March 7, 2013

Too Crafty or Not Crafty Enough?... Funking Out... Geeking Out... Rocking Out... Look Out For...

Too Crafty or Not Crafty Enough

Hashigo Zake endorses and congratulates Newmarket Liquorland on their tweet that shook the world. Their simple assertion that the insult to many brewers contained in the packaging of Crafty Beggars beer was reason not to stock the product is a great example of the market holding the industrial breweries to account for their marketing practices.

By the way, there is a misconception out there that Liquorland is owned by DB. It was actually sold to Foodstuffs some time ago and the individual stores are (we understand) now owner-operated. Which helps explain how several of them, including Newmarket Liquorland, came to be customers of the wholesale arm of Hashigo Zake.

Funking Out

A few weeks ago Funk Estate's (and our own) Shiggy made a lightning trip to the Twisted Hop brewery in Christchurch to collaborate on a strong dark rye saison. Yes, once again Funk Estate are making a black version of a normally pale beer. The result - Funkn'Twisted is getting a release at a Belgian festival in Christchurch on Saturday. We'll follow up with a release here on Tuesday. Funkn'Twisted is described as being bitter, fruity, slightly tart and funky with caramel, chocolate and raisin flavour.

We're also expecting to have some of a second (parti-gyle) beer, called Twisted Funk, made by performing a second mash with the same malts used in Funkn'Twisted. This lower gravity beer has been hopped with Sorachi Ace, so maybe we can expect some lemon curd with the caramel and chocolate malts.

There's talk of getting both beers on both handpump and tap simultaneously, although this will depend on the cooperation of the logistics industry. Whatever turns up on Tuesday will be fresh, slightly unpredictable and on tap from 5pm.

Geeking Out

We've had our share of publicity lately, but being mentioned on the Dominion Post's technology page might just be a new pinnacle. (Down the bottom, not related to the "Budget desktop system for under $700" headline.)

But really the credit belongs to Open Source and Android evangelist, Robin Sheat. Robin's app is here.

Coincidentally, as Robin's work was being recognised, another regular customer, Jay Neilson, was working on an application to do a similar job for Windows 8 phones. That is now available here.

We're flattered and grateful that some of our favourite customers have gone to this much trouble to make it easy for us all to know what's on tap.

Easy for Android and Windows users, that is.

While we're getting technical, here's an article on Wired magazine's site giving us a scientific justification (if one was necessary) for disliking green bottle beer.

Rocking Out

The Nick Granville Trio return this Saturday for more funk and R&B. As usual, it's a 10pm start and a non-existent cover charge.

Look Out For

As always, there's no shortage of goodies on the horizon. For example:

• From Christchurch's Resolution comes an Octoberfest beer called Biergarten.
• From Auckland's Schipper's Beer comes another lager style with Germanic origins - Herr X, a Vienna Lager.
• We've stocked up on beers from Renaissance and Hallertau, which means plenty of beers like Elemental Porter, MPA, Statesman and Maximus IPA.
• Our last keg (for now) of Oggy's Torrey Pines IPA.

February 28, 2012

Craft Beer College

After a successful run of tastings in 2012, as well as this year's "Faux Craft" tastings, the Craft Beer Wānanga are bringing back their original curriculum for a run of Saturday afternoon tastings on our very own premises. The first is on March 9. We wholeheartedly endorse CBC's work and encourage anyone wanting some tutoring with their beer drinking to head along to http://www.craftbeercollege.co.nz/Coming-Up.html for full details on how to participate.

New Release Liberty

Next week's new release is courtesy of Liberty. It's called Midnight and it's a double oatmeal stout. It will be one of the last new beers to come out of the suburban New Plymouth garage that was the first Liberty Brewery. As usual it will be on tap from 5pm on Tuesday. In the words of the brewer (who rarely holds back if he's pleased with his results), "it's beautiful beer".

A portion of the batch is currently aging in a barrel and will be released as Midnight Deluxe in a little while.

Music on Saturday

Our music on Saturday night comes from travelling acoustic singer/songwriter Bryce Wastney. It should be some contrast with last Saturday's blues. As always it's a 10pm start and no cover charge.

Stout

Today's the last official day of summer (depending whose arbitrary determination of these things you go by) and in anticipation of plummeting temperatures we've got some enormous stouts lined up. One was announced above, being Liberty's Midnight. As well we'll have Moo Brew Barrel Aged Imperial Stout, which has been resting in our cool store since last year's Beervana, and Left Coast's Voodoo Stout.

What's Going On?

With the Great Kiwi Beer Festival behind us we don't have so much news of our own this week. But it looks as though New Zealand's brewing industry has a hydro lake's worth of news and the dam is about to burst. As hinted above, we know that Liberty's 300L brewery will be moving to a new home soon. But the air is thick with rumours at the moment and they relate to transactions between large and small breweries. The aggressive buying programmes of Lion, DB and (In)dependent Liquor may be about to bear fruit, although if you believe one rumour that's already in the public domain one of those may find itself being sold and merged with one of the others anyway.

All of which creates the potential for a great dilemma for us at Hashigo Zake. Our business was founded by consumers who resented the lack of choice in Wellington bars - a situation that came about by design, not chance. We've done well by stocking the products of pretty much anyone but the two big breweries. But if those big breweries have their way New Zealand's best small, independent breweries won't be independent any more and if we want to keep stocking their product your and our spending will once again be going into the pockets of the duopolists.

Incidentally, and before we all get carried away with gloom, one of the rumours to come to our attention recently was of a late decision by one brewery not to go through with a partial sale.

February 21, 2013

Relaunches... Entertainment... Great Kiwi Beer Festival... Tuatara Dinner... Sour Beer... Slow News Week...

Relaunches

Next week our typical New Release Tuesday kind of morphs into Re-Release Tuesday and Wednesday.

Koppi IPA

First up in the Tuesday New Release slot is a beer we have had in bottles but have never had the pleasure of pouring on tap. It's Mikkeller Koppi IPA - a beer that subtly uses coffee to tweak a typically hoppy IPA. It's all explained very succinctly here.

As usual it's on tap from 5pm.

Mike's Imperial IPA

Mike's Imperial IPA (or simply Mike's Organic IPA as it was known a couple of years ago) has been absent for a surprisingly long time. Based on a recipe from Liberty's Joe Wood it was, for a long time, one of the best (and one of the few) local interpretations of an American Imperial IPA.

Mike's are giving us the honour of helping to re-launch this old favourite next Wednesday evening. Brewery owner Ron Trigg (five time nominee for nicest guy in brewing) will be on hand to field any questions or compliments. There will be some kind of discount on the beer as well.

From next week the beer will be available in 500ml bottles, but it is a limited release so we're not sure how long it will be around.

Entertainment

Our first ever week as a fringe festival venue has, so far, been a runaway success. The one online review that we know of for We Built This City was mostly gushing and certainly recognised the sense of fun that has infected everyone who has attended. The show has three more performances. It's been pretty cosy in our lounge so we recommend coming in plenty of time before the 9pm start time.

Saturday is going to be fun for all concerned because the final performance of We Built This City will lead into a gig by the ever-popular Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band. The usual 10pm start time for our Saturday night gig will be delayed by as long as it takes for Adam Page and James Nokise to make way for Darren and his band. Please be patient.

Great Kiwi Beer Festival

For the second time a Hashigo Zake delegation is travelling to Christchurch this weekend with a truck-full of our favourite imports to present the "World of Beer Marquee" at the Great Kiwi Beer Festival. It will be a little like a mini-Pacific Beer Expo taking place within a larger (10,000-strong) beer festival. It should be a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. If any of our customers or supporters will be in Christchurch on Saturday or have friends living there, please put in a word for us.

Tuatara Dinner

We've been asked to draw our subscribers' attention to this event taking place at the Zealandia Cafe in a week's time, featuring the beers of Tuatara matched to the cafe's food. We understand that Tuatara's new Tripel will feature in the lineup.

Sour Beer

We're getting to put some sour beer on tap very shortly. One is 8 Wired Grand Cru, which Søren explains here is a complex blend of several beers and some funky barrel treatment that has been much feted but barely seen in public. We'll also have Mike's Strawberry Sour on tap - possibly timed to coincide with next week's Imperial IPA launch.

Slow News Week

Some quite weird media coverage ensued earlier this week after something unpleasant (but not that unusual) happened to us and we reacted exactly the way we promised to when we put warning signs - two of them - in our porch.

Now it seems to be accepted that a business in central Wellington can expect to suffer property damage, tagging, defilement, theft and whatever other unspeakable offences our security camera has had to witness. And for some reason it is also accepted that all these offences are to be tolerated in silence. Quite why the rights of vandals, thieves and the paralytically drunk are so sacred is a bit of a mystery. But we've built our business on being true to our own values rather than anyone else's, so this week, as promised, we used about the only weapon at our disposal - information - to defend ourselves.

So when the sniggering and hand-wringing are over we hope that you will understand why we will continue to use words, pictures and other non-lethal means to protect our premises, our staff, our customers and everyone's property.

February 14, 2013

Local Beer! In Bottles!... Music... New Release Tuesday... Returning to our Food Menu... On Tap Now or Soon...

Local Beer! In Bottles!

Normally a couple of local beers making it into bottles would be good news, but not earth-shattering. But there's something particularly satisfying about some of our latest arrivals.

First, as predicted last week, the first ever large batch of Liberty C!tra Imperial IPA finally got packaged on Monday of this week, and we snuck a few bottles onto the premises yesterday. If there was a way to measure and collate the levels of unsatisfied demand in the market for various beers, then C!tra would score highest. But perhaps no longer. With a batch that is ten times the size of any previous one, supplies should last a while. Or will they?

For months the words "line" and "bottling" used together ran the risk of triggering an outbreak of Tourette's Syndrome at ParrotDog brewery. But no longer. The Matts appear to have tamed the Iron Serpent that is their Chinese bottling plant and case after case of BloodHound, DeadCanary and BitterBitch have rolled off the production line in the last week or two. One of two have even found their way into our fridge. But don't be surprised to see them appearing at supermarkets, bottle stores and dairies in the coming weeks and months.

Music

This Saturday in our usual 10pm slot the Nigel Patterson Trio return for more from the "edgier side of jazz".

Then next week comes a whole new scenario for us as we become a Fringe Festival venue. The show is Adam Page and James Nokise's show We Built This City. Every night from Monday (Feb 18) at 9pm they'll perform their reinterpretation of the history of '80s music.

There will be no tickets available in advance for the show and it will be very much a case of the performers turning up and getting on with it, as it were, in our lounge. We're assured that the set up for each show will be minimal and all that will be asked of the audience will be to consider contributing a koha at some point during the show. So in a way it will almost be as if they aren't there and regular customers needn't be concerned. But we encourage everyone to come along and be entertained by our favourite multi-instrumental bearded former South Australian.

We Built This City will finish its run on Saturday 23 when it will be followed by a gig by Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band, in a memorable marathon of great local music.

New Release Tuesday

In defiance of the current unseasonally summer-like weather, we're going for a true winter beer next week. So yes, if it suddenly turns cool, blame us. We are in possession of a keg of Mikkeller Weizenbock which we understand to be the first and only ever brought to New Zealand, so it gets the treatment next Tuesday.

But if a big, warming, dark, strong wheat beer isn't for you, we may just have a pretty funky alternative. It is highly likely that by next Tuesday we'll have our hands on a small shipment (in bottles only) of a bacon and maple infused beer. Intrigued? You should be.

By the way, this week's new release - De Molen Amarillo Imperial IPA - was undermined somewhat by a faulty keg. We worked around the issue and the beer did make it on eventually, is still on tap and is rather good. "Caramalised peaches" was a pretty fair description.

Returning to our Food Menu

In the next day or so, and in a slightly different form and from a new supplier, look for dumplings returning to the menu.

On Tap Now or Soon

Some randomly selected highlights....

From Four Avenues, the new brewing operation emerging from within Pomeroy's in Christchurch, comes a new, sessionable, English Pale Ale.

A small keg of Garage Project's Bourbon Barrel-Aged Lord Cockswain's Courage was left over after Wellington Anniversary Weekend and it just snuck onto one of our lines.

Any new beer from Golden Bear is worth celebrating and we've an Oatmeal Stout to try out.

And we've found another keg of Liberty's staggering Burning Evil Monster - the batch of Yakima Monster brewed with only half the normal amount of that key ingredient, water.

February 7, 2013

Last Week... New Release Tuesday... Carlos Navae... C!tra...

Last Week

Last week's edition of this email had a higher read count than any previous week. This would appear to indicate that a few people forwarded it around. Did we say something controversial?

Speaking of last week and controversy, here's some news that may surprise a few. For three years we've tried to persuade our regular customers to patronise our business over Sevens weekend (or "Munter Halloween" as it has become known) while trying to persuade "irregular" customers to stay away. After last weekend it's clear there's no point. When you combine the reduction in trade with the increased stress on our staff, property damage suffered, increased security costs and above all the feral behaviour visited on us no matter what we do to keep it out we really are better off closing our doors. Considering that we make a point of staying open on days when others don't bother, such as Boxing Day and New Year's Day, it takes a lot to rob us of the desire to open for business. But that's what Munter Halloween does.

So next Munter Halloween we'll be recommending that Wellingtonians do as we will:- bolt the door and get out of town.

New Release Tuesday

Next week we return to the fertile ground that is the catalogue of Dutch brewer De Molen, this time to try their Amarillo Imperial IPA. This comes with a pretty big reputation and stylistically should be right in the sweet spot for many of our customers, not to mention staff. And there's just the one 30L keg, so we recommend not waiting to see if it lasts until Wednesday.

As usual our new release will go on tap at the user friendly time of 5pm on Tuesday.

Carlos Navae

After a suspiciously long absence the Mexican born and raised singer and guitarist returns on Saturday evening. The Latin entertainment starts at 10pm in the lounge.

Now is probably a good time to remind you that as well as our usual Saturday night musical performances, we're branching out during the week of February 18-23 (Monday - Saturday) and hosting a fringe show. It doesn't mean we'll suddenly become a temporary theatre, simply that at 9pm each night our lounge will host Adam Page and James Nicoise performing We Built This City, their re-telling of the history of 80s music. Admission is by koha, or, for some of you, free!

On Saturday the 23rd this all adds up to a pretty heady lineup with We Built This City at 9pm, followed by Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band.

C!tra

It's been a long time between drinks but it's likely that Liberty C!tra will be back next week. This time it will be in same 500ml bottle that Liberty's three previous large scale batches (Yakima Monster, Yakima Scarlet and Alpha Dogg) have gone into.

Finally, participants in the world's hippest industry conference will no doubt be looking for a bar with complimentary wifi and a 21st century internet connection next week. And to make Web Stock attendees even more at home, we look forward to securing some of Garage Project's contribution to Web Stock - a beer they're calling API. Maybe we'll get in special glasses to serve them in.

January 31, 2013

Moon Dog Visit.. Live Music This Saturday... Faux Craft on 16th... Gumbowl... Ra Ra... Accolades... A Giveaway...

Moon Dog Visit

Forget the Sevens. We have a far more worthy form of entertainment on Saturday with a visit from Josh and Karl of Melbourne's Moon Dog brewery. The pair step off their flight some time on Saturday afternoon and we anticipate having them on the premises from around 4pm for a few hours of autograph signing, QandA-ing and, more realistically, standing around drinking.

Rumour has it there may be some small scale collaborative brewing going on while they're here too. We'll have to hope we get a crack at the result.

Live Music This Saturday

This Saturday night we host sevens-friendly sing-along pub rock live jazz in the form of the James Illingworth Trio. The music starts at 10pm, well before the Sevens crowd descend on Courtenay Place.

In all seriousness, we make our annual plea to regular customers not to be deterred from coming in by the behaviour of the costumed revellers who attend (or frequently miss) the Sevens. Nights like this are the reason we have someone at the door.

Faux Craft

Craft Beer College's controversial tasting of beers that may be categorised as "faux craft" returns on the Saturday afternoon of February 16. Please contact info@craftbeercollege.co.nz if you're interested.

Just in the last week, Australia's Critic-in-Chief of dodgy beer marketing, Matt Kirkegard, has launched a campaign to draw attention to the dubious marketing of a beer made by CUB (Fosters / SAB Miller) but marketed as if it was brewed by some Byron Bay surfies. In that case a small brewery have allowed a big one to produce and market one of their beers while all but concealing the arrangement. It's not exactly the same issue as what many of us call faux craft, where a big brewery will revive or invent a brand that pretends to be small and independent. But it's pretty similar. And it draws attention to just how sensitive many consumers and producers of craft beer (whatever craft beer is) are about the behaviour of the industrial brewers and honesty in marketing.

Now when wandering into debates like this it would be helpful to have an informed opinion on whether these beers are actually any good. And to make objective judgements, all tastings should be conducted without knowing exactly what beer is being tasted and with a reliable benchmark to test against. And that in a nutshell is what happens at the Faux Craft tasting. The mystery of not knowing exactly what is being tasted adds to the entertainment and it can be a pretty entertaining and provocative couple of hours.

Superbowl Forty Seven

It's that time of year, when we de-stress after Sevens weekend by relaxing and cooking up something suitably American in preparation for Superbowl Monday. With the match being staged in New Orleans we have an excuse to crank out a hearty gumbo which should be a good match for some (possibly discounted) San Francisco beers for anyone supporting the 49ers.

Kick-off is sometime early on Monday afternoon (it's always hard to tell through the excessive ceremonialising).

Ra Ra

The beards that many of our staff grow aren't our only homage to Rasputin, a pivotal figure in Russian history. Dutch brewery De Molen smartly recognised in Rasputin the perfect moniker for a serious Russian Imperial Stout. It's our New Release next week.

Is it right to drink an 11% Russian Imperial Stout in the middle of the best spell of fine weather in living memory? Let's not fool ourselves that every single beer is drunk for refreshment. Rasputin will be on tap and for sale in small glasses from 5pm on Tuesday.

Sadly they've been forced to rename this beer Disputin in the US because California's North Coast happened to produce a beer called Old Rasputin.

Accolades

Hang on, the next few paragraphs are going to get a little weird.

ratebeer.com

Hashigo Zake is delighted to have been honoured by website ratebeer.com in their "Ratebeer Best" awards for the year of 2012. We were named New Zealand's best bar and are in some pretty esteemed company. While ratebeer has its biases and faults, it also has scale, credibility and built-in checks to prevent abuse. In fact those built-in checks are one of the reasons we are able to show well on ratebeer. At least twice we've been the subject of what might be called "crank" reviews by individuals whose inconsistent behaviour on the website means that their reviews of us don't count in any aggregations.

Now when these crank reviews appear we don't completely ignore them. But after some soul-searching we generally conclude that, as much as anything, they represent a failure in our management of the expectations of new customers. We do make an effort in that regard - from calling ourselves a "cult beer bar" to issuing ourselves with a Heineken-free Certificate. But in honour of "Willingtrony", "thirstystirrer" and Giovanni Tiso here's our next ad in Fishhead magazine.

By the way that Fishhead ad appears on the same page as a piece by Hadyn Green on beer snobbery. This is genuinely a coincidence.

So thanks ratebeer, we appreciate the honour.

Trip Advisor

These days our name is turning up on tripadvisor.com more frequently than on ratebeer. People are generally complimentary and we're grateful for the good reviews. However the very last one chose to praise us for the quality of the "real ale" coming from our hand pumps.

In case anyone accuses us of perpetrating a fraud, we state for the record that the beer coming from our hand pumps at this time does not fit the definition of a real ale. I.e. it is not being dispensed from a vessel in which it underwent conditioning. We have once or twice put a cask on the bar top and dispensed what can accurately be called real ale. But for the time being the best description for what comes from our hand pumps (or beer engines) is, perhaps, bright beer. We haven't given up on serving actual real ale, regularly, through our hand pumps, but some more trouble and expense will have to be gone through to achieve that. If any statement on our menu or website suggests that we're serving real ale on our hand pumps please let us know.

Beer and Brewer Magazine

So what then of the Beer and Brewer Magazine awards? Has anyone heard of them? Or the magazine for that matter? Over the last couple of years we observed the way these awards were dispensed and repeatedly asked the magazine's publisher, David Lipman, for an explanation of his process for choosing winners. We weren't satisfied with his explanation, which included an acknowledgement that the publisher kept the final say on any awards for himself. So we made a clear, unambiguous request not to be considered for any awards the next time they came around. There can be no doubt that this request was received and understood because David tried to enter into a lengthy dialogue about it.

In October last year the magazine held some kind of awards ceremony, winners were announced, we weren't amongst them and it seemed that the magazine had complied with our request. But then overnight a press release has appeared on Beer and Brewer's website liberally associating Hashigo Zake with some awards that the magazine has bestowed on New Zealand's beer outlets. This is unfortunate. Our previous stated position means we cannot acknowledge nor accept any such award.

A Giveaway

A year ago we and some like-minded customers made a contribution via the web site kickstarter to the production costs of the movie Beer Hunter, about the late, great beer writer Michael Jackson. As part of our return on that contribution we have been sent a t shirt! We'll give it away to the first person who can reply to this email and give Michael's birthdate as listed on the back of the shirt. Warning: the shirt's an M and not a very big M.

January 24, 2013

Thanks

Thanks are due (and apologies in case we don't say this often enough) to our customers, for making our Wellington-only beer weekend a runaway success. We'll never really know if our call to parochialism influenced you or not, but we definitely served quite a lot more beer over Anniversary weekend 2013 than twelve months earlier.

Now as a result of all our ordering for last weekend our tap lineup still has a pretty yellow and black look about it. A more typical blend will be back very soon.

Gumbowl

On Monday week (Feb 4) one of our own little highlights of the year rolls around. There's something perverse when an event that is the embodiment of sport's worst excesses (hype, money, unnecessary ritual) serves as light relief after another sporting event that should be about pure athleticism and entertainment. But in our corner of the world Seven-a-side Rugby is possibly our most dreaded weekend of the year, while Superbowl Sunday (or Superbowl Monday as we know it) is an excuse to match some colourful food and beer with one of the US's favourite occasions.

The good news is that this year's match is being played in New Orleans, giving us an excuse to serve gumbo for the first time since the 2010 Superbowl (won, of course, by the New Orleans Saints). The even better news is that the San Francisco 49ers are one of the teams competing. This gives us an excuse to offer a few specials on beers from Moylan's. Or even, if we stretch the point, Bear Republic. (Moylan's are in Novato which is on the outskirts of San Francisco, while Bear Republic is an hour or two further north.)

As for the aforementioned Wellington Sevens, we're making our usual plea to customers to treat it as any other weekend. And that is, largely, the case - most of the blokes in drag pass us by while we endeavour to provide a refuge for those who aren't in on the joke.

Darren Returns

Darren Watson and his Underground Blues Band return to our lounge this Saturday night at 10pm. Hopes are high that his set will include a cover of Gary Glitter's It's Good To Be Back. Regardless though, the cover charge will remain $0.

New Release Tuesday

Next week we showcase two more beers from pioneering Singapore brewery Jungle. They're Lah Belgique - a Belgian blonde ale with a slightly outrageous list of adjuncts - and their Porter.

They're on tap from 5pm on Tuesday.