarket not expecting to find a good beer, but what do you know? There’s our old friend Tuatara APA sitting in the fridge giving us a sly wink. All I can think is “night sorted!”

Funny how it still says ‘Limited Release,’ all these years later…

Most importantly though, myself and most of my colleagues are mid-to-late-20s, and were getting into beer around 2008 and onwards. APA was launched in mid 2010; right when my beer consumption was hitting its stride. And it’s been fairly consistently available since then (you’ll notice I’m not differentiating between the American and Aotearoa versions, because who cares?).

Given this, lets find a little more room on the back of our envelope:

I estimate my consumption of Tuatara APA to be ~3 pints a month. I go plenty of weeks without any APA, but then sometimes I go to an event/bar/whatever where it’s the only good beer to be had. In this case, I happily drink a lot of it. Now consider that Tuatara APA has been around for 4 years, roughly.

3 pint x 12 months x 4 years
= 144 pints

144 pints / 117 pints per keg
= 1.23 kegs

I have consumed ~144 pints of APA. That’s just over one whole keg of APA by myself (1.23 kegs to be more precise). Fun fact!

Now obviously this has all been calculations based off a rough estimates and are probably way out in many regards (I haven’t factored in leap years for example), but it’s an interesting exercise. I reckon it’s probably safe to assume I have drunk at least two entire keg of Tuatara APA in my lifetime.

We of course can expand on this. APA is the beer I think I’ve probably drunk the most of, but I would be willing to bet that I’ve also drunk at least:

3/4 of a keg of 8 Wired Hopwired.
2/3 of a keg of Epic Pale Ale.
1/2 of a keg of Bear Republic Racer 5.
1/3 of a keg of Three Boys Oyster Stout.
1/3 of a keg of 8 Wired Rewired Brown Ale.
1/10 of a keg of Garage Project Day of the Dead.

Possibly those numbers are a lot higher. It’s really hard to tell.

And now I’ll finish with one last thought: I grew up in the age of good beer. I started drinking ‘craft’ beer as a teenager and I never had brand loyalty to any of the mainstream labels. My more mature Wellington-based readers can probably also claim to have drunk multiple kegs APA (or in many cases, Tuatara or Emerson’s Pilsner) themselves.

But they might also like to reflect on the period before ‘craft’ beer was a officially a thing. How many of them have probably also drunk entire kegs of Lion Red, DB Export, Speights, or Waikato Draught?

Now there’s a cheerful thought…

The Problem With Black IPA

Posted on 15/06/2014 by Dylan J

I just don’t like those Black IPAs. In all seriousness, I love beer. I love it more than most people. I love it enough to make it my career. Hell, I love it enough to devote an entire website that could otherwise be filled with cat gifs to it.

Like this one… BOOP! *scamper*

Anyway, my point is, you’d struggle to find someone who likes beer more than I do, but I don’t like all beer. There are some styles that just don’t do it for me and Black IPA has to be just about top of the list.

It sounds good on paper: a black hoppy pale ale. Actually, outside beer-geekdom that sounds ridiculous (how can something be black and pale at the same time?), but to a Beer Geek, it not only makes sense but actually sounds great. A beer with the sexy-dark body of a Stout, but also the fresh and zesty hop flavour and bitterness of an IPA. Oh hell-yeah! I’m all over that!

But the reality? That’s not how it works out. I find that most BIPAs, instead of being ‘the best of both worlds’ are more often ‘less than the sum of their parts’. It comes down to integration: In my opinion, delicate hop characters don’t interact well with strong roasty malt characters. The flavours get muddied and the finished beer is neither deliciously hoppy, or lovely and dark. It’s an unsatisfying compromise all round.

And there’s a good reason for this, which a prominent brewer (who makes an excellent BIPA, which I don’t like) once explained to me: Dark roasted malts tend kill hop character. Frequently, the moment you add black malts to an IPA it overrides the hop flavour. Likewise if you try to add hops to a Stout or Porter, it’s very difficult to get a hop-forward beer.

The trick then is to darken up a light-bodied beer so that can let the hops come forward, or strip out the malt body and flavour of a dark beer and add a lot more hops. Apparently a favourite brewing trick to do this is to mash in what would essentially be a pale beer, and then mill dark malts on top of the grain bed before lautering. This way you rinse all the colour out of the malt, without gaining too much body or roastyness. And thus you have created a classic Black IPA: a beer that looks dark, but has the body and flavour of an IPA.

Now it seems to me that someone who wants to make or drink a beer like that is having a hard time separating baby from bathwater. Subjectively (and this is entirely subjective) I find the moment we make our IPAs dark or strip out the stoutness from our Stouts, the beer enters a grey zone. It’s neither wonderfully hoppy, nor lovely and malty.

An illustration of this grey zone might look a little like this.*

*N.B. Not to scale. Beer and style placements are suggestive only. Click to enlarge.

Alternatively, a graphical depiction would look a little like this:

Also not to scale. Also click to enlarge.

To summarise with a little less graphical levity: I just don’t like BIPAs. And that’s fine, that’s my subjective opinion. You don’t have to regard it.

“Are you telling me I should stop making my Black IPA!?” exclaims a passing brewer, outraged.

No, I’m not saying that at all. A brewer should remain true to themselves, and if they want to make a BIPA they totally should. If they’re relying on me to tell them what to make, they’re in trouble. But conversely, I know I’m not alone in disliking BIPAs.

When we put them on tap at Golding’s, they move slower than regular dark beers, and a lot slower than IPAs. Classic dark beer drinkers are put off them because they’re too hoppy and not malty enough, and classic IPA drinkers are put off them because they’re too dark and malty. It’s a loss-loss situation for both kinds of drinkers.

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t drink Black IPAs?!” exclaims a lurking Beer Geek, offended.

Again, no. You should drink what you like, that’s the point of the whole ‘craft’ beer movement. BIPAs certainly do have a niche market amongst other beer styles. And if drinking a weird, not-quite-hoppy-not-quite-black-beer is your idea of a perfect pint, then Godspeed (you mad bastard). Certainly I’ve enjoyed the occasional BIPA. Once. A long time ago (actually, it was Speakeasy Butchertown a couple of months ago).

My point is, we’re all entitled to like or dislike whatever beers or beer styles we want.

* * *

This article was originally published under the title “I’m not Racist, But…”. It was a satirical title, poking fun a clickbaity racism and far-right hysteria. As the world has changed, that title seemed less and less amusing. It has since been changed.

tumblr_mdvesePMC51qgxioxo1_500

A Beer Review, With Added Rant

Posted on 26/02/2014 by Dylan J

I stopped reviewing beers on this bLOLg a long time ago. The main reason was I was boring myself and if I’m bored it must be ten times as worse for my readers. I am however, returning to the old school beer review for a moment, and for a good reason: statistics.

You see WordPress provides you with some interesting statistical data on your site traffic: what pages have been visited, where viewers have been linked from, what countries the IP address comes from and interestingly, what search engine terms are used to find your site.

It’s fascinating to see how people stumble across a blog. Mostly it’s people actually trying to find my site, searching ‘the bottleneck blog’ or similar. But sometimes it can be a bit more unusual. Case in point, this gem popped up after my discussion of the San Francisco beer scene:

Click to enlarge.

Strangely though, the most common search term, accounting almost a quarter of all known searches, is a variation on one word: Hophugger.

Now I’m not sure if this is searches from consumers, wanting to know more about the beer or from the producers, Treehugger Organics (don’t bother clicking on that link, the site is still under construction, a year after I first visited it) wanting to know how their beer has been received. What I do know is that this has made my review of Hophugger Pilsner my most searched for post since I started writing. So if only for the sake of site traffic, I thought I might as well review the new Hophugger beer, Coasters Pale Ale, almost exactly a year after I gave the Pilsner a good dressing down.

Warning:
If you just came here to get my opinion on the actual beer, skip to the last paragraph, because I’m about to go wildly off topic. Likewise, if you’re one of those people who can’t stand to hear criticisms of anything small breweries do (I call these guys the Anti-Beer-Snob Mafia), you should probably do the same. And as always, caveat lector.

Now last time, I gave Hophugger Pilsner a lot of stick for having a terrible name, an ugly label and being way off style (although I did also say the beer was quite nice). Two out of three of those things subsequently changed. The beer became a lot lighter and more Pilsnery, which I liked, and the label got an update. The name however did not change.

Yeah, I know they’re stuck with Hophugger, unless they do a complete brand overhaul. So there is no point it banging on about it, but just try something for me. Say “Hophugger” repeatedly, really fast , and at the same time, try not to think about how much it sounds like “Oh Bugger!” See what I mean? Still I guess they’re stuck with it, so lets not flog the dead horse any longer.

What I really took exception to though, was the label. And I was rather pleased to see that subsequent batches went from having the hideous green-on-green-on-more-green label to this much less hideous black affair:

It’s not dynamic, but it’s least legible. Source

It’s not brilliant, but it gets the job done. So lets see the new Pale Ale bottle then:

Yeah, nah. Not loving it. The green on black at least popped a little and showed off the hop textures on the label. The white label looks completely flat and uninteresting. This beer looks as exciting as a can of Budget Brand Chopped Tomatoes. Yeah, I know it feels like I’m being unkind, but I gave Gisborne Gold a public flogging for less. Oh Gizzy, all is forgiven. You may look like you just attended a font-festival, but at least you look enticing on the shelf.

And that’s what this is all about: enticing people to drink your beer. The average punter (whose job doesn’t involve keeping up to date with every little thing that goes on the the New Zealand beer scene), will probably never have heard of Hophugger and will have nothing but the labels to go on. If the label doesn’t say “pick me, I look delicious!” then they’re most likely going to spend their money on something else. I’d love it if this wasn’t the case, but that’s not the way humans work.

Certainly I can say from anecdotal experience, this is true. When confronted with the labyrinthine fridges at Hashigo Zake, frequently the overwhelmed customer will jump on the nearest label that catches their eye. Now imagine you’re at Thorndon New World with 300+ lines of beer and no bartender to say “this one’s nice; label’s not much but the beer is really good.” See where I’m coming from?

Ok, sorry Hophugger. I’ll be honest: I’m using you to take a shot at the wider industry. I do feel bad that I’m railing against somebody’s labour of love here. But there is a serious point to make here and I’m going to use Hophugger to make it. A while back I took a subtle dig at the craft brewing sector for having terrible distribution, to the point of being unprofessional, and I suspect you could categorise this rant as a much similar bugbear.

Small breweries are competing for shelf space and customer attention against the likes of Crafty Beggars and Foundry Road, both of whom have dedicated brand managers. If small breweries are to flourish, they need to be able to compete with the big players, at least partly on their terms in the field of marketing and (I shudder to use this term) brand image, because that’s the first hurdle to reaching the customer. And once they’re past that first hurdle, they’re away laughing, because the quality of the product from small breweries is (99% of the time) far superior.

Whilst I’d like to believe that a superior product alone will speak for itself, that’s only true if it manages to get to the podium at all. Working ostensibly in retail, I can definitely vouch for the fact that appealing and dynamic brand image and product packaging (oh god! More marketing-speak!) is much more important that anyone in the industry is perhaps comfortable admitting.

In the craft/micro/whatever brewing industry, there are breweries that have an understanding of brand image and marketing: Garage Project, Yeastie Boys, Panhead, Epic, ParrotDog, Hallertau, Liberty and urg, Moa (although don’t follow their example) and those that miss the point entirely (I won’t name-names). And yes, it is frequently the smaller breweries and contractors that don’t want to pay a big, flash design company that struggle with this the most. But it’s not surprising that the breweries I listed above are what you might call the more (broadly speaking) ‘successful’ breweries.

And you know what, to your credit Hophugger, there are breweries that miss the mark by a much wider margin than you do.

Anywho, like a steampunk-paperweight, all I’m doing right now is making so much pointless hot air. A beer should stand or fall by what’s in the glass. So how does Hophugger Coasters Pale Ale taste?

Good. Really good in fact. Possibly great.

I said in my end of year roundup that breweries who make a ~5% pale hoppy thing with a solid malt body win at beer, and gave a list of examples I liked. Congratulations, add yourself to that list, because I really like this Pale Ale.

The malt character is caramelly, with a touch of biscuit. The hops are classic New Zealand hop green-fruit-salad, with just a hint of that aviation fuel burn that I like in small quantities. It’s a really, really good pale ale and I encourage anyone out there who sees it to give it a go.

So to finish, let me quickly summarise this post:

Blah, blah, terrible branding. Blah, blah, good beer.

If you take anything away from this review, let it be that.

Craft Beer on the Street

Posted on 12/02/2014 by Dylan J

If there is one thing we can agree on, it is that good beer is in. Not just right now though, but for the future too. Yes, it’s here to stay. We are heading to the mainstream. I’ve seen the signs.

What signs are these you ask? Is it often quoted statistics of dubious origin that point to growth in the ‘craft’ sector, even as the beer market is dropping? Nope. Is it the rise of dedicated beer venues in all the major population centres of New Zealand? Nope. Is it the fact that even mediocre bars, restaurants and cafes frequently stock at least one line of good beer in their fridge (in Wellington anyway)? Nope.

No, for me the sign that we were truly going to made it was when I saw a bottle of good beer smashed in a gutter. It was about four years ago. I can’t remember if it was a bottle of Epic Pale Ale or Emerson’s Pilsner, but when I saw it I though “Yeah, we’ve made it. We’re grownups now.” And I’m not the only one to think this.

So I present to you now; proof that we have made it. Craft Beer on the Street: A Photo-Essay.

These photos were all taken on my Nexus 4, unarranged and presented in chronological order. Enjoy.

Looks like this Kereru Moonless Stout fell in with the wrong crowd…
Taken on Hania Street.

"I woke up in a Soho doorway, a Policeman knew my name!" Outside Gryphon Theatre, Vivian Street

“I woke up in a Soho doorway, a Policeman knew my name!”
Outside Gryphon Theatre, Ghuznee Street.

Evidence of a crime. Found outside Golding's. We don't stock Garage bottles, so it didn't come from us.

Evidence of the Crime.
Found outside Golding’s. We don’t stock Garage bottles, so it didn’t come from us.

This Stoke Amber has seen better days.
Near the Basin Reserve.

A rough night with some sailors?
The Wellington Waterfront.

Honestly I don’t have a joke for this one. Garage cans are like hen’s teeth, and to see one crumpled on the street is surreal.
Khandalla.

Well Camouflaged
Spotted hiding in the bushes of a church carpark, Ellice Street.

‘The Aftermath’
Spotted in the wreckage of the Sevens on Vivian Street. I’m sure Ross would be proud.

On a more serious note, I find myself very conflicted by empty bottles from breweries I love, just thrown around the streets. On the one hand it means small breweries are reaching a wider audience as time goes by. On the other hand it shows a lack of respect for the product, that you would dispose of it so carelessly. More importantly, it shows a lack of respect for the environment, which bugs the living shit out of me. Still, this I guess is the price of success.

On a less serious note, the thing that most interested me was the mix of beers that I found. The only entrant from the larger, more well known breweries is Tuatara. I expected to find some Epic or at the very least some Emerson’s. I think this selection is very indicative of Wellington right now. Certainly I’d be interested in seeing what sort of a selection other cities might come up with.

Maybe this should be a regular feature? I’ll keep taking bottle shots on the street. Feel free to send me your own photos of discarded bottles too.

Cheers,
The Bottleneck

The Bottleneck

Drinking, laughing, talking about it.

Category Archives: Beer