February 16, 2012

Thanks... Ø For Awesome... Nogne-O and Mikkeller... Brouwerij De Molen... Upcoming Treats... Finally...

Thanks

It's extremely important to thank those who do us a favour, so our first duty this week is to thank Dylan and Hayley, who came in and staffed the bar on Monday so the full Hashigo Zake roster could go out and celebrate Christmas 2011. Interestingly this is the earliest date yet that we've got to hold a staff Xmas do.

In the unlikely event that any customers were inconvenienced by being served by our irregular staff that night, we apologise.

Ø For Awesome

Plans are racing ahead for Tuesday's launch of Ø For Awesome, the collaborative beer hatched by Renaissance, 8 Wired and Nøgne Ø's Kjetil Jikiun when we brought him to New Zealand late last year.

Since the launch date is 364 days after a certain civil defence emergency the first two kegs are being donated by the brewers and all proceeds from the sale of their contents will go to the Red Cross's ongoing work in the Canterbury region.

Garage Project are coming to the party too. A small amount of their collaboration with Nøgne Ø (Summer Sommer) has been bottled and we'll be auctioning these bottles off to the highest bidders. Just ask at the bar to enter your bid for a bottle.

A video documenting the brew day has been shot and edited by our own Dylan Jauslin. At the time of writing it's being uploaded to youtube and should soon be available to view here.

Nøgne Ø and Mikkeller

Earlier this week we took delivery of large orders of beer from these two giants of Scandinavian craft brewing. The contents are making their way into our fridges at this moment. There are some pretty exciting beers among them.

Brouwerij De Molen

We got a pleasant surprise yesterday when Dave Waugh of local beer importer Malz & Hopfen mentioned that he has come to an agreement with the Netherland's Brouwerij de Molen to bring their beer to New Zealand. In the past we've stocked de Molen's collaboration with Mikkeller and have also got to taste one or two bottles that were brought in the suitcases of friends returning from Europe, so we know how good their beer is.

It's also great to see another importer importing the "right way" - i.e. with the approval of the brewery and without having the beer go through extra sets of hands.

Upcoming Treats

A few welcome returnees:

• Beastwars
• Big Eye
• Brew Moon Dark Side Stout
• Cassel's Milk Stout
• TPA
• Orange Avenue Wit
• Lots of Renaissance beers

Something new - Brewaucracy (Punkin Image, Bean Counter) have sent us what they're describing as a "lawnmower beer". It's called Honest Labour and knowing Greig McGill's fundamentalist libertarian leanings it's interesting to ponder whether the name is sincere or sarcastic. The beer itself is designed to be refreshing, using pale English and German malts and even some wheat malt, and Czech Saaz hops and weighing in at a modest 4.2% ABV.

A few notable or even sensational offerings remain on tap for a little longer:

• This week's new release - Ballast Point Tongue Buckler - a massive Imperial Red Ale.
• Three Boys Pineapple Lump Porter
• Liberty West Coast Blonde Ale - Amarillo Edition

Finally

We're sending a strike team of bar staff and a truck full of beer to Christchurch next week for the Great Kiwi Beer Festival. If you have friends or family there who might like to try the kinds of products that we take for granted here at HZ, be sure to suggest that they visit the "World of Beer Marquee".

February 9, 2012

Ø For Awesome... Baird News... Mikkeller Order... Super Ad... Tongue Buckler... Price Rises...

Ø For Awesome

The second beer to come out of last year's visit to New Zealand by Nøgne Ø's Kjetil Jikiun is ready for release. It's a collaboration brewed at Renaissance by Kjetil, Renaissance themselves and their staff-member and "tenant" 8 Wired.

The idea for the beer was to take the Nøgne Ø beer known as #100 and replace most of the ingredients with New Zealand alternatives. For those who haven't tried it, #100 is a difficult beer to categorise, falling somewhere between an Imperial IPA and a barley wine. The result is to be called Ø For Awesome.

The first brew day was documented photographically by the great Jed Soane here. There were a lot fewer present on day two when Søren re-brewed to double the batch size.

We're going to launch it here at Hashigo Zake on February 21st. As well as falling neatly into our calendar of Tuesday releases, it happens to be the eve of the anniversary of a certain earthquake. Søren has proposed that we use the event as some kind of fund-raiser, so does anyone really need another reason to come down?

By then we should also have received our latest order from Nøgne Ø. It's working its way through the bureaucratic and logistic obstacles that appear when multiple pallets of beer turn up at a New Zealand wharf. We're hoping to see it finally next week. Included will be bottles of a beer called India Saison, made in collaboration with Australia's Bridge Road brewery. It's a saison brewed with Australian hops, such as Galaxy and Stella. We have the version of the beer made when Bridge Road's Ben Kraus visited Nøgne Ø. We've heard that some bars in Melbourne are serving the second batch, made back at Bridge Road. We've also heard that it's delicious.

Meanwhile, our attention was brought to a disarmingly candid description of the brewery's early days written by Kjetil himself. It's surprising how difficult times have been for a business that from the outside seems like an unqualified success. Read it here.

Baird Beer

Our stocks of beer from our favourite Asian brewery - Baird - are running low, so another order has gone in and should be on the water soon. The Baird brewery are busy - after rumours flew around for months they recently announced plans to build a brand new brewery and they're doing nothing by halves. A few details are embedded in this account of their new year party.

Mikkeller Order

We're also waiting patiently for an order of fresh Mikkeller beer to arrive and we're told we'll be seeing them next week too. The main highlight will be the return of the Single Hop IPA beers - ten of them. We'll get some of the bottles in stock as soon as possible and some time in the near future we'll try and find a way to slot the kegs into our packed schedule.

We're also getting just a couple more cases of the Chateau d'Yquem barrel aged Belgian ale known as Mielcke & Hurtigkarl.

Super Ad

It was great to see a healthy and hungry crowd in on Monday to take in the Super Bowl and the two rival chillis. Sadly the local broadcaster somehow stripped us of the opportunity to see this seminal example of the TV commercial maker's art.

Tongue Buckler

Next week's new release is an import, courtesy of San Diego's great Ballast Point. It's Tongue Buckler, and we have just a few kegs of a beer described as an Imperial Red Ale. It should be a perfect sequel to this week's Liberty Yakima Scarlet, which proved very popular and will be back in limited quantities again soon.

Tongue Buckler will be on tap from 5pm on Tuesday.

Price Rises

According to a press release by the Hospitality Association yesterday's rise in the minimum wage "will result in price increases across the board for hospitality products". We'd like to reassure customers that while we face plenty of significant cost increases (such as a near doubling in our insurance premiums), a rise in the minimum wage does not trouble us. But wouldn't you think that businesses that need an act of parliament to get them to pay more than $13 per hour would keep a low profile?

February 2, 2012

ParrotDog... Yakima Scarlet... Foreign Approval... Growler Howler... This Long Weekend... A Few Teasers... Fine Dining... On Tap Soon... Other News...

ParrotDog

Unsurprisingly a big crowd turned up on Tuesday for the launch of ParrotDog's new beer - FlaxenFeather. There was even a pleasing turnout from some key figures in businesses like Tuatara Brewery, The Fork and Brewer and LBQ.

Those present not only got to try a pretty pleasant new golden ale, they witnessed the official announcement of one of Wellington's worst kept secrets: ParrotDog are building a new brewery in downtown Wellington.

In a few months time beers like BitterBitch, Bloodhound and FlaxenFeather will no longer be brewed under contract at Mike's and will instead be brewed in lower Vivian Street. The Matts have taken on a six year lease and ordered a 2500 litre brewery from China.

For years many speculated about why there were no breweries in Wellington city. It seems that there never was a good reason not to put a brewery in Wellington city, and ParrotDog, Garage Project and, perhaps one day, the Fork and Brewer are going to show us what we were missing out on all these years.

ParrotDog have pulled of a coup by stitching together the funding to let them take this audacious step into full-time brewing. Starting a week into the Year of the Dragon seems fitting. We have great expectations.

Yakima Scarlet

Next week's new release will be Liberty Yakima Scarlet. It's a Red IPA, or perhaps an American Red Ale, depending how you prefer to construct labels for contemporary beer styles. In other words it's a 6.5% ale with a complex and rich malt bill and hopped like a new world IPA.

The last time we had a completely new release from Liberty was the launch of M!ller's IPA, which was one of the busiest nights ever at Hashigo Zake.

Coming down from New Plymouth at the same time will be the latest in this summer's series of the West Coast Blonde Ales. This time it will be Amarillo - for many of us the only one even nicer than Simcoe last year.

Foreign Approval

We have theorised before that 8 Wired brewing started doing much better on ratebeer.com once the brewery started exporting. Not because exporting somehow made the beer better, but because beer geeks in New Zealand are either less frequent or harsher judges of beer.

Last week ratebeer released their annual summary of the previous year's ratings and it may have reinforced that impression. Because 8 Wired, who now export more beer than they sell domestically, have broken new ground for a New Zealand brewery. To the best of our knowledge they are the first New Zealand brewery to break into the worldwide top 100 and they dominated the Australasian top 50.

A glance at that top 50 shows some pretty good returns for Epic, Yeastie Boys and Renaissance, who are sending plenty of beer offshore too.

Growler Howler

While DB's trademarking of "Radler" remains the most notorious abuse of intellectual property law in the beer world as we know it, other cases pop up now and then. One of our informants has put us on to a shocker from none other than Hancock's, the local liquor distributor, owner of Glengarry's outlets and supplier of a handful of products (for now) to us. They are currently attempting to trademark Growler - the North American term for flagon or rigger.

The not-so-funny part of this is that if IPONZ are blissfully unaware that there are plenty of us around who know and maybe even use this term - just as they insist no-one in New Zealand knew what a radler was - they may just accept the application. And then someone sufficiently outraged will have to cough up $300 to correct a government department. On the usage of growler. The mind boggles.

But what we'd like to ask Hancocks is: why would a company try to take ownership of a term that they didn't invent?

Anyone curious can search for trade mark application 851281 at the IPONZ website. And while you're there, patent number 519778 is kind of interesting too.

This Long Weekend

This is our third Wellington Sevens since opening in 2009. In the days before the last two events we've exhorted our regular customers to take no notice of everything else going on in downtown Wellington, and just come down like it was a normal Friday or Saturday. Frankly it's made little difference - slightly fewer regular customers come in, we gain a few irregular ones (and keep a nervous eye on them) and at the end of the night we wonder what the fuss was about.

So our message now is: everyone do whatever you like. We'll truck along as normal and look forward to Monday.

Because on that day, which happens to be Waitangi Day, we get to put a few pretty special American beers on tap, slow cook a couple of enormous pots of chilli and screen the Super Bowl without worrying about whether the next customer is coordinated, coherent and clothed. It's actually a kind of therapy for us.

Now we've had a couple of requests to reserve tables during Monday afternoon. It shouldn't be that busy, but just in case, we'll accept a limited number of table bookings from the time this email is sent.

And in case anyone is in any doubt, we won't be applying any kind of public holiday surcharge on Waitangi Day.

A Few Teasers

It's been a month or two since we received a significant shipment from overseas and a couple of the shelves at Hashigo Zake aren't looking quite as overloaded with exotic goodies as usual. So here are a few hints about what's going to arrive soon.

• More Mikkeller! When we put Texas Ranger on tap it was such a success that we're investing in more of this in bottles and kegs of this chipotle pepper infused porter. In fact we're securing enough Texas Ranger bottles to sell a few on to selected bottle stores and supermarkets.

  We're also going for broke and getting a keg of every beer in the Mikkeller Single Hop IPA range. Some time in the next month or so, look out for a succession of these beers, which will include Simcoe, Sorachi Ace, Citra and Nelson Sauvin, among others. We admit that importing hoppy IPAs like these is risky, but these beers are guaranteed to be fresh and have been kept refrigerated for the bulk of their trip from Western Europe.

  Look out too for a couple more cases of the Chateau d'Yquem barrel-aged Belgian ale called Mielcke & Hurtigkarl.

• A new shipment from Nøgne Ø will be with us soon too. Once it's here supplies of beers like their Citra IPA and Imperial Stout should last for months.
• 
  
• More Californian beer:- a big shipment with enough of the spectacular Ballast Point IPAs (Big Eye and Sculpin) to last for... well weeks. We'll also have a couple of new beers from Green Flash, including Rayon Vert - a brettanomyces influenced Belgian pale ale. This shipment is still a way off and may not be with us until late March.

Fine Dining

There remain available places for our first dining event of the year - a five course pairing of dishes from five Asian countries with different beers. It takes place on Sunday (yes, Sunday!) February 12 at 6pm. Bookings can be made at the bar or here.

On Tap Soon

Look out for:

• A showdown of some of the New Zealand IPAs that came out in 2011 - Yeastie Boys Digital IPA on handpump, Mike's Taranaki Pale Ale and Hallertau Beastwars IPA.
• Croucher's new IPA made with, of all things, Australian Galaxy Hops.
• Bear Republic's great dopplebock - Carburator.
• A rare treat straight from Emerson's. This one depends on freight from the deep south and with the long weekend coming up we don't want to make too many promises. But keep an eye on the online menu for an Emerson's beer that isn't normally available on tap.

And did we mention that Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout and Green Flash Le Freak are on tap right now?

Other News

Yesterday, in our capacity as a distributor of American craft beer, Hashigo Zake became a paid up member of the American Brewers Association! Among various benefits we should start receiving the association's own periodical that we'll make available to regular customers along with other magazines.

Late last week we took customer contributions, topped them up with our own money and made a $US125 donation to the production costs of the Beer Hunter movie. Thanks to donations like this the fund raising exceeded its goal, as described here.

January 26, 2012

Subscriptions... Waitangi Bowl... Upcoming Releases... Our First Dinner of 2012... On Tap Soon...

Subscriptions

In the last few weeks we've had a flurry of new subscriptions to this email, and we warmly welcome those people.

A few people seem to have ended up in the purgatory that is having a "pending subscription" - they've signed up but not responded to the confirmation email that our service provider insists on to distinguish us from the spammers. If you suspect that someone you know intended signing up for this email but somehow still doesn't seem to be au fait with its contents each week, please suggest they check their email (or spam folder) for the confirmation email.

Waitangi Bowl

As mentioned previously, the NFL have contrived to schedule the 2012 Super Bowl (aka Super Bowl XLVI) for Waitangi Day, New Zealand time, meaning those who aren't taking part in or observing acts of protest, reconciliation or commemoration can spend their holiday watching the Super Bowl in glorious high definition.

To make the whole prospect even more appetising, we'll start late the night before and prepare not one but two big rich chillies. One will be a relatively conventional American one, with beef, kidney beans, and an authentic cocktail of hot and aromatic spices. The other will be a New Zealand reinterpretation, with lamb, manuka smoked chipotles and any another fitting, locally raised agricultural product we stumble over.

We understand that kick-off in this quaint event will be at 12:30pm.

This time of year is also when another sporting event that should excite us happens to come around. Unfortunately as much as we love the sporting spectacle that is the Wellington 7s, the event's effect on Hashigo Zake as a business are modest. So please join us in treating February 3 and 4 as business as usual.

Upcoming Releases

Judging by what was popular in our recent customer survey, the next two new releases should create some excitement. First up, next Tuesday, is the newest beer from the new local heroes ParrotDog. It's a golden ale made with "English malts and an array of aromatic hops". And predictably it's going to be known as FlaxenFeather.

It's possible that we'll come to an arrangement with the Matts that will let us be somewhat over-generous with samples of this beer. It's also possible that the lads will want to let some other news about their plans slip out during the evening.

A week later, on February 7, we have a new release from brewer of the year (tied with 8 Wired) - Liberty. It's an American Red Ale, made with a complex mix of grains and a tasty blend of US and New Zealand hops. And it will be known as Yakima Scarlet.

Joe has plans for this to become a regular beer but for the time being there will be very limited supplies of Yakima Scarlet.

Our First Dinner Of 2012

Among the highlights of last year for us was a series of dinners, matched with beers, staged by our resident occasional chefs, Shiggy and Sam. Shiggy has put his hand up to begin a new series of similar events in 2012, with a dinner of five dishes from different Asian cuisines on February 12. This is a Sunday, which is a departure from our practice of the last couple of years. We hope it's convenient for plenty of you - feedback is welcome.

The size of our kitchen means that places have to be strictly limited. We're taking bookings here.

On Tap Soon

As always there are treats in store for anyone coming down over the next few days. Look out for:

• Golden Eagle Coalface Stout.
• Yeastie Boys Digital IPA.
• Invercargill Boysenbeery.
• Renaissance Tribute Barley Wine.
• .. and finally, if everything else is consumed... Hallertau Beastwars IPA - our second instalment of the hottest new New Zealand IPA.

January 19, 2012

A Tie Is Not A Draw... The Results... The Great Kiwi Beer Festival... Bar-top Casks... Upcoming New Release Tuesdays... Anniversary Weekend... Waitangibowl...

A Tie Is Not A Draw

Cricket lovers will understand this distinction. A draw merely indicates an inability to arrive at a result, be it due to unfavourable conditions or an act of defiance by one side, and is only occasionally something to get excited about. A tie on the other hand says that after an extended contest in which the advantage may have changed hands many times and many contests-within-a-contest have had their own outcomes, the contestants really did arrive at the same score and to contrive some means of breaking the tie is to create an injustice. Ties are results to marvel at.

Now the results of this month's survey of what you, our customers, thought were the best beers and breweries of 2011 produced no fewer than two ties. Hashigo Zake officials could have surreptitiously created a new survey rule to find a winner or made a sneaky casting vote, but this would prove less than to reveal the naked truth to the waiting public: these two really are no better than each other equally great.

The Results

One of our ties came in probably the most important question: "What Was Your Favourite New Zealand Brewery of 2011?" If bets were being taken on a winner then 8 Wired would surely have been favourite. The Blenheim based contract brewery has enjoyed success after success since first releasing Rewired back in late 2009, including winning the top award at the 2011 BrewNZ Awards.

Meanwhile New Plymouth's Liberty has been making a similarly profound impression on drinkers since Joseph Wood told us in late 2010 that he was turning part of his home into a Customs Controlled Area so he could sell the output of the home brewery he had assembled. He wanted to sell beer to us in cornelius kegs (normally used for soft drinks and home brew) and encouraged us to adapt our systems to work with them.

We went along with Joe's suggestions and have been glad we did ever since. (Apart from one or two times when the plastic cornie connectors played up.) And what Liberty beer doesn't get consumed here at Hashigo Zake we now proudly distribute around the North Island.

We tipped off both 8 Wired's Søren and Liberty's Joe that they were doing well in our little survey and they were both pleased and gracious. Søren related this win to his triumph at BrewNZ last year, singling out the "kudos of customers and fellow beer geeks" as being closer to heart. Joe said he was "chuffed" that his decision to build his own brewery is working out, but added: "On the other hand - I am not suprised. The whole reason that I started brewing in the first place was so that I could brew beer that you can't normally buy."

The full results await your scrutiny at http://hashigozake.co.nz/2011survey.pdf. Our press release is there too - http://hashigozake.co.nz/2011surveyrelease.pdf.

The Great Kiwi Beer Festival

As mentioned last week, February the 25th is when Christchurch gets to host what might be the country's biggest beer festival. Their website went live a few days ago and the astute would have seen Hashigo Zake's name mentioned.

Now we share our range of imports with bars, bottle stores and supermarkets in places like Auckland, Hamilton, Greenmeadows, Palmerston North and Dunedin, but not, as yet, Christchurch. So at the Great Kiwi Beer Festival we're taking down some of our finest Californian, Norwegian and Danish beer, along with some from Malz & Hopfen's stable of German beer, and giving Christchurch a taste of what our regular customers get to choose from every week.

We encourage readers to encourage their Christchurch friends and family to support this event.

Bar-top Casks

Garage Project continue to make up for volume with variety. A couple of times recently they've surprised us by appearing with 20L casks of fresh, low-gravity real ale, ready to be tapped and poured straight from the plastic barrel. This time we've decided to hold one of these casks back a few days so we can at least tell you all about it.

So late tomorrow afternoon we'll be hoisting the second and last barrel of Left Field Best, an ordinary bitter (subtitled Out Of The Ordinary), onto the bar and filling glasses gravitarily.

Upcoming New Release Tuesdays

The hardest part of our new institution - New Release Tuesday - is squeezing all the upcoming releases in. We're already often releasing two beers on the same night.

Next Tuesday will be another double header. We've been holding back what is probably the only keg of Norwegian Pilsner in New Zealand. And Garage Project have decided that their collaboration with Norway's Nøgne Ø is ready. That beer, whose name is being changed due to a clash, is a strong rye pale ale with added pohutakawa honey. So both of those beers will be coming on at 5pm next Tuesday.

The schedule after that is crowded and not yet finalised. Liberty's Yakima Scarlet, a red IPA, will be with us in a week or so. As will ParrotDog's new blonde ale. Stay tuned.

Anniversary Weekend

Monday is a holiday for Wellingtonians, but as usual we'll be making no change to our opening hours and we won't be applying public holiday surcharges. In fact since it's a Monday our discount to SOBA members will apply.

Waitangibowl

Over the last couple of years we've enjoyed coaxing a few people down on a Monday afternoon to watch the Superbowl while eating and drinking something suitably American. This year the NFL have contrived to schedule the event on Waitangi Day. This may necessitate adding some kind of unlikely Kiwi adjunct to some quintessentially American dish. The imagination of our staff is being taxed right now.

January 12, 2012

Slow News Week

We don't have as much of our own news as usual this week, so here are a couple of pieces of other people's news that we happen to have an interest in, relating to beer festivals.

On Saturday February 25th - only six weeks or so away - a new beer festival kicks off in Christchurch. It's called the Great Kiwi Beer Festival and the organisers are ambitious. The venue is Hagley Park and there will be room for up to 8000 participants and we understand that a lot of tickets were sold before Christmas. The format creates plenty of room for corporate brewers, craft brewers and imports. In fact we're talking to the organisers about bringing a swag of our favourite imports from around the world and setting up a temporary Hashigo Zake within the larger festival. The full event website should go live any day at greatkiwibeerfestival.co.nz.

Meanwhile another festival that could be even more ambitious is being planned for Melbourne in May. It will be the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular and is a venture of the extraordinary Local Taphouse in St Kilda. It will feature 60 beers from Australia and New Zealand, all brewed specially for the event. Again we have a little inside knowledge of this event and have reason to believe it will be pretty special. And again the event's website is still in development but the odd piece of news is being posted on the Taphouse's blog at thelocaltaphouse.blogspot.com.

Two Appeals Repeated

Once again we invite customers to join us in supporting the completion of the Beer Hunter film, a documentary following two years late in the life of the great Michael Jackson. An appeal has gone out to raise funds to finish production and we'll match every dollar that anyone puts in the can behind the bar, make a consolidated donation and hopefully earn the right to host an early screening of the finished film.

Last week we launched our second (and therefore now annual) survey of what our customers think were the best beers, breweries and pies of 2011. In a short time we've matched the number of submissions we got twelve months ago, which is extremely encouraging. Some of the categories are foregone conclusions but other are producing neck and neck contests, and someone voting soon will end up making the casting vote. You can join in the fun at http://tinyurl.com/6s5sr2o.

We'll keep accepting responses for a few more days, then our outsourced survey analysis service will be engaged and promises to deliver preliminary results by this time next week.

Turning The Clock Back

After a couple of relatively quiet New Release Tuesdays during the Christmas and New Year period, on Tuesday of this week it felt like late 2011 all over again. A new Garage Project beer was on (L'il Red Rye, along with Ballast Point Even Keel) and many of Wellington's elite beer nerds were in attendance. You know who you are.

So we've another intriguing new release lined up for next Tuesday. It's another one fresh of the boat from San Diego's Ballast Point. Called Schooner, it's a wet hop ale - a beer made using un-kilned, fresh-off-the-vine cascade hops from the recent US crop.

It will come on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

Other Goodies

Some other treats to look out for over the next few days and nights:

• Yeastie Boys PKB back on tap.
• Another keg of 8 Wired's Haywired. Wheat beers that aren't specifically modelled on a German Weissbier or a Belgian Witbier usually struggle to make an impression. But we were impressed that this beer manages to be recognisably wheaty and a hoppy pale ale at the same time.
• Adlib Mashup - we've had Epic's and Liberty's versions of the open source New Zealand Pale Ale, now comes one from Christchurch.
• Liberty West Coast Blonde - Pacific Jade. Our allocation of the Pacific Jade edition of Liberty's West Coast Blonde should make it here before the weekend. Or maybe we'll pop a keg of the Simcoe version on instead. Or maybe both.

January 5, 2012

Funding The Beer Hunter... New Release Tuesday Double Header... Our Best of 2011 Survey... Another Intersection of Beer and Rock 'n Roll...

Funding The Beer Hunter

We've been following progress of the film The Beer Hunter for a while now. When it's finished the documentary will be a record of a period in the life of the late, great Michael Jackson. For those who haven't heard of him, Jackson was the world's foremost beer and whisky writer and probably did more to inspire the current boom in craft brewing than anyone else. The film will also raise funds for research into Parkinson's, the disease that killed Jackson in 2007.

A few days ago the producers announced a campaign to stitch together funding to help get the project finished using the Kickstarter website. Basically they're asking for donations but there are perks for those who donate enough, including copies of the finished product in DVD form and even the right to host a premiere. So we think if we pool our resources with enough of our customers' we can make a significant contribution and get to host some kind of screening here in our lounge to boot.

So we'll take donations here at the bar and for every dollar collected Hashigo Zake will donate another dollar. We'll take contributions until January 25. If all goes well we'll get to show the resulting film in some form later in the year.

New Release Tuesday Double Header

First of all we must apologise to anyone who expected Mikkeller 1000IBU to be this week's new release. The reasons we deferred this beer and put Ballast Point Dorado IIPA on instead are a little convoluted and we promise that 1000IBU will be on tap at a future date. We're confident that Dorado was an adequate substitute - it could certainly compete with 1000IBU for general hoppiness. And any self-respecting hop head should be excited to hear that there is some left at the time of writing.

Next Tuesday we're releasing not one but two new beers. And for a little while it might just feel like late 2011 because one of them will be from Garage Project.

That Garage Project beer will be L'il Red Rye. It's described as "a nice little red ale, made with Chinook and Summit hops, caramel, Munich and melanoidin malts and a good dose of rye."

The other beer will be another seasonal from Ballast Point - Even Keel Session Beer. No-one here has tried it before but we know that it's a rare thing for an American craft brewery - a session beer with less than 4% alcohol by volume.

Both beers will come on at 5pm on Tuesday.

Our Best of 2011 Survey

Since well before the end of last year critics have been piling in with their lists of best this and best that. With new beers going on tap here right up until the end of the year we chose to wait until 2012 to start speculating on what was best about 2011. And as tempting as it for Hashigo Zake management to overrule the opinions of those critics by publishing our own answers, we're content to collect and aggregate the answers of our customers.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying our annual survey is open and taking answers. Have your say here.

We like to think that the continual, collective sampling performed by our customers constitutes the most considered and thorough beer judging performed in New Zealand. So when we collate the survey results we'll have what we think are the truest indicators of what was good in New Zealand in 2011.

Having said that, please understand that the questions are built around the range of products that we've served here in 2011, and tap beer products in particular. There are occasional chances to offer answers outside of our suggestions, but if your drinking experiences in 2011 were too different from ours then you might just find it frustrating.

Another Intersection Of Beer and Rock 'n Roll

A few months ago Stephen Plowman at Hallertau in West Auckland launched a beer to coincide with a tour by Wellington metal band Beastwars. Bottles of that beer - Beastwars IPA - sold out everywhere in absurdly quick fashion. (We never saw any.) But it has been re-brewed and any day we will join Auckland outlets like Hallertau and Golden Dawn in having this Auckland homage to Wellington music on tap.