- Australian International Beer Awards
- Matariki Winter Ale Festival
- Upcoming Beers
- Our Menu Online
- And Finally..
Australian International Beer Awards
This week's missive comes to you from Melbourne, where the Hashigo Zake delegation is rubbing shoulders with the rock stars of New Zealand and Australian brewing at the Australian International Beer Awards and simultaneous Beer and Brewer Expo. A few hours ago the silverware was handed out and the results were pretty extraordinary.
Several New Zealand breweries had plenty to smile about. Richard Emerson walked away with the trophy for the best wheat beer, with his Weizenbock beating out some of the great names in German brewing, including Schneider and Sons' Aventinus.
Renaissance took out silver medals with every beer they entered and were rewarded for their consistency by being shortlisted for Champion Small Brewery. Similarly, Harringtons were shortlisted for Champion Large Brewery - the surprise being the news that they were considered a large brewery.
Rogue may well have won more gold medals than anyone else - at least seven, plus innumerable silver and bronze. They even managed to win one gold and two silvers in a single category - India Pale Ales.
Mikkeller won the Best Stout trophy. When brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø was sent an SMS with the news he replied with a question - "which beer?". A fair question since Mikkeller Black was shortlisted but was beaten by Beer Geek Brunch Weasel. Yes, the cat sh*t beer.
When the overall Champion Brewer was to be named, the announcement was prefaced by the introduction of a genuine Scandinavian person to pronounce the winner's name. Which pretty much gave away that the winner was none other than Nøgne Ø.
All of which meant that the Australian importer of Nøgne Ø and Mikkeller needed help to carry all his trophies away.
So this seems a good time to remind everyone that there is exactly one bar in New Zealand with a regular supply of Nøgne Ø and Mikkeller beer.
Matariki Winter Ales Festival
SOBA have announced that their Matariki Winter Ales Festival will take place on June 26 at the Boat Shed, not far from us here at 25 Taranaki St. Hashigo Zake will support the event in some capacity or other and we encourage our customers to go along. Tickets are already on sale at SOBA's website (www.soba.org.nz).
Upcoming Beers
The following have recently come on tap or will do over the next few days:
- Rogue Dead Guy Ale
- Epic Armageddon
- Emerson's Harvest Ale
- Mike's Imperial India Pale Ale
Our Menu Online
We've tarted up our online menu at www.hashigozake.co.nz/beerlist.html and will endeavour to keep it updated whenever we change beers. We've also created a simplified version of the page that will look better on iPhones. It's at www.hashigozake.co.nz/m_beerlist.html.
Since demonstrating the page to a few of our regulars we've been flooded with some extraordinarily brilliant ideas about what should happen when you click on a beer. (We also got inundated with reports when it broke last evening.) Please remember that our web development division is employed for about 45 minutes a week, so enhancements (and repairs) will come at glacial pace.
And finally...
This week is American Craft Beer Week. What better way to commemorate this than to try a fresh Dead Guy Ale?
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