Thursday, February 24, 2011

February 24, 2011

Time To Change Our Luck... What's On Tap?... Tasting News...

Time To Change Our Luck

Late last week we learned that the victim of a shocking murder being covered in the media was in fact someone with a connection to Hashigo Zake. Matthew Hall was an experienced home brewer who had assisted some of our staff in their own brewing and had attended the first of our occasional home brew tastings.

Everyone at Hashigo Zake extends our profound sympathies to the friends and family of Matthew Hall.

We were scratching our heads trying to come up with a suitable way to acknowledge his tragedy when the earthquake struck.

This is not a time for holding back. So here is what we're doing:

Every cent spent at Hashigo Zake between 6pm and midnight this Saturday will be shared between two beneficiaries. The first is Atareira. This organisation was nominated in the printed guide to the funeral of Matthew Hall, so we're simply following their suggestion. The second beneficiary will be an organisation providing Christchurch earthquake relief, possibly the Red Cross.

The hope here is that anyone wanting to contribute to either of these causes can actually enjoy doing it. So if you have no plans for Saturday night, this is a rare opportunity to simultaneously drink and do a good deed.

What's on Tap?

Note the question mark. We're less sure than ever about what we'll be serving over the next few days and weeks. Every week we get a delivery from BeerNZ, the Christchurch craft beer distributor, of South Island beer, and Christchurch beer in particular. This is probably our single biggest source of products and we don't know when this supply line will resume.

This doesn't mean we're about to run out of beer. But it will be harder to predict what will be on and it will mean that the average latitude of the beer we serve will be heading north for a while. Expect more than the usual amount of Tuatara, a little Hallertau and Galbraith's hopefully, maybe more Mike's, Epic and Croucher and probably a slightly higher than usual number of imports on tap.

In particular, lovers of hand pumped beer might have to wait a few days while we sort out supplies. Please bear with us.

We can announce that our first ever kegs of Moa 5 Hop Ale have arrived, as well as a keg of Moa Pale Ale.

And Ballast Point Sculpin IPA - the world's 3rd best IPA (according to ratebeer.com) will be on soon.

Tasting News

We did just have one piece of good news. A small order from Squatters Brewery in Salt Lake City just turned up, which was something of a surprise since we haven't been invoiced for it yet or paid excise. (No-one tell Customs.) So we don't know what it's costing us yet.

Now for those who haven't heard, Squatters are the new US brewer of the Mussel Inn's Captain Cooker. We have enough of the US version to try alongside some from the Mussel Inn and Invercargill Brewery (where most Captain Cooker is actually brewed). We also hope to have Andrew from the Mussel Inn come up for the event. There are a few other details to confirm so please don't try and book yet. But we're aiming for March 8th.

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