September 19, 2013

Debate Aftermath

Our Mayoral Candidates Debate took place last night. We're genuinely impressed at and thankful for the support that was shown for this event by the candidates, by our moderators and their helpers and by Wellingtonista.com. We're disappointed and a little embarrassed that all our hopes for streaming proceedings over the internet fell through due to technical problems. These will be corrected in any similar, future events.

All the feedback we've received has confirmed that the moderators did a great job, the candidates got their messages across and the whole thing was pretty informative. For anyone who missed out Wellingtonista have compiled the only thing better than a verbatim transcript.

In spite of the technical failings we're sufficiently encouraged by last night's proceedings to consider doing something similar again in future.

Beard Beer

At the risk of drawing attention to the fact that a high proportion of our staff and customers struggle with finding razors, we take pleasure in bringing our customers the long awaited Rogue Beard Beer.

Clearly this is a beer that confuses people and causes a little discomfort. The story is that Rogue brewery were looking for yeasts that may have evolved spontaneously in or around the brewery; and as an afterthought, or maybe just a joke, they tested hairs from the beard of brewer John Maier. It turned out that the only viable brewing yeast they identified was from Maier's beard.

beeradvocate.com calls the resulting beer an "American Wild Ale". But ratebeer.com call it a "Belgian Ale". Maybe this says something about perceptions of hygiene around the world. Or maybe it's more to do with where John Maier had been holidaying. The surprising thing is that consumers are getting past the ick factor and are actually said to be enjoying Beard Beer.

We'll find out for ourselves tomorrow evening when New Zealand's first case of Beard Beer goes on sale.

New Release Tuesday

There are at least four commercial beers called Vuur & Vlam (Fire & Flame). About the same number as there are called Zombie Hopocalypse in fact, but probably less of a coincidence. We previously had a small amount of the beer by this name from Midtfyns Bryghus in Denmark. We now have what we suspect was the original from De Molen. (In fact this blog provides a likely explanation of the proliferations of Vuur & Vlams.)

So De Molen Vuur & Vlam, which is, by the way, an American IPA, goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

Ramen Friday

We're onto a fortnightly cycle with Tsubasa and Asher from the Ramen Shop. They'll be back at noon tomorrow with supplies of their Ramen for lunchtime diners. They'll stay until interest and/or supplies dwindle - between one and two hours.

Saturday Music

Appearing this week in our Lounge are the Wellington City Shake 'Em On Downers. We say they're appearing in the Lounge but last time this heavily populated swing band appeared at Hashigo Zake they chose not to be confined by the four walls of the lounge and played en promenade.

The fun starts as usual at 10pm.

Nontoberfest

We've been fielding a lot of queries lately about the Pacific Beer Expo. There was a good reason for delaying any announcements - we've been working through the implications of a shift in venue from the Boatshed to the First Floor Gallery at the St James Theatre. It's a much bigger venue and it's only available to us on one day of Labour Weekend, which means that this year PBE takes place on one day only, Sunday October 27.

Tickets will go on sale early next week. As a condition of using the venue the ticket agent is going to be Ticketek.

This year's event will feature, as usual:

• More geographic and stylistic variety and quality than any beer festival in New Zealand.
• A number of beers that have never been available in New Zealand before.
• High quality food.
• A generous allocation of starting tokens for food and drink.

We can also make a few other firm promises about the 2013 Pacific Beer Expo:

• No oompah music.
• No-one (or no event staff at least) will be wearing lederhosen.
• No $22,500 ratepayer subsidy.
• The Pacific Beer Expo proudly remains, perhaps, the only beer festival held in New Zealand in October, that isn't called Oktoberfest.