Beervana is Decadent and Depraved Part #4

Posted on 26/11/2014 by Dylan J

Part 4: Beer Geek Kingdom

Friday

I awoke at 10 am. My plan for the day was to attend the morning session of Beervana, enjoy in moderation, and then work the evening shift at the bar. This plan however, went straight out of the window when I tried to get out of bed. My body protested in the same way a gearbox protests when you try to change down from 5th into 3rd at 100 kilometres an hour. God dammit body! You carried me into this thing, you have to see me through!

Eventually I levered myself out of the sheets. Looking at myself in the mirror, my face showed signs of furious dissipation that I recognised instantly: That grey countenance that speaks of too much booze and nowhere near enough sleep. I’d seen it before on other people and despised it. And now I saw it again and on my own face, I despised it more. One thing was certain: there would be no Beervana today.

Instead I formed a new plan: I would go to Garage Project for brunch, and then head to work. I got dressed and hit the streets to Aro Valley. Rockwell And Sons, some amazingly popular restaurant from Melbourne was doing a pop up menu at the Garage. It sounded like a hot ticket.

Unfortunately, due to poor communication I turned up several hours before food was being served. Instead, I made do with an ice cream sandwich, and a can of Garagista IPA. Breakfast of champions. Leaning back in a dusty corner of the cold garage, I took stock of my rotten position.

At this rate and by my reckoning, total mental and physical collapse was due sometime in the next forty eight hours. This was in theory, enough time to make it through Saturday, after which I was clear to fall apart at my leisure, but making it that far was by no means guaranteed. As I saw it, I had two options.

Either I could stop right now, go back to bed for a little extra sleep, go on a vegan juice-detox diet, and give up all alcohol for the foreseeable future. Or, option number two was to ride this god damn debauched beer train all the way clear to Sunday. I gave option one serious consideration, before dismissing it utterly. I was much too far into this thing to back out now.

Anyway, as the good doctor said: buy the ticket, take the ride.

***

I walked into Golding’s two hours early. I had no reason to, I hadn’t been called in or anything, but I had a suspicion I’d be needed. Friday afternoon is always the tamest session of Beervana, and the after-session rush on the beer bars in town is usually fairly manageable. It’s a different matter for the rush after the evening session, but we would be closing by that time.

Inside Golding’s was chaos.

Not the chaos of a hundred drunks throwing beer around and shouting. Rather it was the chaos of a hundred people all trying to order beer and pizza at once, with only one bartender. It seemed the people leaving the morning session early were overlapping with the people warming for the evening session. I started at 3pm, and didn’t stop for the next ten hours.

***

Saturday

Get to Beervana, you half-baked internet hack.
- The Voice on the Phone

I plodded the barren concourse to the Westpac Stadium, diligently trying to pretend the vicious southerly that was flogging Wellington didn’t exist. Every god-damn year at Beervana, a southerly blows up, turning the Cake-Tin into a refrigerator.

I was not the only one being whipped along the concourse, even though I was an hour late. Other groups and singles crawled their way towards the distant entrance. On other occasions the concourse would’ve been crammed with sports fans, dressed in black, or yellow or white. But not these folk. No sir, not today. I and the rest of these miserable, huddled clumps all had but one thing on on our minds: beer. And we were prepared to go to extreme lengths to get it. Even braving this god-damn wind.

I got off to a bad start, when I went to collect my press credentials and found that I had none under my name.
‘What Media Outlet are you with?’ I was asked.
Shit. That question. I had been asked that a few times this week, and had been getting by calling myself a ‘freelancer, specialising in online material’. It sounds better than owning up to being a ‘Beer Blogger’ a breed dubiously regarded at the best of times. Still, there were few options now.
‘I’m the Official Beervana Blogger,’ I said. That was what my place-setting had said at the Longest Lunch, and was in some, vague, technical sense at least partly true. Mentally I prepared a list of names to drop, and if that didn’t work, make a dash past security and hope they couldn’t find me in the crowded tunnel.
‘Oh, Ok. Go on in then.’
Hmm. Alright, I’ll remember that one. I went in.

***

Beervana 2014. What can I say? Lets start with what was new this year:

There was a new payment method. These were electronic wrist tags which you pre-loaded money onto and then scanned every time you bought a beer. Apparently these caused mass-chaos at the start of the first session. That’s partly why I turned up late, as I was told horror stories of people waiting an hour before they could buy a beer. This seemed to have been sorted by Saturday. Instinctively I didn’t like them, but I have no good reason for saying this and they seemed to be fairly functional on the day. So lets move on.

There were more single-brewery-operated stands than in previous years. This I think was a very, very good thing. I’ll elaborate further on this soon, but I will say the variety and ingenuity that people put into their stands was very refreshing.

The Festive Brew Stand sucked and the Australian Stand was altogether missing. Both of these are usually my most frequented stands in previous years. This year the Aussie stand was hamstrung by the shipment of beer not leaving port in time for the festival. Que sera. The festive brews on the other hand, were stymied by a theme so uninspiring that most breweries didn’t bother to enter. It was ANZAC biscuits – an idea that several brewers had already tried and at least one (Garage Project) already had in their seasonal range.

The Portland stand almost made up for this. The posse of Portland Brewers all had their beers on a dedicated stand, and this was where some of the most interesting beers were to be found. Behind this they hosted the ‘Taste of Portland’ seminar, which was a guided beer and food matching session. Like the Longest Lunch, the food was exquisite and the matches excellent. On the downside, this took a full hour out of my drinking time, but I didn’t need to queue or pay for beer and food (it was ticketed, but my non-existent media pass got me in) and I needed to stay sober anyway.

OK, lets take an intermission.

***

I was standing by one of the big heaters trying desperately to restart my circulation when I heard the words that set any god-fearing liberal on edge:
‘The Conservatives are polling almost 6%. Looks like they’re getting a seat this time,’ a woman with a purple silk bag said.
‘I don’t believe it, surely New Zealand won’t elect that dingbat into parliament?’ said her friend. He was a tall geek, with a waxed moustache. ‘It can’t last. I’m waiting for the scandal that will sink the Conservative Party. Those sorts are always up to something underhanded. That’s how they got to be rich crazies in the first place.’ I couldn’t resist. I piped up from the other side of the heater.

‘I know what it is,’ I said. ‘I pour beer for all sorts of government types. You wouldn’t believe the stuff you hear across the bar when no one thinks you’re listening.’
‘Oh yeah? What is it?’ he asked sceptically. ‘Backhanders?’
‘As if. No one’s stupid enough to get caught doing that in New Zealand,’ I said.
‘Closet Queer?’ asked the woman.
I laughed. ‘Craig’s no Ted Haggard. No.’ I looked conspiratorial, whilst I invented quickly. ‘It’s drugs. Opium.’
‘What?’ they asked, disbelievingly.
‘Oh yeah. He flies it in three times a year on his private plane. All those ‘Business Trips’ to South-East Asia? Bringing back kilos of the raw stuff.’

‘Bullshit!’ said the man. I could tell he wanted to believe it very badly.
‘Oh yeah, it’s true.’ I said. ‘One of our regulars is a Staffer for Bill English.’ Once I was started, the bullshit flowed freely. ‘She accompanied the Minister to Craig’s Mansion in Epsom. They were there to discuss a theoretical coalition deal. She said they found him shirtless in his office. He was in front of a shrine to Pat Robertson, chanting ‘In Referendums confidimus’ and taking great big hits from a pipe of the stuff. Apparently he sort of came out of it after they threw some water on him, and carried on with the meeting, but she was pretty shaken by the whole thing.

‘Christ, that’s insane!’ said purple silk; ‘I know he’s a nutjob, but he’s not that crazy, surely?’
‘That’s what opium does to you. Coleridge used it to write Kubla Khan. Craig smokes it and comes up with his bat-shit policies. You can see it in his face. I mean look at his publicity shots. Him leering in front of a thunderstorm with that million-mile, dead-eyed stare? You’d have to be high as a kite to think those were a good idea.’
The man gave an ironic bark of a laugh. ‘True that.’

‘Spare us all if he gets into power,’ I said. ‘Thank god for decent people like us,’ and with that I walked away.

Jesus Christ. Vicious lies, all of it. But at the time it felt good. From our liberal bubble in Wellington, the election looked like a much closer race than it turned out to be. With the Conservatives polling over 5%, the prospect of that degenerate swine playing king-maker made me physically sick. I knew I couldn’t really stop the Conservative party, but anything I could do, however small, to chip away at their power-base felt cathartic.

As it all turned out, the Conservatives got less than 4%, but the left such as it is, received a vicious pounding. We really should have seen it coming.

***

OK, time for some break-down.

I liked Beervana a lot this year. Maybe not quite as much as I liked it in the Town hall days, but that was so long ago I’m not sure I can separate fact from nostalgia anymore. The simple fact of the matter is that this Beervana felt like it had regained a lot of its soul. That sounds pretty airy-fairy, which is something I want to avoid, so lets ask the question: why did I like it more?

Well, it felt more in touch with the beer. Damn it, that’s airy-fairy. What I’m trying to say is, that it felt more like a celebration of good beer and less of the industrial booze-up of previous years. And I think there are many reasons for this, but there are two I’d like to focus on: exclusive beers and brewery stands.

Exclusive beers is the mechanism that drives the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular. Every brewery exhibiting must contribute a never-before-seen beer which are all poured on large, central stands not controlled by the breweries. This makes it a really fun and interesting festival for those au-fait with ‘Craft’ beer and those who are not Beer Geeks will enjoy it (or not) just the same. Whilst there were issues with exclusives this year, owing to a weak festive-brew and Australian stands, as I’ve said, the Portland and Individual Brewery stands made up for this.

This brings me to my second point: Brewery stands. I think individual brewery stands are the heart and soul of big beer festivals. This year in particular, the quality was outstanding. Last year Garage Project turned things up to 11 with their crazy stand. This year it seemed more like a 10, which honestly is still pretty outrageous, but also Panhead and Yeastie Boys (and others) came to the party with awesome stands and great new beers.

I’m a big fan of individual stands because they give the option of a) showcasing a brewery’s portfolio to new drinkers, b) exhibiting new and exciting beers for the Geeks, and c) it lets the drinking public feel in touch with the brewery team. And I think that is a really important aspect of beer festivals.

To sum up: I liked Beervana more this year because it felt like there was more engagement between beer, drinker and brewer. And that is where the future of the festival lies, if I may air-and-fair again. Put simply: Beervana seems to be growing in directions I like, and I’m looking forward to next year.

Ok, let’s wrap this beast up and send it home.

***

I’d had a great festival, but I hadn’t seen nearly as much of Beervana as I’d planned to. I seem to have gotten stuck at Garage Project’s stand. The problem was that every time I tried to leave, I’d be collared by a friend or associate and get stuck in conversation. On the plus side though, most of my beers were being bought for me.

Suddenly I heard the last drinks call go out across the PA. Shit.

I ran over to the Garage stand, elbowing several punters keen on getting there before the cut-off. Ian, the lanky yet handsome Brewery Manager saw me coming.
‘Hey Dylan, you need a beer?’
‘Ian! Ian, give me a blade!’ I shouted.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘A knife! Scissors! Anything sharp. Now, goddammit!’

Ian shuffled about for about for a moment, then produced a Stanley knife from under the counter, looking confused. His confusion turned to shock when I snatched it off him and started desperately sawing at my wrist. I was trying to remove my wrist tag. When I had got it off, I threw it at him.
‘Take this. There’s ten bucks or so on there. Have a beer on me. Or some dumplings. Whatever.’
‘Hey thanks, man,’ he said. ‘You sure you don’t want another…’
‘THERE’S NO TIME DAMN IT!’ I shouted. ‘I’ve got to get to Golding’s.’ With that I charged into the crowd.

The bar was already packed when I got there. Tom and Steve were on top of things, but I knew that a thousands tipsy beer fiends were only minutes behind me; and the dirty glass was already piling up. And so began the rhythm that would fill the next eight hours: Pour beer. Order pizza. Collect glass. Wash glass. Collect pizza. Repeat.

They came in waves. Again and again, the waves of people washed over us. The passing of time was marked only by the incessant changing of kegs. My world shrunk to four walls, seven taps, a mountain of glassware and an ever-growing pile of empty kegs.

And then suddenly, it was over. It was 11:30pm, and we called last drinks. We pushed the people out, we wiped, mopped and we settled the tills. And before I knew it, we were sitting in an empty bar: Owen, Gen, Tom and myself; wallowing in exhaustion and bucket-sized staffies. An idea had occurred to me, in the maelstrom of the shift, which I hadn’t had time to really think about but I teased out a little more now.

We’d been busier than Satan on a Sunday, but somehow the shift had been… easy. Sure we’d moved two weeks worth of beer in four days, but there had been none of the usual bullshit of a super busy bar: no arguments, no abusive customers, no vomit. And yeah, we’d refused service to a lot of drunk people, but none of them had cut up rough or even sworn at us. For an event which ostensibly involves drinking for hours (or in my case days) at a time, everyone had been remarkably well behaved. What a testament to the culture of ‘Craft Beer’ in this country.

I guess it’s true what Dr. Thompson says: Good people drink good beer.

***

I was standing outside the bar, having just locked up. I felt my phone vibrate.

We're at Malty. Coming?
-Steph

My friends, still riding the train to the bitter end. Am I coming? Not today. I desperately needed rest, sanctuary. I had to be back at the bar in ten hours, but that was long enough to recover. Breathing in the cold Wellington air, I turned my back on the bar, my friends, the whole damn-rotten affair. Anonymous darkness settling on my shoulders, I strode off into the Wellington night. For the first time in days, I felt at peace. This is my city. Here I am at home, safe.

Another Beer Geek, in the Beer Geek Kingdom.

***

A big thank you to my Editor, Hannah. And all those who encouraged me to keep writing when I was thoroughly sick of this project.

This post is fiction and intended for parody and satire purposes only. Some of the things mentioned above happened, some of them did not. Others did happen but happened slightly differently that depicted here. Don’t take it too seriously.

Hi Colin.

Beervana is Decadent and Depraved Part #3

Posted on 28/10/2014 by Dylan J

[Go to Part #2]

Part 3: Debauchery at the Awards Dinner

THURSDAY

Thursday was in my mind, to be the peak of my Beervana Week. I awoke at 6am and smashed my way through a busy but manageable day shift, and then donned a jacket and tie for the annual Brewer’s Guild Awards Dinner.

The Awards Dinner is meant to be a dignified, formal occasion; the only black-tie event many beer-people will ever attend. However, getting Brewers and Beer Geeks to play dress-up is no mean feat. Rumours that a dress code would be rigorously enforced were laughed out the door immediately. My close friend, Bardecki, turned up in lederhosen and an oriental smoking jacket, with sandals and painted toenails. I myself tried to toe the line and dress nicely, but I could see the pointlessness of it all.

Why feign dignity, when there’s an open bar?

The Awards Dinner is like a giant birthday party for brewers, where everybody gets a goody-bag of candy to take home. Except in this case, the bag is full of gold, silver and bronze medals (and if you’re very lucky, a trophy or two. This year, I was pretty happy with the results. Beer awards can be a mixed bag, and like all kinds of industry accolades, need to be taken with a grain or two of salt. Having said that, when a friend, colleague or loved one has their brewery’s name displayed on screen, or better yet goes up for a trophy, it’s an incredible high.

***

To go through the whole ceremony would be pointless. The results can be found here. Breweries you’d expect to do well did exactly that: Emersons, ParrotDog, and even Garage Project (who deviate from style guidelines so frequently, they’re often penalised in competitions). Unexpectedly, Aotearoa Breweries AKA Mata, a brewery close to my heart for a number of reasons, took nine medals and were grievously robbed of at least one trophy in my books.

Other highlights included Te Radar as host. He’s not only a good beer enthusiast, but he also knows how to tease without mocking. I also greatly enjoyed John Holl’s presentation about engaging with your customers through brand and technology. He spoke a lot of home truths that night and I sincerely hope New Zealand’s brewers were taking notes.

Once all this was done and dusted, all eyes and ears were keenly waiting to find out who would win the genuinely almost prestigious award for champion brewer.

***

We had sat through two hours of medals and trophies before we got to Champion Brewer. Most of us were all too drunk to have been keeping scores at that point, so from our point of view, the winner was wide open.

We all hoped a shit brewery hadn’t won.

You see, this is the thing with beer awards: beers are judged according to rigorous, even restrictive style guidelines. As such, completely inane beers from mega-brewers can take out dozens of medals and trophies in categories like ‘Other European Lager’ and waltz off with Champion Brewer. I remember four years ago, when DB won, there was more than a few people booing over the polite applause. A year later when 8 Wired won, there was a standing ovation.

There was a rising paranoia that DB (or Lion) would take out the prize again, but personally I was just as concerned that some little shit-house brewery that I have no regard for would win. You see the grim meathook reality is that there is a big difference between making the kind beer that’s faultless and fits style criteria; and making beer that people will beat each other with sticks or crawl over broken glass to get their hands on. And there are plenty of small breweries that make the former, not the later.

What really galled me though, is the knowledge that many of these half-arsed brewers would be beating a path to my door within the next few weeks, flashing medals about the place and trying to sell me beer that neither I nor my customers want. The worst case of this happened a few years ago, when as a humble bartender at Hashigo, a drunken brewer I had never met before accosted me after the awards dinner.

‘Why don’t you bastards buy our beer? Look at all these medals we’ve won,’ he slurred, waving a fistfull of medals in my face. How the drunk fucker had gotten past security, I don’t know.
‘You’ll have to take that up with Dave our Manager,’ I deflected.
‘Bastards’ he said. ‘Bastards,’ before he staggered away.

Later, after I had security escort him out, I learned which brewery he represented. The most of the medals he’d brandished were for cider.

‘Bastards.’

We waited with bated breath for the winner to be read out. The new award for ‘Best Production Brewery’ had just been announced. This was for the best brewery that produces other people’s beer under contract. It had been won by Townshend, by all means a dark horse in that particular race. We were all very happy with that result. Martin Townshend is a good human by all accounts, and great brewer, much deserving of recognition.

‘And, Champion Brewer for 2014 is… Townshend Brewery’.

We lost our shit. Standing ovation, cheering, shouting, glasses banged on tables. All the noise that one hundred frenzied Beer Geeks and Brewers could make. Martin is a friend to all of us and we were all ecstatic that he’d won. The self-effacing bastard wasn’t even there to collect the award, having convinced himself he wouldn’t win a god-damn thing. It didn’t matter. We could mark this down as another year when the small guy, the craftsman, the barely recognised and grossly undercapitalised guy from nowhere had proved themselves better than the soulless, accountant-run-sausage-factory-mega-brewers.

The ceremony was neatly wrapped up soon after but knots of revellers hung out, trying to ride the free beer and afterglow. Eventually we were asked to leave by event staff before they set the dogs on us, but not before Steve loaded his pockets with as many bottles as he could for the short walk back to town.

We would be carrying this party long into the night.

***

[Go To Part #4]

Beervana is Decadent and Depraved Part #2

Posted on 15/10/2014 by Dylan J

[Go to Part #1]

Part 2: Angst and Anxiety in Thorndon

Wednesday

Wednesday was to start with the Media Briefing session. I didn’t know what to expect from this. It started early: 11:30am (that’s early for bartenders). Fortunately I awoke at 6am, and had plenty of time to get to the Rydges Hotel in Thorndon.

I walked into reception and took off my expensive named-brand raincoat. With a background in the film industry, I appreciate the value of good rain gear. Underneath my raincoat, I was wearing a hoodie from a bar I got drunk in in San Francisco, a denim jacket with the sleeves torn off, and my trademark red doc martens with yellow laces. In short, I was in a respectable establishment, in not at all respectable attire. You wouldn’t think this thing matters anymore, but it does. I immediately garnered bad glances from the people in the vicinity, and a staff member came out from behind the desk and approached me.

‘Can I help you… Sir? He asked, glancing up and down. The pause was too long to be polite, but not long enough to be insulting.
‘I’m looking for the Beervana Media Briefing,’ I said. As an experienced bartender, you learn not to take guff from swines in suits as a matter of principle.
‘Upstairs, Room 3 on the left.’
‘Thanks.’ He was after all, just doing his job.

When I got to Room 3 it was worse than I had imagined: about ten people in smart casual clothing, scattered around a large conference table. They held notebooks and nice pens. The one sitting nearest me had his notebook open already. The indecipherable squiggles of journalistic shorthand crawled all over the page. I felt like fraud: a scribbler from the internet who had wandered out of his cave to where grownup journalists roam.

I wanted to run. Get out now, before they turn on you! They’ll jump you any second now and stomp you for impertinence! Get away son, get away.

***

The Media Briefing featured presentations from Cryer about Beervana, Rob Simic (an expert from ANZ) about the finances of the ‘Craft’ beer industry and Jon Holl from All About Beer, regarding the state of the American beer scene. Very little was added to my sum knowledge by these talks, as they were more designed for journalists with deadlines than an industry insider like myself. Although the report put together by ANZ will be a useful document for anyone who wants to cite some concrete figures on growth rates and market share of ‘Craft’ Beer.

One quote that did stick in my head though was that “Investors seem willing to pay above market rates to buy into the story of New Zealand craft beer.” There seemed to be a tone of confusion about this statement, as if bankers couldn’t understand why someone would sink a lot of money into an industry that promises next to no return.

From where I sit, it makes perfect sense: I’d invest in a brewery because I believe in drinking good beer, and I want to ensure I can get a good pint for years to come. Expecting a return on buying into a ‘Craft’ brewery is to me like expecting a return on buying a pint at the pub. Passion and enjoyment are why we get into this industry, not striking it rich.

Mind you, another reason people might pay ‘above market rates’ for shares in a brewery is because of IPO’s that promise investors they’ll be drinking with Odin in the Halls of Valhalla, but somehow fall short of that, but I digress.

The other good occurrence was that I became better acquainted with the Portland contingent. The tall, attractive, bearded man who sat next to me turned out to be Ben Love from Gigantic Brewing, a thoroughly nice guy. Chatting with him, I discovered that besides being the first bartender to pour his beer in New Zealand, I’d already had some of his IPA at Mikkeller Bar in Copenhagen a few weeks earlier and listened to his business partner on a podcast series I follow. Sometimes the beer world is a really small place.

At this stage I also met Sean Burke from Commons Brewery, and Denise Ratfield of the Pink Boots Society, the first person ever to address me by my Twitter handle before we’d even been introduced. I found conversations with Denise to be a little difficult at first, owing to the fact there was a smartphone almost permanently in her hand.

***

I sat amongst the respectable journalists listening to the speakers and pretending to take notes. I felt as a little more relaxed. I had established that enough people in the room knew me to justify my presence there. For the most part I listened with little interest.

I was however, very taken by the trousers of the geek from ANZ. They were plain, slightly textured black business trousers, discretely emblazoned with the bank’s logo on the corner of the pocket.

It was strange. Was this? A uniform? Is this how they dressed their bankers up to do battle? I suddenly envisioned battalions of people in company ties and tastefully-discrete pinstripe, waging brutal warfare, rank-and-file marching down conquered streets. When the our financial system finally collapses, and we’re all so poor and crippled with debt that our society turns on itself; it will be people in trousers like these that lead the execution squads.

Jesus, did I just think that? Was my brain already breaking down to some atavistic level?

***

The briefing session was followed The Portlander’s Longest Lunch. This was a truly decadent experience: four courses, consisting of two dishes and a beer to match each dish. The thing was, each dish could well have constituted an entire course in their own right. The experience amounted to smashing your way through eight courses with matched half pints over about four hours.

I won’t bore you with descriptions of food you’ll never eat. Suffice to say I highly recommend the Longest Lunch as an event. The food was exquisite, the beers top-notch, and the matches sublime. I particularly fell in love with Gigantic’s Pipewrench IPA, which was a new experience for me: a gin-barrel-aged IPA. Strong, subtle and interesting.

I was sharing the table with Denise, whom I got know quite a bit more (in between bouts of tweeting) and found good company. My other luncheon companions consisted of two big chaps from the company that provided AV support to Beervana. They were remarkably entertaining, even though one of them didn’t like beer (so I stole his Pipewrench) and the other only liked the pale lager, but was really thrilled to be here trying all these new brews he’d never heard of.

***

AV Guy: You wouldn’t believe how much it’s changed. Back before all this new brewing business.
Dylan P. Jauslin: What do you mean?
AVG: We didn’t go out. We didn’t have restaurants and bars and whatnot. That’s all happened in the last 20, maybe 30 years. Town was dead back then. You didn’t just go out for a meal. There were no restaurants in Wellington. Not like there is today.
DPJ: So what did you do? on a Saturday or whatever?
AVG: Well, we’d go around to somewhere. Maybe someone’s house. Then you’d get pissed. You’d drink a shit-ton of piss. And it didn’t taste good. Not like these fancy brews. [Long pause]… Then we’d, dunno, drive home completely munted. Crash the car on the way. Maybe kill someone. You young fullas really have no idea.

***

To cut a long lunch short, four hours, three kgs and two litres of beer later, I waddled back to Golding’s to smash out a few dozen emails and catch up on a little of paperwork before the second event of the day began: The Brewer’s Guild Mashing In.

This is the after-function for the Brewer’s Guild AGM. It’s an industry event, meant for insiders only. An occasion to socialise and and network away from fanboys and drunks. It was held upstairs at San Fran and not open to the public (and neither should it be). It’s supposed to be a dignified and professional occasion, but when you put a hundred people in a room and give them a free bar, a debauched piss-up is a very real risk.

***

My first challenge at The Mashing In was to get inside. It was a ticketed event for Brewer’s Guild members only. Both my employer and my partner are Guild Members, so my name should have been on the list, but it rarely works out like that. As I approached the door, I mentally prepared to make enough bad noises until I got in. However one glance at my Hashigo Zake cap, and they let me in without question.

I spent a lovely few hours catching up with all manner of brewers, brewery staff, bar owners, distributors and other associated industry folk. We had come here to network, and for the most part, it was a wildly successful evening all around. Even so, pockets of drunkenness kept breaking out. Our particular group was continually harassed by a man who worked for a filter company who was quite drunk and on some sort quest to prove how much he loved the Wellington beer scene; a task he set about with almost preternatural energy.

I’m not sure who it was that brought up the fact that over half the brewing talent of the country was currently in the room. What would happen if there was a fire in this god-forsaken box at the top of a narrow flight of stairs? How long before one of these drunken smokers sets fire to his own beard? If this particular roomful of people were to all die in a horrific blaze, how many years hard work in the ‘Craft’ beer industry would be undone in on hideous moment? Five years? Ten?

It doesn’t bear thinking about…

***

[Go To Part #3]

Beervana is Decadent and Depraved Part #1

Posted on 30/09/2014 by Dylan J

"Fiction is often the best fact."
William Faulkner

I awoke on Saturday morning with an almighty hangover. My head hurt terribly and my mouth felt like bats had been shitting in it. Sweet Jesus, what the hell had been drinking, I wondered? Then I remembered: nothing. Well, three beers, which is pretty much nothing in my job. No, I was in the depths of a work-hangover: faux-drunkenness compounded by exhaustion and dehydration. And it was only going to get worse. What more would this foul week throw at me?

My phone rang.

‘You weren’t at Beervana yesterday. I checked.’
‘No, I was exhausted and hungover.’
‘Well are you going today?’
‘No, I’m exhausted and hungover.’
‘Listen, you key-tapping swine!’ the voice exploded. ‘You’ve gotten a sweet ride on this assignment! Free lunch, final wisdom, the lot. But that means you’ve got to cover it. Completely. Get your ass to Beervana God damn it!’
‘Urh, yeah, sure,’ I said.
‘Anyway, what else would you be doing? Drinking whisky out of eggcups again?’
‘Hey, I don’t do that. I don’t own any eggcups. I eat my boiled eggs out of shot glasses. They work really well.’
‘Whatever. Get to Beervana, you half-baked internet hack,’ the voice added for good measure.

***

Apologies to all those who are greatly confused. A while back in the lead up to Beervana, I wrote a fairly popular post in the style of Raymond Chandler (et al.). Afterwards I fielded a suggestion from a regular reader that I write my next Beervana post in the style of Gonzo. At first I was against it, because I have no pretension to being anywhere near as good a writer as the Hunter S. Thompson, and anyway it would probably ring pretty disingenuous to blindly copy his style.

But then I thought, what the fuck, why not? If there’s one thing I really don’t like, it’s blog posts along the lines of ‘I went here, I drank this, you should go where I go and drink what I drink.’ So anything that breaks that monotony has got to be good.

Now a disclaimer: Gonzo style requires a good dose of what we might call hyperbole. As such, just remember that this post is parody and intended for recreational and novelty use only. I’m also not going to write the whole piece in style either. That would again seem well, disingenuous. So here goes…

***

Beervana is Decadent and Depraved

Part 1: Uneasy Vibrations and Early DT’s

Monday

Beervana began for me on Monday afternoon in a blur of jetlag. I had just returned to New Zealand that weekend from a trip to Scandinavia. I was coming down slowly off what had essentially been an extended herring-binge, and adjusting to New Zealand’s timezone and cuisine was not happening smoothly.

I had awoken at 6am had spent the day shift variously staring at my emails trying to make sense of plain English, and making sandwiches for the first few beer tourists who were already trickling into Wellington. Suddenly, in walked the avuncular David Cryer, hefting a 30L keg as if it was a feather.

‘You’re having a beer launch here tonight. Don’t worry I cleared it with Golding.’
‘Ok… So what are we launching?’ I asked.
‘A collaboration between 8 Wired and Gigantic Brewing from Portland.’
‘Great, what’s it called?’
‘I don’t know.’

The keg label left us none the wiser. All it had was the unenlightening gibberish: ‘PDXNZESB’ which I took for some sort of batch code. I later found out that this was in fact the name of the beer. At the time we settled on calling it ‘New Zealand ESB’.

‘One more thing,’ said Cryer ‘We need twenty litres run off into riggers for another event.’

Holy Jesus, this will be the shortest beer launch I’ve ever worked, I thought. What would happen when waves upon waves of punters turn up, demanding a beer that’s already run out? Suddenly I was having flashbacks to the Garage Project 24/24, when two hundred people would attempt to ram themselves into Hashigo at five every Tuesday; desperate for beers of which only 20-40 litres existed at a time.

Cues ran out the door, people at the back deluding themselves that there would still be beer available when they reached the front. I remember the complaints, the bad noises, the gnashing of teeth, the almost tears when folks arrived twenty minutes after the beer hit taps, but five minutes too late to try any.

Was I going to have to relive that?

***

It didn’t quite pan out like that. The event wasn’t well publicised, and only a few people missed out. The remaining ~10L was drunk in roughly as many minutes, mainly by a pack of Americans that came into the bar. I’d later learn that that this was a selection of Brewers and Beer People from Portland Oregon, flown over for the week.

At the time however, reality was feeling a little thin on the ground for me, so I shook a bunch of American hands, then got the hell out of Golding’s early and made for the sanctuary of bed.

Tuesday

Tuesday was to be my first proper night shift. Events for the Road to Beervana week were starting to happen all over Wellington and more and more people were rolling into town.

Golding’s was hosting Fritz and Maria of Liquid Alchemy, for a beer and spirits matching session, which I felt more than a little trepidation for. Matching booze with food is great because people don’t get too drunk. But matching booze with booze seems like bad recipe.

Liquid Alchemy were showcasing their Moonshine, which was pretty rough stuff, even for someone who drinks their eggcups neat. and when drowned with enough cinnamon syrup and apple juice (a cocktail known as an Apple Pie), it was really quite delicious. I didn’t expect much to happen in the first couple of days. I assumed most folks would be either arriving later or saving their pennies for the big events. I was wrong and we were slammed.

It seemed like every Beer Geek in the Southern Hemisphere was rolling into Wellington, and more than half of them were attempting to cram themselves into Golding’s. And with only two of us behind the bar…

***

Tuesday was the first day of proper Beervana craziness. Steve and I coped as best we could, handling as much trade as we might usually expect on a mild Saturday night. It wasn’t long before my old friend jetlag was rearing its hideous face again. I had woken at 6am. It was around 11:30pm when we finally pushed the last customers out the door, and I was out of my mind with exhaustion. My body was attempting to punish me for being in the wrong timezone. As I sat drinking my staffie, the fairy lights began to literally swim and swirl before my eyes and and the music began to fade in and out, as if someone was playing with the tuning knob on an FM radio.

Hallucinating from exhaustion already? Fun times.

Golding’s would be a strange place to try and take hard drugs. With such an abundance of stimuli, a head full of hallucinogens could easily turn nasty. I’ve only seen one guy come into the bar who was clearly on hard drugs. He walked in on a busy Wednesday night when we had no security on. He’d stood, wide-eyed in the middle of the bar, mouth agape, drinking the place in. He seemed to be enjoying himself,and when I cautiously approached him and asked if I could help, he’d smiled and looked straight through me with the million mile stare of someone travelling on a plane of existence well removed from my own.

He left without issue, but what if whatever junk that was in his head had shifted gears on him? Would he have melted into a pile of gibbering goo into one of our casino chairs? What would I have done then? Scooped him into a wheelbarrow and dumped him in the alleyway behind Hope Bros? Maybe I should’ve rolled him too… Stolen his wallet and given him a kicking? Nothing like a broken rib or two to teach him a lesson… Jesus, that’s a bad thought.

He could have cut up rough too though. If a trip turned bad in a bar like this, when the actual god-damn weasels we have scattered around the bar start closing in, and the Bartender starts morphing into a demonic stoat monster, there’s no telling how the depraved mind will react.

[Go to Part #2]

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.

Our Man In Wellington

Posted on 11/07/2014 by Dylan J

I had a very interesting business meeting at Golding’s last week. Well actually, it wasn’t that interesting, so to liven it up a little, I’ve decided to recount it as if it was a cheesy 1950’s spy thriller…

***

The soft light of bucket lamps shining through drawn slats said someone had gotten to the bar before me. It was an uncommon interruption to a morning routine that varies little: I open Golding’s alone at 11am everyday until Mr.Golding arrives around midday. Perhaps he was early? I went in without suspicion.

Inside however, I was surprised to find middle-aged man in casual business attire relaxing at a table. He was tall and broad shouldered, darkish complexion, greying hair and a cheerful, slightly uncle-ish demeanour. I knew who he was: David Cryer, head of Cryermalt, the biggest player in New Zealand’s malt business. More commonly however, he’s known as the man behind Beervana, New Zealand’s largest beer festival. Not a man to be taken lightly in the beer world.

I’d met him before through Beervana, a festival I’d both worked and attended over the years. Indeed, I’d even shared a beer with him on several occasions. I did not however, expect to find him in unannounced in my bar.

‘Mr. Cryer, this is a pleasant surprise,’ I said, affecting nonchalance.
‘Indeed Jauslin, nice to see you too,’ he replied. ‘Mr. Golding let me in, but he was called away. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been hoping to have a word with you.’
‘Certainly,’ I said, acting as if this was completely expected. ‘I’m all ears.’
‘As you know, Beervana is coming up in August. There’s a lot of action around town in the next few weeks. We need eyes and ears all over Wellington; men on the ground. Your name came up. We want you for the job.’
It smelt funny to me. ‘Don’t you already have your own machine for that?’ I asked.
Cryer shifted visibly. ‘Yes we do, and they’re doing a great job. But we need a man on the inside: a local. A freelancer, like yourself.’

The penny dropped in my brain so hard it must have made an audible thunk.
‘I hear you Mr. Cryer. Now let’s not split hairs: you want a spy,’ I said.
‘Now hold on Jauslin, that’s now what I said! You wouldn’t be spying, you be…’ he paused, looking for the right word. ‘Sharing useful information. We want you to be… Our man in Havana, so to speak.’
‘That’s an unfortunate literary reference. You want a mole, now call it what it is and be done.’ I countered.
‘We heard you were a man of understanding, but clearly I’ve come to the wrong door.’ Mr. Cryer got up to leave.
I laughed. ‘Oh no, you’ve got the right door, you just need to knock-knock on it the right way.’ I motioned for him to sit.

‘You want a spy in Wellington, you found one. But at a price, Mr. Cryer. Always at a price.’

Our Man in Wellington

***

Ok, I’ll be serious-faced now. The meeting didn’t really go like that (for a start there were other people in the room, and the lighting wasn’t nearly so moody). The simple fact of the matter is though that I’ve taken on a role as what you might call ‘Social Media Liaison’ for the run up to Beervana. Our goal is to capture those beautiful, exciting, and frequently crazy moments that happen when the beer community get together.

Now this is new territory for me. A lot of people spend their life on Twitter, but I’ve never been much of a user. I keen a vague track on what’s happening in the beer scene, but for the most part, I just wait until I see something interesting (or get tagged), swing in, deliver a few devastating thrusts, and swing out again like Beer-Geek Errol Flynn. But we’re going to make a real go of this, so here’s the plan:

Follow me on Twitter. While you’re at it, follow Beervana if you haven’t already (you mad person).
If you know of anything beer related going down in Wellington in the next few weeks, share it with us. Perhaps there’s a beer dinner, or maybe you’re a brewer coming to town. Or you could be a homebrewer, making a batch for the Beervana Home Brew Comp. Maybe you’re just an out-of-towner who want’s to know where the good beer is at. Whatever the case, Tweet about it, share it on Facebook. Spread the word, let the people know.
Tag us in (myself, Beervana, your friends, your Beer Geek Aunty), AND/OR use the hashtag #RoadToBeervana. I’ll be keeping tabs on this.
Head to Beervana in August, and have a wonderful beery time.

Disclaimer:

For all my dramatic talk of ‘Always at a price,’ I’m not being employed by Beervana. I didn’t write this post for money, despite what The Joker says (well, maybe a Beervana ticket and a few other perks). I’m doing this for a few reasons. First of all, I don’t want to write on The Bottleneck for money. I want to keep it free from bias (or at least other people’s bias).

Secondly, I’m not here for all the leadup to Beervana. My own #RoadToBeervana goes via Scandiwegia for a little while (basically, there’s a chair at Mikkeller Bar I need to sit in). So I’m not here for a decent slice of it.

Finally, I actually really do believe in what we do around Wellington at this time of year. There’s so much good ‘craft’ beer stuff that happens in this town when the whole beer community gets together. So lets get on this. Let’s share it, enjoy it, and help this industry grow.

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

Lager Roundup Vol. 2: Contraband

Posted on 03/06/2014 by Dylan J

One of the most frustrating thing working in a beer bar, or any bar for the matter, is annoying shit-heads sneaking in their own alcohol. It bugs the hell out of me: you spend a lot of time and money building a nice bar, you stock it full of wonderful beer; then some cretinous spanner with a bag full of Corona comes and takes up space that could be occupied by customers who actually understand what we’re all about and, you know, spends money.

And it is always Corona too; or one of its equally cheap and crappy siblings. No one ever sneaks a bottle of Panhead The Vandal into a good bar. You know the best beer I’ve ever caught someone sneaking into the bar was? A Cooper’s Pale Ale. And I’m damn sure they chose it because it’s dirt cheap here, not because they actually appreciate it’s subtle nuances.

Having said all this, we don’t actually get a lot of people sneaking alcohol into Golding’s. Our ‘customer base’ (nebulously defined as it is) are not the sort of people that sneak shit beers into good bars. Further more it’s even rarer that we catch any of them. So it came as a surprise that I managed to confiscate two unopened bottles of beer less than a month apart.

Now normally, I wouldn’t bother reviewing beers like these. It’s not sporting, you know? Like shooting low-hanging fruit in a barrel. But I don’t know, something about drinking shitty beer that we took off absolute munters appeals to me on aesthetic level: fate brought these beer to me. I’m meant to review them.

Then again, it could just be schadenfreude.

Beer 1: Flame

Yup, straight in with the good stuff: pure bogan juice. This particular bottle was confiscated during the Wellington Sevens, or as it’s colloquially known, ‘Munter’s Halloween’.

Best enjoyed from a Framboise glass.

We cracked this bottle after our not particularly busy Sevens Saturday shift.

Aroma: N/A.
Appearance: Pleasantly golden.
Favour: Blearg
Over all notes: poor.

One of my colleagues summed it up nicely: “This tastes like someone poured brown sugar on wet cardboard”.

Hmm. Wet cardboard… That’s a sign of oxidation. I have no idea what conditions this bottle has been stored in. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and assume that this bottle has been stored in less that optimal conditions (and possibly someone’s pants, to get it past the security gates of the Sevens Street party).

Moving on.

Beer 2: Tui

Alright, this shit just got real. This particular bottle was confiscated off a guy on a stag do pub-crawl. Any seasoned bartender knows that guys on stag dos are trouble. Usually more trouble than they’re worth. And if they’re in drag, it’s even worse (incidentally, this is why Hashigo has a blanket ban on men in drag, excluding performance artists and the legitimately transgendered). This guy wasn’t in drag; he was one worse still. He was wearing a unitard.

Anyone wearing a unitard to a pub is guaranteed to be a A-grade, certified cock.

Aroma: Bugger all.
Appearance: Pleasantly amber
Favour: Meh
Over all notes: You know what? Tui starts of pretty good. It’s got some mildly inoffensive nutty amber flavours, but just as they reach your tongue, they just sort of trail off into nothing. Again, one of my colleague’s summarised it nicely as having ‘the ghosts of flavours’.

You know I can’t grab your ghost-beer. Lets move on.

Bonus ~~Beer~~ Beverage 3: Wolf Blass Yellow Label Pinot Noir

Umm, do I have to?

Now I spied someone stashing these two bottles after closing, in an alcove outside Golding’s before heading of towards Hope Bros. My guess it that they’d been drinking one of them on the way into town and would’ve picked them up on the way home.

Silly person.

The one on the left was unopened, so I figured I wouldn’t catch some disfiguring disease from it. So, yeah… Lets review it….

…

Bugger this, I can’t do this any more. I think I’ve shot my quota of Barrel Fish, so here’s an actual piece of consumer advice:

Beer 4: Mussel Inn Golden Goose

Taken in the dying days of Summer. Paired here with a nice fresh Gerald Sandwich.

Golden Goose has been described as “the Thinking Drinker’s golden lager.” For years it’s sat in the fridge at Hashigo as the ‘craft’ alternative to green bottle shite.

I love Golden Goose. It’s head and shoulders above corporate lagers, because it has that rare, almost-mystical thing that the corporate brewers like to claim their beer’s have: a full malt body. It’s light, but it’s full and well-rounded.

Alright we’re done here.

Straighten Up and Fly Right.

Posted on 20/03/2014 by Dylan J

Ah, cider.

Yeah, this is is a beer blolg: beer is the love of my life. But cider? Cider is my Mistress. My bit on the side. My sneaky, drunken-5am quickie. My on the D.L. hook-up. My…

Er, not sure where I’m going with this anymore…

Anywho, I love cider, almost as much as I love beer, and if I ever develop Celicas, I’m opening a cidery (or just moving next door to Peckham’s). And recently, the cider world has seen the resurgence of a name we’d almost thought lost for good: Crooked.

For those not in the know, a brief history (with apologies for any factual error I make here. I’m not a journo, I haven’t done research and this is based off what I’ve heard from people in the industry. My own sideline perspective tallies with what I’ve been told):

Once upon a time there was the Three River Cider label, a.k.a. The Cider House Orchard. The only reliable (sorry, I mean easily Google-able) record of this exists in the dark recesses of RateBeer. They went out of business, possibly before I had ever tried them. My theory is that New Zealand wasn’t ready for that sort of cider yet, but there is probably a better explanation. They were bought up and became Crooked. Incidentally, you should definitely check out that website before an actual designer with any sort of competency gets their hands on it.

Would you believe me if I told you the vulture is wearing plate armour and holding an axe just out of frame? Cos it’s true. Source

Now Crooked cider was great: bone dry and full of flavour. It didn’t just taste like fermented apple juice; you could taste the whole damn apple. The flesh, skin, seeds, stalks and all. And it was jam-packed full of weird (delicious) funky-yeast flavours. And it was hazy. Hazy as fuck. In short, Crooked was great.

Ok, so I’m going from memories here. Maybe time has greened those pastures. Crooked was a least interesting. It was authentic, and got me excited at a time when it wasn’t even guaranteed that cider would contain and actual fruit, let alone apples (oh wait, we still live in that time).

Now you can probably tell what comes next in the story: the Vulture went the way of the Dodo. Without putting too finer point on the matter (or talking too much shit about people in the industry), Crooked was mismanaged into the ground. But there was always rumours that Crooked was coming back. And finally rumours coalesced into bottles on shelves. Bottles which it took me about a month or so to recognise, because they now look like this:

I detect the hoofprints of a Graphic Designer. It’s generic, but at least it’s dynamic. Definitely an improvement anyway.

So straight away, you’ll notice that it’s crystal clear. Crystal clear as fuck. That’s ok, many great ciders are filtered and fined. The back of the label is a little more ominous:

Again, I detect the hoof-prints of a marketing person.

It says a hell of a lot, without telling you anything at all. Whatever. How does it taste?

Um, you know when an old band gets back together, but half of the members have changed, and it’s alright, but it’s just not the same? Yeah, pretty much that.

Yeah it’s dry, but not like the old Crooked. If old Crooked cut like a scalpel, then new Crooked is more of a bread knife. It’s lost it’s skin-and-stalks flavour too; it just tastes like apples now. And it’s clean; too clean. Gone is the yeasty-funky-barnyard character. In short it’s lost pretty much everything that made it Crooked.

But wait just a moment! You know how I said the label doesn’t really tell you anything? Actually it does: “100% NZ Hawkes Bay Apples”, with a little map showing you exactly where the Hawkes Bay is in New Zealand? But the old Crooked Cidery (and most importantly the orchard which grew their amazing cider apples) was in the Wairarapa!

Suddenly all is clear. This is a revival of Crooked in name only. The bottle also lists a business address in Wellington. This cider is probably made under contract in the Hawkes Bay, from apples grown in that region.

Now that’s kind of disappointing, but don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad cider. It’s made with real apples and it’s not back-sweetened into oblivion. It’s just hell of a lot shallower than it used to be. It’s gone mainstream. But new Crooked is definitely a lot better than the overly sweetened products of the corporate breweries. And I’d take it any day of the week over Rekorderlig. And if you take anything away from this, I guess it should be that.