July 9th, 2015

A Big Batch of Homebrew

The Society of Beer Advocate's (SOBA) National Homebrew Competition (NHC) is generally considered the highest level of homebrew competition in New Zealand.

The judges are experienced, with each table of three judges usually having a judge who has judged at the World Beer Cup.
The beers are judged to commercial standards and style guidelines - to win even a bronze medal at the NHC is quite an achievement.

Each year the highest scoring beer out of the hundreds of entries is brewed commercially at Hallertau.

The 2014 winner came from Aucklander John Golics, with his 'Dog's Golics' Rauch Bock.

From memory his beer scored an unbeaten 48/50, which gained it a gold medal and brewing honours at Hallertau. Only ten gold medals were awarded out of the 417 entries in 2014.

Rauch Bock is a fairly unknown style in New Zealand. Essentially you take a big strong rich German bock bier, and throw in some beechwood smoked malt - Bamberg-style.

The challenge with this beer is balancing and matching the smoke character to the malt without dominating its delicate lager character.

After tasting The Dog's Golics at SOBA's City Of Ales festival in Auckland I can confirm that John and Hallertau have managed to scale the homebrew masterfully. It has just the right amount of classic Bamberg smoke flavour and rich malt while still obviously being a bock.

We've secured one of the few kegs of this beer for its Wellington launch, this coming Tuesday at 5pm.

JB3 Funk

This Saturday the JB3 Trio return to the HZ lounge.

JB3 will be pumping out Boogaloo and New Orleans Funk from 9.30pm with Jake Baxendale, Shaun Anderson & Daniel Hayles!

As per usual the door fee is $0, so we'll gladly withhold 20% for the IRD's new crowdsourced tax-collection scheme.

Taste ALL the New Beers

If you want to taste all of the new beers from our most recent shipments, Wednesday's tasting is for you.

On Wednesday July 15th at 6pm in the Red Room, we'll make our way through eight of the newest additions to our fridges. It'll be a less-than formal, relaxed evening as we taste through:

Modern Times Mount Remarkable IPL

Modern Times Oneida American Pale Ale

Speakeasy Blind Tiger IIPA

Rogue Pumpkin Saviour

Coronado Señor Saison (Jalapeno Saison)

Almanac Farmer’s Reserve Strawberry Sour

Rogue Sriracha Stout

Ballast Point Indra Kunindra (curry stout)

You can book your place to taste over at The Cult Beer Store for just $40.

The tasting kicks off at 6pm and will just have light snacks provided - so eat dinner beforehand!

A Word on Vaping

Vaping has emerged over the past year as a popular way to give up smoking. As they are not a tobacco product vape-pens aren't covered by the Smoke-free Environments Amendment Act 2003, so it's not illegal to use them inside bars.

With vape-pens now being used in enclosed public areas, inevitably conflicts arose. One side touting the safety of their vapour and the other pointing to studies showing possible harm coming from primary and secondary vapour. This debate is heated and ongoing, and I'm not going to comment on it either way.

Instead, our issue with vape-pens is simple. Politeness.

Most vape-pen users we've encountered have been polite enough to check before using, and we've let them. However as e-cigarettes evolved into 'advanced personal vaporisers,' the amount of vapour produced increased significantly. Flavourings were also added to the 'juice' (the substance that is atomised) to make the vapour taste & smell like anything from mint to pineapple lumps.

With the clouds of vapour increasing in size and aroma, subjecting others to them in public indoor areas becomes intrusive and disruptive.

At Hashigo Zake we want people to be able to enjoy their beer unhindered and in comfort, so we will now be asking vape-pen users to please partake of them outdoors.