February 21, 2019

Multiple Releases

This week we have two beer releases to alert readers to, and both are quite special as far as we're concerned.

First up, on Tuesday, comes a beer that we actually helped to make. To give credit where it’s due, this beer is very much the work of brewpub Fortune Favours, but our own Steven Wells made every contribution in ideas and labour that he possibly could.

So Steven and Fortune Favours brewer Dale Cooper set out to make a Brut IPA with as many of the innovations that have helped develop this style as they could pull off. Specifically those innovations were:

• An incredibly light malt base – to the extent that they replaced about 15% of what should have been barley malt with rice. Which puts this beer in some pretty interesting company – we’re thinking Budweiser and the category of beer known in Japan as happoshu.
• The use of enzyme-of-the-moment (amyloglucosidase) to make sure that every possible gram of starch in the grain bill got converted to a fermentable sugar.
• Making a single, but very large, hop addition, right at the end of the boil, ensuring that the hops contribute far more aroma and flavour than bitterness.

They’re pretty confident that they’ve come up with a magnificently dry, hoppy and drinkable monster of an IPA, weighing in at around 7%, but not troubling the senses with overt bitterness, sweetness or astringency.

This beer is being called Concrete Architect – a Brut(alist) IPA and we’ll be putting it on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

A special occasion needs cake, so we’re going to offer rice cakes, a.k.a. mochi balls, to see if any of the rice flavour in the mochi reflects the flavour profile of the beer.
 

And A Chaser..

Meanwhile…. We were recently contacted by our old friend Mike Kush of Chasing Harvest. His company is mainly about wine, and every year they make a kind of slow, seasonal commute around some of the world’s best known wine-making regions, including Central Otago.

While in the Deep South, as well as making wines under their Chasing Harvest label, they brew a beer every year, blend it with Pinot Noir juice, then ferment it and age it in pinot barrels. The result is There Be Dragons.

We’ve been taking a small allocation of bottles every year and believe that these barrel-aged hybrids are unusual and very special.

This year Mike has offered us a keg of the 2017 vintage, which is the newest, so we’re putting it on tap next Thursday. We understand that Mike will be passing through Wellington and will be here! He and we are also making available bottles of a few previous vintages AND we’re even investing in a few Chasing Harvest wines to offer at the same time.

By The Glass

We recently received new stock of Ritterguts Gose, which is the nearest thing that there is to a gose from before the style died and had to be revived.

We also grabbed some stock of its stable-mate Urgose Märzen, which is another revived style (the Märzen-Gose), but with smoked salt, cinnamon and pine cones.

Intrigued? On Saturday we’ll offer 150ml of both beers for just $10. That will be from 3pm until 9pm.

La Bête

It’s going to be great to welcome gypsy jazz back to our lounge, for the first time since New Year’s Eve, when a lineup with some of the same musicians as this put on a performance worthy of the end of the year.

This time our guests are La Bête, made up of Adrian Jensen (guitar), Mark Sommerville (guitar), Dan Yeabsley (bass) and Mike Jensen (drums).

La Bête play from 10pm on Saturday, and our cover charge is still (STILL!) $0.

Guilty Pleasure Cinema

Sunday’s movie is another important and fondly remembered 80s piece – Streets Of Fire. While this Rock ‘n Roll, action flick has its critics, they’re officially in the minority, plus it has spawned some delicious descriptions:- “extravagantly stylized pulp burlesque”, “pinnacle of 80s guilty pleasure cinema”.

Streets of Fire screens at 7pm on Sunday on the cinema screen in our lounge. Here's a trailer. Soundtrack available on record and cassette!

Finally

Yesterday our attention was drawn to this tweet:

It's hard to let fighting talk about sexy ways to get real time ETAs go by without reminding everyone that our electronic menus, complete with real time bus info, remain sexily unique. But hey, sexiness is in the eye of the beholder.

February 14, 2019

By The Glass

This week we revive our tradition of offering rare beer by the glass instead of the full bottle. This has the advantage of letting you savour some of those beers that almost never turn up on tap, without making an investment of $40 or much more in a whole bottle.

We’ll start this Saturday with Kereru’s Night Spirit – their whisky barrel aged imperial stout. We did in fact have this on tap, briefly, back in October. But it could be a long time before we get to do that again. So before everyone forgets just how nice it was, we’ll offer 100ml pours of this beer for $12. A full, 500ml bottle costs $55 over the bar.

Night Spirit is Imperial Moonless Stout that has spent ten months in barrels that originally held bourbon, and then cradled whiskey at the NZ Whiskey Co for 20 years. And all that beautiful boozy history is reflected in the finished beer.

We’ll offer Night Spirit in 100ml pours from 3pm until 9pm on Saturday.

Spectrum Shadow

Spectrum Shadow - playing this Saturday at 10pm - are a new musical act, and not just new to us. But they’re another permutation of some of Wellington’s well known musical talent, since they include the very familiar Dayle Jellyman (Dangerous Experts, Three Rays, Death Hos, The Rumble) on keys and Mike Jensen (La Bete) on drums along with the not so familiar Russell Henderson on sax and Dan Ryland on guitar.

Their listed musical genre is “vintage funk with a psychedelic twist”, which could mean just about anything. Maybe their very colourful, ‘70s logo tells us as much about what to expect. We anticipate archaicly timeless music with flare, best enjoyed with a relaxing beverage on a sultry summer evening.

Our musical programme is getting a little busier over the next month and is packed with some genuine highlights. Rather than enumerate them here (again), we encourage readers to bookmark useful links such as our own website's events page, the Hashigo Zake Lounge's facebook page or our listings on eventfinda.

On Tap Now

• Choice Bros Boogaloo Pale Ale
• South Cider Boysenberry Cider
• Brouwerij Boon Geuze Boon Sélection
• Tinker Tailor Hazy APA
• Deep Creek Hoppy McHopface
• Deep Creek Lagerita
• Kereru Moonless Stout
• Renaissance Odyssey Witbier
• Kereru Pohutukawa Golden Ale
• Choice Bros Reet Petite Red IPA
• Kereru Silverstream Pale Ale (hand pump)
• Deep Creek Undercurrent Pilsner

Strange Women Lying In Ponds Distributing Swords

Long before Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings, or Game Of Thrones, the 1981 movie Excalibur was arguably the most memorable filmed work of medieval scrapping and mythology. It was full of spectacle, stirring music and severed limbs and was sprinkled with some great acting – particularly from Nicol Williamson’s Merlin. Oh and there’s the small matter of a quest for the Holy Grail.

Does Sunday night entertainment get any better?

On the cinema screen in our lounge at 7pm on Sunday.

Super Duper Rugby

It’s another warm, sunny summer, which can mean only one thing – it’s rugby time. It’s no secret that interest in the tournament now simply known as Super Rugby peaked some years ago. But this is a world cup year, which means that even if you don’t lie awake at night worrying about the Hurricanes, it’s everyone’s patriotic duty to lie awake at night worrying about the nation’s depth at 1st five, number 8 and lock. And the best way to be informed about these issues is by wasting Friday and Saturday evenings glued to a telly.

Or not.

We’re maintaining our Sky Sport subscription for now, so for the foreseeable future we give customers the option of having these games shown on one of the modest screens we have in parts of the bar. And this arrangement commences tomorrow evening, when the Chiefs host the Highlanders. The Hurricanes play a late game in Sydney on Saturday evening.

New Release Tuesday – Barista, 2nd Attempt

Kasteel Barista was meant to be our new release a couple of weeks ago, only for a different beer to be delivered in its place. This time we have the keg on the premises already, so we’re rescheduling it for Tuesday the 19th.

It’s a Belgian quad, with all the big, malty, boozy implications that that style brings. But it also has coffee and chocolate added, just to make 100% sure that it’s one of the most decadent beers you could ever sip on.

Raymond Chan

Raymond Chan was a wine critic and educator whose expertise helped thousands of Wellington consumers make informed buying choices and get more enjoyment from their wine drinking. And even better, he provided a lot of entertainment to those consumers along the way. So his death last weekend is a massive loss and a cause of no end of sadness to many people.

Others can explain Raymond’s career better, so we recommend reading these obituaries.

Those us at Hashigo Zake who knew Raymond admire his work and mourn his passing. We extend our deepest sympathies to his family and friends.