July 27, 2017

 

News bulletin #401

July 27, 2017

Urban Pale & Jealous Plums

Tomorrow night we simultaneously launch two new beers that have quite a bit of significance.

First there’s La Sirène’s Urban Pale Ale.

There’s a school of thought that, once consumers have drunk huge volumes of cleanly fermented, highly hopped pale ale, they start to crave variations that are lighter, subtler or that incorporate other flavours. Which may help explain the phenomenon of the citrus-infused IPA. And it probably contributed to a resurgence of interest in beers with more fermentation character, such as saisons. In turn, this has created interested in hybrids that might bridge the gap between beers defined by their hop flavours and beers defined by their fermentation character, with the so-called Belgian IPA an early example.

But Belgian IPAs can taste like a violent battle between strong phenolic flavours left by the yeast and aggressive hop flavours and bitterness from hops, with the drinker’s palate left as rubble.

La Sirène Urban Pale looks for a far more harmonious relationship between hops and fermentation flavours, by bringing out flavour notes they have in common, such as citrus pith and dry, peppery spice. The brewery’s years-long investment in developing and tuning their house yeast strain has no doubt helped make this possible.

For a short time Almanac in San Francisco made a beer called Mandarina that did this beautifully, but that beer is, sadly, retired. It’s likely that others will attempt this brewing trickery in the near future, but we encourage our customers to come in and snap up the opportunity to drink Urban Pale while it’s on tap.

Meanwhile we get to join several other venues around the country launching Jealous Plums. It’s a Berliner Weisse aged on greengage plums. It’s made and sold by Hallertau, but is based on the National Homebrew Champion beer of Dunedin’s Jamie McQuillan.

Now Jamie will be releasing beer under his own Cell Division brand very soon. In fact on August 12, we’re hosting the Cult Beer Barn, in which beers of a Belgian/farmhousie nature, made by La Sirène, Craftwork and Cell Division, will be on tap simultaneously. Which means tomorrow night’s double launch is a kind of a preview (but with different individual beers).

Craftwork

Speaking of Farmhouse styles of beer and Craftwork themselves… we just received a fresh order from Oamaru’s finest brewers of Belgian styles of beer. It means that the supply in our fridge of their bottled beers has been topped up, while we also have two kegs tucked away for Cult Beer Barn on Aug 12. Those fresh supplies of bottles include four that we’ve had before:

• Red Bonnet
• Saison Poire
• Saison Zest
• Saison Anise

And two that are new to us:

• Angel – judging by the lengthy description on the bottle, this beer is inspired by Orval - the original brett-condition, Trappist legend. 
• Riverstone 10 – a saison brewed to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Riverstone Kitchen, the celebrated restaurant on State Highway 1, north of Oamaru. It won a silver medal at this year’s Australian International Beer Awards. (The beer won a medal, not the restaurant.)

New Release Tuesday - Smoke and Arson Edition

On Tuesday we celebrate the arrival of Graphic Brewing's third beer, which curiously coincides with the first anniversary of the time someone tried to burn us down.

Oh how we laughed.

But seriously, My City Is On Fire is a smoked porter, that we get to release on Tuesday before it makes its way around the country in cans and kegs.

We also invite any customers who might be inclined to take it personally that an arsonist tried to burn down a bar that you frequent, to come down and figuratively wave two fingers in their direction by enjoying a glass of My City Is On Fire.

Bottle Pour Saturday

All the new (to New Zealand) products that have arrived from La Sirène give us a chance to dedicate a bottle pour to them. In fact there's every chance that we'll hold more such bottle pours of different La Sirène releases in the weeks to come.

This week we'll be offering small servings by the glass and from the bottle of Cidre and Bière de Provision.

Cidre is La Sirène's first cider and they went to extraordinary lengths to create an authentic French style. Cidre uses a French variety of cider apples grown in North Bendigo. The apples were pressed and exposed to the air at the orchard, to try and capture some local microflora, before being fermented, bottled and aged at the brewery. The final gravity of this is under 1000, yet its fruit flavours more than cancel any perception of dryness.

Here's how they drink it at the brewery. Maybe we'll settle for flutes.

Bière de Provision is a super dry and tart pale ale, fermented with wild yeast and coming out at just 3.9% ABV, making it ideal as a Saturday afternoon post-gardening tonic.

On Tap Now

• Te Aro Dragon APA
• Garage Project Garagista IPA
• Omnipollo Karluminium
• Beer Baroness Lady Danger Red Ale (Handpump)
• Hey Day Moongold (Handpump)
• Omnipollo Nebuchadnezzar IIPA
• Te Aro Oatmeal Stout
• Baylands Party Pils
• Leipzig Ritterguts Gose
• Wild & Woolly Sooty Albatross
• Mike's Vanilla Coffee Porter

Highlights

Still on tap are the two pretty amazing beers from Sweden’s Omnipollo that we tapped on Friday, as well as Ritterguts Gose, which (apart from a 40-odd year hiatus) has been made since 1824, making it pretty much the most authentic gose any of us will ever taste.

Look Out For

As well as getting Hallertau to send us Jealous Plums, we picked up a keg of their IPA called I Like Your Speakers. This beer celebrates the sound system at Lovebucket Bar in Karangahape Road in Auckland. Hallertau are the majority owners of Lovebucket, which is a must-visit for some of us when in Auckland.

Music

There's no live music this Saturday, but then we make up forthat with three in two weeks:

On Aug 5 it’s Jellyroll Blues and The Pussycat Dues. 

Then during the week of Beervana we have live music on both the 11th (the Cosmonauts) and 12th (Nick Granville Funk Trio) of August.


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July 20, 2017

 

News bulletin #400

Event Overload

We’re celebrating the 400th issue of this email by bombarding our readers with a hailstorm of event news. Buckle in!

Fredags mys med omnipollo - Friday with Omnipollo

Tomorrow – July 21!

Our friends at Regional Wines, Beers and Spirits recently acquired a load of beer from the Swedish Nomadic Brewery Omnipollo and we couldn't help but scoop up a few kegs and bottles.

This Friday we are tapping both Nebuchadnezzar and Karluminium plus adding Amun, Nebuchadnezzar and Zodiak to our fridges. Plus our in-house Swede is making Swedish meatballs for the occasion.

Beer descriptions from the brewers:
Nebuchadnezzar IIPA (8.5%) “Neb” is a home brew recipe that has been scaled up with no consideration to economies of scale. Some say idiotic, and as an economist I would have to agree. Get fresh or die trying.

Karluminium Sour Wheat Ale w/ Raspberries and Cherries (6%)
"Karl is a magical human. Karl deserves a beer for his birthday. Here it is – a cherry wheat sour."

Amun Oat milk DIPA Collab w/The Veil (8%)
"Working closely with Virginia’s rising beer star, The Veil, we conceived and brewed this soft yet bright Imperial IPA. Mashed in with several grains and topped of with 100 liters of oat milk and an abundance of hops."

Zodiak IPA (6.2%)
"Our house IPA. A blend of grains, untouched post fermentation and aspiringly hopped with Simcoe, Citra and Centennial."

July 24 New Release Tuesday

A few weeks ago in edition #398 of this email we talked about the arrival in New Zealand of actual gose from an actual Leipzig brewer of gose called Rittergutsbrauerei. We also managed to source a keg of that very beer and are going to pop it on tap next Tuesday as our New Release.

Of course, calling a beer that’s hundreds of years old a new release is a bit of a stretch. But we’re giving ourselves a little licence given the plethora of new beers appearing almost daily.

July 28 Double Bill

On July 28 we’re joining in not one, but two, coordinated, nationwide releases of pretty interesting new beers.

First there’s Jealous Plums. There’s plenty to say about this beer. It’s the traditional commercial rebrew of the most recent champion beer at SOBA’s National Homebrew Champs. Once again it’s Hallertau Brewery that hosts this great tradition. The champion home brewer this time is Dunedin’s Jamie McQuillan. Jamie has a pretty interesting background and we recommend having a look at the profile of him that Beertown.nz wrote a few months ago.

Jealous Plums is a Berliner Weisse aged on greengage plums from Central Otago.

The timing of this release is fortuitous as Jamie is in the process of going commercial in his own right, albeit on a small scale. Read on to learn more about Cell Division, which might just be the best brewery name we’ve heard in years.

Simultaneously on July 28, we're joining in the nationwide launch of the beer that is comfortably La Sirene's biggest commercial success over in Australia - Urban Pale. This hoppy, citrusy reinterpretation of a saison has been winning friends in Australia since it was launched late last year.

FARMHOUSE FOR THE PEOPLE

August 1 Smoke Bomb

As mentioned last week, we’ve stumbled across what might be the most bittersweet coincidence of beer release and anniversary ever. Graphic Brewing have a new smoked porter called My City Is On Fire and we’re celebrating the first anniversary of the night we added arson to the list of near disasters we’ve had to live through.

So on August 1, we’re delighted to put My City Is On Fire into our New Release Tuesday slot.

Road to Beervana

The Road to Beervana programme is live and our contribution to the official catalogue of events is in there – namely The Blind Leading The Hype. It’s a little innovation we thought up that involves turning off the flow of product information that we usually work hard to maintain. We’ll put a bunch of probably great IPAs on tap but say as little as possible about them and leave it to the voting consumers to decide which deserve to have a fuss made about them. All of which will lead to a big reveal on August the 9th.

Missing from the official programme are the events that could only be put together more recently, such as Cult Beer Barn. This will be a one night celebration of beers and breweries that nail their colours to the Farmhouse mast. We’ll dedicate most of our taps to beers from Jamie McQuillan’s Cell Division, Craftwork and La Sirène.

On Tap Now

• Beer Baroness Bearded Lady
• Beer Baroness Betty BamBaLam BIPA
• Deep Creek Black Tamarillo Gose
• Craftwork Crikey Dick
• North End Fieldway APA
• Beer Baroness First Lady APA (Handpump)
• Fitzpatricks Imperial Porter
• Townshend Lioness Pilsner
• Adroit Theory Love of the Damned
• Beer Baroness Rye-ot Grrl IPA (Handpump)
• Baird Suruga Bay IIPA

Highlights

The last two weeks' new releases are somehow both still available. One is the distinctly Brettanomyces influenced pale ale from Craftwork called Crikey Dick. And the other is Deep Creek's highly quaffable Tamarillo gose.

For many of us the flagship beer from Tauranga's Fitzpatrick's is the Imperial Porter. It was inspired by the celebrated Gonzo Imperial Porter by Flying Dog that we know Craig Fitzpatrick got to try back in 2009. It's rare and comes in a small keg so we recommend taking advantage promptly.

Music

The Vincent Vega Trio return at 9:30pm this Saturday with their brand of surf rock and brandalised artwork.

Two weeks later (Aug 5) it’s Jellyroll Blues and The Pussycat Dues. 

Then we break out of the pattern of fortnightly gigs for Beervana week, by hosting live music on both the 11th (the Cosmonauts) and 12th (Nick Granville Funk Trio) of August. 

July 13, 2017

Anniversaries

Beervana just announced their brewery lineup for this year and there’s less than a month until New Zealand’s highest profile beer festival. It was around the time of Beervana, way back in 2009, that we started trading here at Hashigo Zake. So every Beervana is a kind of anniversary for us.

From this year it’s also the anniversary of something slightly less joyous – the time someone tried to burn us down, on August the 5th, the Friday before Beervana 2016.

It seems that we’ll never know whether the culprit was attempting a little petty vandalism with the paper towel dispenser in the gents or actually wanted to burn the building down and kill all our customers and staff. And perhaps if the arsonist was under the legal purchase age for alcohol then the case would have been quickly solved and we’d know the truth.

But hey, no-one was injured, we got to know how a gender-neutral bathroom works and most of the gents bathroom repairs were funded by insurance, so… no harm, no foul??

And now by glorious coincidence our friends at Graphic Brewing have a new beer to launch. And it’s called… My City Is On Fire. It’s a smoked porter. So on August the 1st we’re launching My City Is On Fire and simultaneously waving extended digits at our unindicted arsonist.

New Release Tuesday, Cook Strait Crossing Permitting

Once again Oamaru’s Craftwork have given (well, sold) us the rare gift of kegged beer.

Crikey Dick is described as a “bretty, hoppy pale ale” and a small keg of it is on its way. In theory it will make it in plenty of time to be next week’s New Release Tuesday. But the odds of it making it here by Tuesday are diminishing by the hour thanks to those fresh breezes we’re enjoying right now.

Is this a good time to remind everyone that there's no weather underground?

On Tap Now

• Wheaty Brewing Corps/Hawkers Baklava Brown Ale
• Deep Creek Black Tamarillo Gose
• Kowloon Bay / Black Kite / Hong Kong Beer Co. CBAHK Wei(zen) The Dragon
• Willie Smiths Cerasus Sour
• Fitzpatrick's Fitzy's Special
• North End Iron Sands Stout (Handpump)
• Townshend Lioness Pilsner
• Baird Rising Sun Pale Ale
• Beer Baroness Rye-ot Grrrl Rye IPA
• Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout
• Townshend Sutton Hoo (Handpump)

Highlights

A few goodies remain from last Friday’s Smash ‘n’ GABS, when we featured a very carefully selected set of GABS leftovers. Amazingly there’s even some of the mouth-tingling, szechuan-infused Wei(zen) The Dragon left.

This week’s new release – Deep Creek’s Black Tamarillo Gose is still there as well.

Bottle Pour Saturday

This Saturday we’re doing a bottle pour made up of two recent, local barrel-aged releases. The first is Garage Project’s Rebel County, their collaboration with the Jameson distillery. GP made a beer inspired by Jameson’s whiskey, with Irish malt, maize, honey, hazelnuts, vanilla and dried apricots (although, curiously, no coconut), then aged it in Jameson whiskey barrels. The result is Rebel County.

Alongside that will be Kereru’s Night Spirit. This is an Imperial Stout aged in New Zealand Whiskey Co barrels.

Bottles of both of these beers constitute substantial investments for the adventurous drinker, but on Saturday we’re offering a taste of each for a very reasonable price.

Music!

The Saturday after next sees the Vincent Vega Trio return with their distinctive surf rock (or perhaps that's surf RnB).

Next month we'll again have an extra live gig to help entertain patrons on both evenings of Beervana (August 11 and 12). We'll host the Cosmonauts on the Thursday and the Nick Granville Funk Trio on the Saturday.

Our events calendar can be viewed any time here.

Finally...

It's a while since we bashed New Zealand's industrial brewers in this newsletter, but an opportunity has appeared that's too good to turn down.

One of DB's sibling subsidiaries of Heineken just got slapped with a nice big fine for doing what DB (and Lion) do here better than anyone - behaving anti-competitively. Sadly this ruling was on the other side of the world.

Those of a like mind to us can savour the news here.

July 6, 2017

Smashed 'em Bro

As reported right here, seven days ago, we have committed whatever deeds were necessary and have secured a selection of the very best of this year’s GABS festival. Which means that tomorrow we host the second Smash ‘n’ GABS.

Here’s the lowdown on what will be on tap:

Craft Beer Association of Hong Kong Brewers Guild
WEI(ZEN) OF THE DRAGON
We’ve had Singaporean and Japanese beer plenty of times before, but this is almost certainly our first Hong Kong beer. This refreshing citrus spiced Weizen starts with subtle sweetness from dried dates, and finishes with a warm and tingly feeling, provided by Sichuan peppercorns.

Colonial Brewing Co Margaret River
RYE 'N GOSE SLING
Allow us to submit Western Australia’s entry in this year’s Gose pun contest. “A lightly soured Gose with rye malt, Margaret River seawater and a dosing of West Winds Broadside gin. Finished with a few US hops, if Gin Sling was a beer, it'd be this.”

Feral Brewing Company
DARK MATTER
Choc, vanilla, coffee, lactose.

Hawkers Beer / @Wheaty Brewing Corps
BAKLAVA BROWN
Hawkers Beer is a Melbourne brewery founded by Lebanese combat brewer Mazen Hajjar, who also happens to be one of Australia’s fiercest critics of the anticompetitive practices of the industrial brewers. For that reason alone, we’re fans.

Wheaty Brewing Corps is the brewing offshoot of Adelaide’s trailblazing Wheatsheaf Hotel.

The idea of these two outfits collaborating on a beer is utterly compelling from the start. But the beer is pretty attractive in its own right. It’s a “Big Brown Ale with Honey, Pistachio, Rosewater, Orange Blossom Water and Spices.”

Nail Brewing Australia
SUPER VPA
Perth’s Nail Brewing are masters of dark and black beer but this is an over-the-top IPA. “Born of the planet Hoptom, this is a Super VPA sent to planet earth to make the world a better place. The powers of hops will give strength to all those who imbibe.”

Willie Smith's Organic Cider
CERASUS SOUR
Our spies at GABS insist that this cider is in fact uncannily like Rodenbach Ale. “A barrel aged sour cherry wine, paying homage to farmhouse fruit beers of Belgium. Wild fermentation of black Lapin cherry, barrel conditioning in ex-Lark Distillery casks and a heady mix of bacteria and yeast.”

Smash ‘n’ GABS starts tomorrow at midday and continues while stocks last. We’ll be offering a six-beer (well, five beer and one cider) ticket.

Gose The Extra Mile

The style known as Gose has made a storming comeback over the last few years, not unlike the way the Belgian Witbier style came back from oblivion a couple of decades earlier.

Some part of this can be explained by brewers’ desire to come up with beers with puns for names. But at least a little can be credited to the merits of this salty, tart and slightly funky take on a wheat beer.

For many of us though, all we’ve got to try are versions of the style made by brewers in countries such as our own. This is simply because there are so few examples of the style that can honestly show some kind of lineage back to the traditional goses from Liepzig. The style was all but lost, after all.

But now a limited supply of beer from Liepzig’s Rittergutsbrauerei , the oldest brewer of Gose there is,has made it to New Zealand. Some of us were allowed a sample and can vouch for its merits. It was also a pleasant surprise to learn that those “new world” interpretations we’ve been trying over the last few years are pretty close to the mark.

But don’t take our word for it. Come on in and grab a bottle of Ritterguts Gose. Or hold out for the day (in the near future) when we sneak it on tap.

On Tap Now

• Townshend BlitzGreig IPA (Handpump)
• Fitzpatrick's Citra IPA
• Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale
• Gigantic Hearts & Stars Saison
• Adroit Theory Love of the Damned
• Oskar Blues Mama's Little Yella Pils
• Modern Times Mega Fortunate Islands
• Graphic Origin Story Citrus APA
• Garage Project Snug (Nitro)
• Oskar Blues Ten Fidy Imperial Stout
• Townshend American Amber Ale

Highlights

Our General Manager Rory went to extreme lengths to get our temporary nitro taps pouring Garage Project Snug in time for the Lions game last weekend, so we encourage customers to take advantage of the fruits of that experiment.

And speaking of amazing stouts, don't miss out on a rare keg of Oskar Blues Ten Fidy.

New Release Gose

In keeping with the unintended theme of this broadcast, we can announce that next Tuesday's New Release will be a gose! Brewery of the moment, Deep Creek, have been putting out a series of fruited goses lately, under the Steam Funk name, and they've been goooood.

Coming up next is Black Tamarillo Gose - on tap from 5pm on Tuesday.

Music!

This Saturday we welcome Black Spider Stomp back to the lounge, so they can transport us once again to Paris in the mid-20^th century and unchain the memory of Django Reinhardt.

If in doubt, have a little listen at bandcamp.

All with no cover charge, naturellement.

Then on the 22nd it will be the turn of the Vincent Vega Trio.