April 9th, 2015

Minuscule Monk

Coronado's Brewer Series had been kind to our New Release Tuesday programme, providing us with a few kegs of small batch beers with each new shipment.

The final Brewer Series beer from the previous shipment hits the taps this Tuesday: Friar Starter Belgian Blonde.

As the helpful infographic to the right explains, this isn't your hefty 7-10% abv Belgian ale. Friar Starter should give you the Belgian experience without the big alcohol hit.

It seems the Belgians have been doing this for decades without new drink driving laws to point to as a reason for lower alcohol beer. Kudos to them.

The recipe is the classic and simple pilsner/wheat malt base, but veers from tradition with Simcoe hops added with the noble Saaz. At only 13 IBU don't expect much if any hop character to show itself over the fruity esters that the Belgian yeast throws.

Our single 20L keg of Friar Starter will be tapped at 5pm this Tuesday.

Swingin' Organ

Our free musical entertainment this Saturday is provided by the Hammond Head Three.

Nigel Patterson (aka Hammondhead) will be firing up his 1961 Hammond B3 organ to deliver this hard swingin' late '60s inspired organ trio.

Also featuring Tia Beaufort on drums and Jules Blewman with guitar.

Catch them for free from 9.30pm this Saturday.

Sleepless in Wellington

We've recently noticed that we have quite a few interesting coffee beers. Then our mates up at Beer Without Borders got a bag of the beans that go into one of them: Modern Times Black House.

This provided a great excuse to make a night of it and show off our more interesting caffeinated brews.

So on Wednesday the 22nd of April. Hashigo barman and ex-barista Dylan Shearer will take you through a selection of our best coffee infused beers.
You'll be treated to the likes of:

• Mikkeller Beer Weak Breakfast
• Rogue Allegro Coffee Porter
• Modern Times Black House
• Ballast Point Victory at Sea
• Mikes VCP
• Moon Dog Cold Drip War
• De Molen Kopi Loewak
• Mikkeller/Amager HR Fredriksen Bourbon BA Coffee Imp Stout

You weren't planning on sleeping that night anyway right?

The tasting will only cost $35 per person, and kicks off at 6pm on Wednesday the 22nd of April.

Book your spot online at the Cult Beer Store or at the bar any time.

Fresh Hop Sneak Peek

The word is that Saturday's Pathway to Hoppiness Tasting is almost sold out.

Book soon if you want to hear Panhead's Mike Neilson speak about Panhead, hops, beer and ask him all your burning questions.

This tasting will also be the first sneak peek at Panhead's Fresh Hop Vandal, which will be making an appearance.

You can book by emailing Steph at info@craftbeercollege.co.nz, or online

Hopstock 2015

The annual Wellington-wide fresh hop celebration that is Hopstock is upon us.

If you don't know already, fresh hopped beer has been hopped with cones picked fresh from the bines. Usually hops are dried and pelleted, otherwise they'd go off mere hours after picking. But in drying and pelleting some volatile aromatic oils are lost.

Every year at hop harvest season NZ Hops have been getting more and more wet hops to more brewers, meaning we can experience more super-aromatic fresh hop beers every year.

There are so many fresh/wet hop beers being made for Hopstock this year, a few bars had to host two beers (damn eh?).

A few weeks ago we pulled two breweries names out of a hat to see what beers we'd be serving next week. We were stoked to pull Petone's Baylands Brewery and Christchurch's Raindogs Brewing.

These are a great combo, as Baylands have made WaiFly II, a super hoppy NZ IPA while Raindogs have done 17 Seconds ESB, which melds fresh hops with English yeast and malt.

To make things even more interesting we'll have both of these beers on handpump as well as on tap. So you can geek out about serving differences while you geek out hops.


Because there are so many beers, both WaiFly II and 17 Seconds will be available in a 150ml Taster size as well as the usual 300ml fancy and 473ml US pint.

The festival kicks off on Wednesday the 15th, and runs till Saturday the 18th. so come along and grab your Hopstock booklet and start collecting stamps!

Fresh Off the Boat

As I write this, the poor souls up at Beer Without Borders are sitting in their cool-store warehouse, shivering as they apply 'standard drinks' and 'imported by' stickers to thousands of newly imported bottles of US beer.

Later this afternoon we're hoping their shaking hands will have applied enough stickers to send some exciting newbies our way.

The biggest rock star of this shipment is arguably Gigantic Pipe Wrench - a gin barrel aged IPA that started a small trend of adding a shot of gin to pints of IPA when it made an appearance at Beervana last year.

Pipewrench will be competing with bottles of 3 varieties of Ballast Point Sculpin. Bottles of standard Sculpin and Grapefruit Sculpin are back in stock, along with Habanero Sculpin in bottles for the first time.

Also from Ballast Point, Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter is now available in the much more sensible size bottle of 355ml. So you can have one all to yourself!

Speakeasy are back, with restocks of Prohibition amber and a new easy going lager Metropolis.

Karl Strauss is also included in this shipment, with bottles of Big Barrel IPA. We're even going to be serving 200ml pours of this 9% IIPA on Saturday for $7 a pop.

These newbies should all be in the fridge later tonight.