September 16, 2010

Immediately below...

• Beer Tourism
• Well Traveled Beer and announcing a New Tasting

Beer Tourism

This week's missive comes to you from Japan, where summer temperatures have been breaking all records and the Yokohama edition of the Great Japan Beer Festival starts on Saturday.

The Export Consulting Division of Hashigo Zake International Corporation is here at the request of Tuatara Brewery to help showcase their range in the back yard of Lion Nathan's paymasters, Kirin.

It should be a fascinating few days, and an interesting contrast to Beervana. It is the done thing at these events in Japan to squeeze as many people as possible into a small, shapeless hall. And with the cost of samples included in customers' ¥4000 ($67) ticket price, there will only be the attendees' innate sense of decorum stopping things getting quite ugly.

We're also taking the opportunity to conduct a tasting of New Zealand beers for a select group of Tokyo's elite beer geeks at Baird's Nakameguro Taproom on Sunday evening.

Well Traveled Beer and announcing a New Tasting

But while some of us follow beer around the world, more well travelled beer is finding its way to Hashigo Zake.

New stock from the US, Denmark, Norway, Canada and Australia have all arrived over the last few days. It has left us with a backlog of paperwork, bills for excise and GST and a headache as we try and find room for them in our display fridges. Bear with us while we find time between serving drinks in two hemispheres to find space for all these exciting new beverages.

Or... consider booking for our October tasting of Quebec beers. At the heart of this tasting will be the beers of adventurous Montreal brewpub Dieu du Ciel. Expect beautiful labels, intense flavours and innovative uses of adjuncts such as spices. What's more the tasting will finish with something of a shootout of stouts in Ratebeer's 100th percentile - Dieu du Ciel's Aphrodisiaque and Péché Mortel and St Ambroise's Oatmeal Stout.

It takes place at 6:30pm on Tuesday, October the 12th. Anyone interested in booking is hereby invited to take part in an experiment - bookings are now being taken via our web store. Follow this link http://www.cultbeerstore.co.nz/products/quebec-beer-tasting to book.