August 15, 2013

The Ramen Shop... Music This Saturday... Southern Tier and Compass Sparkling Ale... Craft Beer College 200-level Series... New in Bottles... Finally...

The Ramen Shop

Cult popup restaurant The Ramen Shop pops down to Hashigo Zake tomorrow, for a Friday lunchtime special. Salarymen and OLs are invited to leave their sandwiches in their briefcases and come down for some hearty broth, noodles and assorted toppings from Wellington's up-and-coming ramen maestros.

Music This Saturday

Our musical programme took an unexpected turn this week, when we learned that our booker had signed a local jazz band featuring one of our own staff. Not that we didn't realise that Josh had another career playing Klezmer, Balkan and Gypsy Jazz, we just hope it doesn't interfere with his beer-related studies.

We're still working through some of the implications of this, not least of which is getting someone to cover his shift. But we ask customers on Saturday not to pass your empty glasses to the saxophonist.

In summary then, The Flying Gypsy Biscuits, featuring at least one accomplished bartender, play at 10pm on Saturday in our lounge, with the customary cover charge of $0.

Southern Tier and Compass Sparkling Ale

A couple of nights ago we brought a keg of Southern Tier Plum Noir pretty much straight from the wharf to have on tap as our Tuesday New Release. We've since had time to receive the rest of the order from Southern Tier that Plum Noir is part of. The order certainly impresses us, with the only downside being the sad news that Southern Tier have decided to suspend exporting and concentrate on markets closer to home. So this is, in fact, the last delivery of Southern Tier beer for the foreseeable future.

For one thing, we now have fresh stock of old favourites like their IPA, 2XIPA, Iniquity Black IPA, Unearthly IIPA and (drum roll, please) Crème Brûlée. And we also have one more new beer, in the form of Compass.

Compass is described as a "Sparkling Ale w/ Rose Hips". It may be the easiest drinking 9% beer ever made. It's made with pilsner malts and torrified wheat, giving it a malt profile not much different from a witbier. With hops chosen for citrus-like qualities and the addition of rose-hip, you'd swear that this beer was designed to be quaffable and refreshing, which it is, but at the end of the night you'll be glad we didn't serve it in pints. It's confusing the hell out of ratebeer but scoring highly nevertheless.

It's our new release next Tuesday, so will be on tap from 5pm.

Craft Beer College 200-level Series

The future of beer education kicks off on Saturday with Craft Beer College's first 200-level tasting.

We have a little insight into the selection of beers for the "Weird and Wonderful" Tasting and can vouch for the fact that it's going to be a great way to taste some of the planet's more successful experiments in brewing in one convenient Saturday afternoon.

To apply for a last minute enrolment, email craft beer college.

New in Bottles

We've had several interesting deliveries in the last week or two. First there was a long-overdue sailing all the way from Western Europe with multiple treats from Nøgne Ø. Treats such as:

• Dark Horizon 4th Edition. Nøgne Ø's original ludicrously strong, coffee-infused imperial stout, now in a toblerone-type cardboard box.
• Red Horizon 2nd Edition and Red Horizon 3rd Edition. The sake yeast-fermented red ale in distinctive tins.
• Almost Undrinkable. Some troll left a bottle of Rex Attitude at the Nøgne Ø brewery a couple of years ago. This is their response.
• Tindved - sour ale brewed with Norwegian malted barley, raw wheat and added juice from pressed sea buckthorn (tindved). Get some before sea buckthorn beers become passé.
• Aurora Australis - a Quad brewed collaboratively at Bridge Road in Beechworth, Australia, then matured in red wine barrels sailing to Norway.

Along with the aforementioned Southern Tier order we picked up fresh supplies of a few core beers from Ballast Point and Green Flash, including Hop Head Red.

Meanwhile Garage Project have finally got around to bottling some of their legendary, Greg Broadmore-inspired Lord Cockswain's Courage. What made it into the bottles is a blend of the year-old barrel-aged beer that won a trophy at the Brewers Guild Awards last week and a fresh batch of the same beer. We gather from the beer's distributor that only a few cases of this beer were released to the market, so be quick.

Finally

Thanks and congratulations to everyone who made last week one long celebration of all the good things in the brewing industry. Of course the biggest winners were Renaissance Brewery, who took out the Champion Brewery Award, to go with a similar accolade from the Australian awards earlier this year. The great thing is that Renaissance would certainly make the short list for a "hardest working brewery" award too, so it's great to see the country's biggest gong go to someone we know deserves it. As happens most years.

But really the whole beer consuming public of Wellington and the visitors who made up the numbers deserve massive back-pats for showing that good beer is being created and consumed with imagination, enthusiasm and common sense by a growing number.

August 8, 2013

Liberty/Panhead/Fitzpatrick's... Live Music... New Release Tuesday...

Liberty/Panhead/Fitzpatrick's

During a brief window this evening we'll be joined by brewers Joseph Wood (Liberty), Mike Neilson (Panhead) and Craig Fitzpatrick (Fitzpatrick's) before take a wheelbarrow to the Brewers Guild Awards Dinner to collect their trophies. And at the same time we'll be making sure we have several of their beers on tap. Fitzpatrick's have found a second and final keg of their magnificent Imperial Porter. We've got two of the first kegs of Panhead's XPA and Pilsner. And from Liberty we've got some Sauvignon Bomb a rare keg of Bhuty Chocolate Stout.

As a wise bartender once said of the Bhuty Chocolate - "Deep chocolate love burns so good".

Live Music

Tonight marks the start of a mini-festival of live music at 10pm each night in our lounge, to coincide with all the other Beer Week festivities.

This evening it's the Tony Mad Trio playing Texas Boogie in a Stevie Ray Vaughan-soft of way.

Tomorrow it's regular favourite and living legend Darren Watson with his Underground Blues Band.

Finally on Saturday night it's another regular favourite - the X-Ray Catz.

Remember that every gig is completely free.

New Release Tuesday

We've pencilled in a pretty exciting beer for next Tuesday, in the hope that a certain container full of beer will have reached us by then. It's Southern Tier Plum Noir - an Imperial Stout made with Italian plums. Yes this is the same brewery that came up with Pumking and Crème Brûlée, so expect something ambitious and unusual.

There is an element of risk in naming this beer before our shipment has arrived, but all going well Plum Noir will go on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

August 1, 2013

A Week Of It... GP2... Jed Soane's Third Exhibition... Reel Ale... Collaborative Launches... New Release Tuesday - The 8 Wired Mega-Mix... Liberty/Panhead Night... Music Nano-Fest... In other news... Craft Beer College 200 Level... Finally...

A Week Of It

On Saturday we begin a week of festivities around the annual events known as Beervana and the Brewers Guild Awards. We say a week, but really we mean two weekends and the days in between. Yes, we're defying the Guild and starting two days early on Saturday, rather than on the official Choice Beer Week start date of August 5th.

Why? Well for two reasons. Firstly if you fast forward to Friday and Saturday of next week, it's pretty hard to host anything else when Beervana is on. The night before Beervana is Awards night and the night before that is when the brewers get together at a secret location to have couple of jars. So if we want to host events involving our favourite brewers we really have to hold them pretty early in the week. Or simply start this weekend. The other reason is that Garage Project's second birthday happens to be this week.

There's more about most, if not all, of the events we're planning below. But we should add that this calendar of events has been like a greased pig when it comes to finalising the details, so they've been changing up until the moment this email goes out and may well change again.

GP2

Garage Project turns 2 this week. We're celebrating it on Saturday.

For a brewery struggling to push product out the door at a rate that will satisfy anyone, it's remarkable what gems they were able to conjure for their own birthday. These aren't just words. We were genuinely surprised and amazed at the birthday list:

• Angry Peaches
• Pernicious Weed
• Smoke & Mirrors
• Bastard Rye Raspberry
• Cherry Bomb
• Cockswain's Extraordinary Ordinary - a new release that is a low gravity ordinary bitter.
• Spezial K - also a new release - a keller bier to be served from a pitch lined barrel on the bar top.
• Pils & Thrills
• Chai Brown Stout - a new release and a collaboration with Moon Dog Brewery

We'll have all of these beers on tap by 4pm on Saturday. Possibly a little earlier for some of them.

We had previously announced a special food option to coincide with the festivities but that has fallen through. We apologise for any inconvenience, but trust that the occasion's other highlights will compensate.

Jed Soane's Third Exhibition

For the third time we're throwing our Red Room over to photographer Jed Soane. The theme of next week's exhibition is New Wellington Breweries. Although - let's face it - there aren't many old ones. Jed's put up a sneak preview here.

To add to the occasion of Garage Project's 2nd birthday, the exhibition should be ready for public viewing by 4pm on Saturday.

Reel Ale

So it might be stretching the point to call this a film festival and give it a pretentious title, BUT... we have legit, high quality copies of two recent and very cool documentaries relating to the beverage that we obsess about, and we're out to entertain you all as much as possible next week. So at 3pm every day from Monday to Thursday we'll be screening, alternately, Beer Hunter: The Movie and Suds County, USA.

For the sharp-eyed, Beer Hunter: The Movie is the very same film that is receiving its New Zealand premiere on Sunday night, courtesy of SOBA. The SOBA screening will be in a superior setting and it will be the local premiere so we encourage readers to go along and walk along the red carpet.

Collaborative Launches

We have not one, but three brand new beers to launch in the next few days that are the results of collaborations between New Zealand and Australian breweries. The first has already been mentioned - it was cooked up by Garage Project and Melbourne's Moon Dog way back in February when Josh and Karl from Moon Dog were over here.

The other two date from May, when a legion of New Zealand breweries infiltrated Australia. Fly By Night is a collaboration between ParrotDog, Two Birds and 3 Ravens. It's a Black IPA. We had hoped to have it here to launch on Monday but it looks as though it's not going to make it in time. So we're transferring its launch to Wednesday, by which time we hope that Jayne from Two Birds will be in Wellington.

Finally Wendy is the second collaboration between Yeastie Boys and Lobethal Bierhaus. There's no official statement on the beer's style but we understand that it will be a strongish porter with a secret ingredient that is a variant on another unconventional adjunct that Yeastie Boys have been using a lot of lately. Wendy was always going to be launched on Wednesday, because that's when they're launching it in Adelaide. And we believe the kegs will actually arrive in time.

New Release Tuesday -The 8 Wired Mega-Mix

We could never settle for any old new release next Tuesday. And after protracted negotiations (actually quite short negotiations with long periods of inactivity) we've come to an arrangement with New Zealand's champion brewer of 2011. Not only are we releasing 8 Wired's most challenging beer ever, we're going to dip into our own stocks and bring out some forgotten 8 Wired gems.

So on Tuesday we will be serving, in extremely small portions, Ice-Distilled Bumaye. A sample has gone to a lab to be tested, but this beer is estimated to be over 30% ABV.

To prepare everyone for this finisher, we will also be serving:

• Mighty Imperial Ale
• the newly released Barrel Aged Saison
• a keg from the first commercial batch of iStout
• the last known keg of Ø for Awesome by 8 Wired, Nøgne Ø and Renaissance

Liberty/Panhead Night

Liberty Brewing are in the process of converting Auckland's Hallertau brewpub into a much larger brewing facility for themselves and Hallertau to share. And Panhead are releasing the first batches of a range of beers from their brand new Upper Hutt brewery. But it's not that long since Liberty's Joe Wood and Panhead's Mike Neilson had day jobs and brewing was purely a hobby.

So on Thursday evening we hope to take advantage of a small window before the Brewers Guild Awards to celebrate their progression from home brewers to entrepreneurs. We'll pick a couple of kegs from our stash of great Liberty beers and will sneak two of Mike's first releases on tap as well. And we hope that in between grooming themselves and turning up at the Awards the pair will grace us with a walkabout.

Music Nano-Fest

As mentioned above, we're not just here to supply beer next week, we also want to provide entertainment. And as we've seen, there's often someone with an axe to grind after the awards are given out so on Thursday night it's fitting that we provide some sounds to soothe any savage breasts.

In fact we're providing live music every evening from Thursday to Saturday of next week, plus of course a performance this Saturday. So here's the lineup:

• Saturday August 3, the Reuben Bradley Trio. Jazz,
• Thursday August 8, the Tony Mad Trio. Texas Boogie.
• Friday August 9, Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band.
• Saturday August 10, the X-Ray Catz. Rockabilly.

The music starts at 10pm each night and there is no cover charge.

In other news... Craft Beer College 200 Level

It would be a travesty if the following news got lost amongst the fuss about next week, so we beg readers to hang in there.

We get occasional queries about the fate of the regular tastings that we used to run ourselves, often featuring the beers we import ourselves and usually happening about once a month. It would be fair to say that we ran up a certain amount of fatigue from running these events, and have recently concentrated our efforts on the New Release Tuesday slot while being kept increasingly busy with our importing business. Meanwhile Craft Beer College have emerged and are talking the art and promotion of beer tastings to another level.

So with a certain amount of encouragement from us, Craft Beer College have developed their repertoire of tastings and have just announced the 200-level series, taking place in the second half of this year. We think they will achieve a lot of what we used to try to with our own tastings programme and more. And they also look like a lot of fun.

The series features a glassware tasting, at which the claims of glassmakers about the difference a glass can make to the taste of a beer will be put to the test. And participants will get to keep not only the beers they drink, but the glassware they try them from. There will also be a couple of tastings dedicated to the exploration of styles that, shall we say, new beer drinkers might struggle with. All the details are here.

Finally

IPA Day? Every day is IPA Day.

July 25, 2013

Today!... Music On Saturday... Whoops Apocalypse... New Release Tuesday... Photography...

Today!

Years of planning and manoeuvring by Wellington brewer Andrew Childs come to what should be a triumphant climax this evening with the release of Celia Wade Brown Ale (a.k.a. Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale) under his own brand - Behemoth Brewing.

The beer was brewed a year ago under the "Wellington in a Pint" umbrella, as a collaboration with Yeastie Boys at Invercargill Brewery. This time it's purely a Behemoth release, and was brewed at the Twisted Hop in Christchurch.

In Andrew's own words:

A coffee brown ale that symbolises Wellington, the city I adore. With Havana PNG organic coffee beans, New Zealand Hops, British malts and yeast (the Mayor is British after all) this beer has combined what Wellington runs on coffee and craft beer, with just a hint of politics, that melds together into something beautiful.

We're launching the beer at 5:30pm tonight. Andrew's flying down from his flash job in Auckland and we believe the person the beer is named after might be in attendance as well. And as certain people have been quick to point out on the social networks, there will be a few complimentary glasses of it for early birds.

Come and see how a homage to Wellington, brewed by an Auckland resident at a Christchurch brewery tastes.

Music on Saturday

This Saturday Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band return.

Now shortly after the recent seismic activity Darren joked on facebook about wanting danger money for playing here. Perhaps this is a good time to point out that Hashigo Zake is not on the City Council's list of earthquake prone buildings. In fact not only are we not on that list, we have a letter from the council stating that our building has been surveyed and is quite definitely above the threshold for being considered earthquake prone. So any ground-shaking and consequent building damage that goes on while Darren plays is purely his responsibility.

We'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to correlate the list of earthquake prone buildings with the list of recently earthquake-damaged buildings.

The blues begin at 10pm.

Whoops Apocalypse

A couple of months ago the "Four Horseman of the Hopocalypse" - Steve Plowman of Hallertau, Luke Nicholas of Epic, Joe Wood of Liberty and Kelly Ryan of Good George - got back together to brew another ludicrously hoppy Triple IPA. Some of our kegs were lying around at the brewery and so they were filled and dispatched to our warehouse with so little fanfare that we didn't even know they'd arrived.

We've been alerted to their existence and one of those kegs is lined up to come on tap. Fittingly it will replace Liberty Sauvignon Bomb when that finishes.

Now feedback from the Auckland launch of this beer suggested that some of the locals there found it "too hoppy". We're taking that as Auckland speak for "just about right".

New Release Tuesday

Next week we're going back to the deep well of interesting beer that is our recent De Molen shipment. This time it's an all-Citra sessionable IPA, weighing in at just 4.8%. It goes by the imaginative name of De Molen Single Hop Citra. In fact De Molen have a whole series of single hop IPAs at this strength. If this goes well we may invest in other varieties in future orders.

De Molen Single Hop Citra goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

By the way, this week's new release - Fitzpatrick's Imperial Porter - is still on tap and we were pretty impressed at how well it turned out.

Photography

Regular readers may recall that during "Choice" Beer Week next month, we're not only having our very own nano-film festival, we're once again showing an exhibition by popular local photographer Jed Soane.

But there's more. Only it's not here. Nearby bar Goldings Free Dive are holding a competition to uncover great examples of amateur beer photography. Sound a little left field? We're confident that some pretty cool images are going to emerge from it. And possibly some pretty disturbing ones. The mind boggles.

July 18, 2013

The Latest from Tauranga

Last month we managed to acquire a keg of Fitzpatrick's New Zealand Pale Ale, which confirmed what we already believed - that the Tauranga nano-brewery is destined to make some great beer.

Next week we're putting the brewery's third beer (that we and Untappd know of) on tap. In fact it's going to be our official new release. It's an Imperial Porter that Craig Fitzpatrick says is modelled on the great Gonzo Imperial Porter from Flying Dog. This isn't a complete surprise given the way Craig talked up Gonzo after he had been a steward at the 2009 Brewers Guild Awards. (Gonzo took away a gold medal.)

In Craig's words it "weighs in at 75 IBU... has a heap of Cascade and Centennial. Finished full bodied at 1.022 and 8%."

Fitzpatrick's Imperial Porter goes on tap on Tuesday at 5pm.

SOBA Winter Ale Festival

The lineup at SOBA's Winter Ale Festival is actually looking pretty stellar, and we say this not only because a few of the goodies are coming from Hashigo Zake's own stocks. For one thing it looks like it will be the first time any of us can sample the output of Mike Neilson's new Panhead Brewery. And then there's the infamous Super-Afrodisiac from Funk Estate. Not to mention new beers from Baylands and Garage Project. In fact it could be the most stellar lineup of festival beers outside of the Pacific Beer Expo.

Any tickets that are left are at http://www.soba.org.nz/shop/2013-mid-winter-ale-festival.

More Beer Week Events

Plans for week starting on August the 3rd are evolving. Today we can announce a few more details:

As we did last year, we'll be extending our usual Saturday night musical offering to include the Thursday and Friday. So we'll have live music from 10pm on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August. Specifically:

• On Thursday the 8th it will be the Tony Mad Trio.
• On the 9th we host the always popular Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band.
• And on the 10th we'll host the X-Ray Catz.

Since the season of beer events once again clashes horribly with the Wellington Film Festival, we're coming to the rescue of those frustrated that they can't quite enjoy both simultaneously by hosting our own nano-festival of beer related documentary films. And yes, we have the perfect name for this event: Reel Ale.

Reel Ale will kick off at 3pm on Monday the 5th. On that afternoon we'll host New Zealand's second official screening of Beer Hunter: The Movie, the recently completed documentary profiling the late, great Michael Jackson. We'll rescreen Beer Hunter on Wednesday the 7th.

On Tuesday the 6th and Thursday the 8th at 3pm, we'll be screening Suds Country USA. This film is all about San Diego and its recent brewing history. We think this is an interesting documentary for a couple of reasons. One is that it features a lot of our favourite breweries. But for anyone enjoying the current resurgence in brewing in Wellington the parallels with what went on in San Diego are glaring. So watching Suds County USA is weirdly like watching present-day events but presented as history.

The even better news is that these will be no dodgy hand-held captures or torrented screeners. Both films are legit copies that we have the right to screen publicly.

Finally we can elaborate a little on what we're up to on Saturday August the 3rd. Not only is Jed Soane's exhibition of photography of Wellington breweries opening at the same time as we celebrate Garage Project's second birthday :- between 4pm and 7pm we'll have Vicky from the Dumpling House on the premises, frying and selling her full range of dumplings on the spot.

Also, it looks as though one of the goodies that Garage Project will offer up for their birthday will be a collaboration brewed when Josh and Karl from Moon Dog visited Wellington back in February.

Remember to go to http://hashigozake.co.nz/beerweekevents.html to see our calendar of events during Beer Week.

Music on Saturday

In true Wellington fashion our music this Saturday comes from another permutation of some of the same musicians we've seen in different combos over the last year or so. So from 10pm it's Nick Granville playing guitar, James Illingworth on keyboards and Lauren Ellis on drums making up Granville, Ellis and Illingworth.

Behemoth Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale

Last year Andrew Childs devised Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale as part of Wellington In A Pint. The beer was one of the competition winners and a batch was brewed. The competition may have been consigned to the recycling bin of history, but the beer remains part of Andrew's plans for world domination. Nor has he let being turned into a temporary Jafa stop him from revisiting his very Wellington creation.

So... now operating under the Behemoth brand, Andrew returns in 2013 with a new edition of Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale. And the new version gets a launch at Hashigo Zake on July 25 - a week tonight.

In the interests of balance in an election year, we invite any brewers out there to be inspired by the candidacy of any other mayoral contenders.

Old Friends in New Packages

Anyone who has been pining for Rogue's Double Dead Guy should be advised that it has returned in a new form. It's now labelled XS Dead Guy and comes in the same magnificent resealable ceramic bottle as beers such as Old Crustacean. And anyone purchasing the bottle for consumption on the premises may ask to get the empty bottle rinsed and put in a paper bag to take home and put whatever you like in.

Finally, Liberty's New Zealand IPA, Sauvignon Bomb, which was a huge hit when Joe brewed a small amount a few months ago, hits the market properly this week, with kegs and bottles becoming generally available. We'll have bottles in our fridges by knock-off time tomorrow and should have it on tap some time soon as well.

July 11, 2013

Craft Beer College Exam... Voodoo Doughnut Beers... Princess Lost... SOBA Winter Ale Festival... More Beer Week Events... Next Week's New Release... Music On Saturday...

Craft Beer College Exam

The Craft Beer College's "Exam" takes place on Saturday. We use inverted commas because final / lolly-scramble / game / tasting might be a better description. Beers will be served and questions asked that are intended to reveal who has been paying attention during previous tastings. But the event can also be seen a chance to sample some pretty tasty beers AND pick up some very nice swag. In fact some of that very swag will come from our own collection of brewery-sourced glassware, attire and, maybe, prophylactics.

To join in the mayhem, contact Craft Beer College by email.

Voodoo Doughnut Beers

In all the excitement surrounding the Fourth of July last week we may not have made it clear that some of that day's tap offerings came from a very large shipment of Rogue beer that had just arrived. There are more treats to elaborate on from that shipment, starting with not one, but two beers inspired by doughnuts from Portland's Voodoo Doughnuts.

A while ago we were lucky enough to get a supply of Voodoo Bacon Maple Ale. That proved popular and sold out, so now we've not only been resupplied, but have gone one better and got a supply of Voodoo 2 - Voodoo Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Ale.

Rogue's mastery of, ahem, unconventional methods of brewing and packaging will also be enjoyed by anyone ordering Chipotle Ale soon in the near future. Insist on drinking from the correct glassware!

Princess Lost

From a couple of nights ago there is a massive hole in Hashigo Zake's personnel. Our very own princess is to return to Japan. Rei was with us back on opening night on September 10, 2009 and apart from the occasional absence while she holidayed in her homeland, she has been an incredibly popular member of staff ever since. As someone who claims to not actually like beer, Rei has been a complete anomaly amongst our staff, but employed an encyclopaedic recall of beer descriptions and some degree of personal charm to more than compensate. She will be missed.

Any regular customers wanting to farewell Rei can come along next Monday evening and get in the queue to buy her a plum wine.

SOBA Winter Ale Festival

The SOBA Winter Ale Festival is approaching quickly. July 20 is just nine days away. SOBA's ruling elite are crowing about how good the lineup is going to be, especially since it includes a couple of goodies from Hashigo Zake's own stash. Specifically :- Moon Dog Dasher's Envy (a Christmas beer, which is appropriate for a winter festival) and De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis (meaning Hell and Damnation, which is kind of puzzling alongside a Christmas beer).

Tickets are at SOBA's website.

More Beer Week Events

Last week we announced a few of our Beer Week events, starting with the Garage Project Second Birthday Celebration on Saturday, August 3. Now it turns out that August 3 is two days too early to be considered part of the Brewers Guild's Choice Beer Week, which leaves us with no choice but to label our agenda simply Beer Week. Sigh.

As some of you are probably tired of hearing, Melbourne celebrated Good Beer Week back in May. (Is this a good time to mention that Good Beer Week ran for nine days?) Anyway, some of our brewing friends made good use of their time in Australia. ParrotDog took advantage of the chance to team up with 3 Ravens and Two Birds to brew a beer they called Fly By Night. It's a Black IPA made with, naturally, Falconer's Flight hops. And a handful of kegs from this batch are on their way to us.

Yeastie Boys meanwhile made a second visit to the fabulous Lobethal Bierhaus in the Adelaide hills for a second collaboration there. (The first, a moderate strength golden bitter called Bruce has become a hit in Adelaide and is permanently on tap at the Wheatsheaf.) This year they've gone for a darker, stronger beer with a twist that might just still be a secret. It's to be called Wendy, named after the other bulldog of Lobethal's owner/brewer Alistair.

From left, 8 Wired's Søren Erikson (just a visitor that day), Sam Possenniskie, Stu McKinlay and Lobethal's Alistair Turnbull.

The following announcements might just be subject to change as both beers still have to be extracted from Australia:

On Monday, August the 5th we'll launch Fly By Night. And on Wednesday, August 7th we'll launch Wendy.

By the way, we're also taking advantage of this order of Wendy to bring over a pallet-load of other Lobethal beers, which is pretty good news, we believe.

To view the full range of events at Hashigo Zake between the 3rd and 10th of August follow this link.

Next Week's New Release

This week's new release was from De Molen which may have alerted some of you to the fact that a new shipment has arrived from the Dutch brewer. So we're gonna ride this wave and make next week's new release a De Molen beer as well. It's Lentehop, an IPA fermented as a lager, which some people therefore dub an India Pale Lager.

The arrival of this shipment also means that we have some pretty extraordinary bottled beer to sneak into the fridges as and when we can make space.

Lentehop goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

Music On Saturday

This Saturday harmonica virtuoso Neil Billington returns with his band for two hours of Chicago blues. From 10pm and at no charge.

July 4, 2013

Today... Tatsushi Collaborative Dinner... Garage Project Second Birthday... Wellington Brewing Photography Exhibition... 10,000 Pies and New Release Tuesday... Music This Saturday...

Today

Today's the Fourth of July. (Another June has gone by.) Our once-a-year opportunity to celebrate our favourite citizens of the world's one and only superpower - people like Jon Stewart, Daniel Ellsberg, Stephen Colbert, Edward Snowden, Sam Whitney... Not to mention the brewers who transformed the phrase "American beer" from a joke into an unstoppable movement.

So we've turned almost all of our taps over to US beer today and we think it makes for a compelling and varied line up and some pretty ostentatious tap handles. Specifically:

• Speakeasy BIG DADDY IPA
• Coronado FROGS BREATH IPA
• Rogue JUNIPER PALE ALE
• Rogue NITRO SHAKESPEARE OATMEAL STOUT
• Ballast Point OLD BARMY APRICOT ALE
• Rogue HAZELNUT BROWN ALE
• Left Coast HOP JUICE IIPA
• Coronado OLD BLIGHTY ESB

While regular customers will need little in the way of guidance regarding these beers, we must add a couple of comments:

• Today marks the launch in New Zealand of San Francisco's Speakeasy brewery. We're confident that Big Daddy IPA will meet everyone's expectations of a great northern Californian IPA.
• Rogue's Shakespeare Stout is nitrogenated rather than carbonated. Serving beer this way is new for us and this may be the first time that a nitrogenated stout has been dispensed from a key keg in New Zealand. We're looking forward to trying this famous oatmeal stout with the promised silky texture that should come from this particular treatment.

Better still, in something of a departure for us, we invited American-style barbecue specialists Three Little Pigs to set up in the nearby outside space that we, ahem, don't actually own, and serve their amazing food. From late this afternoon they'll be offering the following menu:

• Pulled Pork Sandwich
• Beef Sandwich
• BBQ Tasting Plate

Tatsushi Collaborative Dinner

It is with great pleasure that we make the first of a number of announcements about what we'll be up to during the week of the Brewers Guild Beer Awards and Beervana.

Tatsushi is the new favourite restaurant of our in-house expert on things Japanese and food-related - Shigeo Takagi. He's worked with Tatsushi's founder, Tatsushi Mikuni, to come up with a menu matching the restaurant's food with fine beer, most of which will come from a fresh shipment from the acclaimed Japanese brewery Baird.

So on August the 6th and 7th we're proud to co-host a dinner at Tatsushi of Japanese cuisine matched with beer. Tatsushi is one of Wellington's littler eating places and there will be room for just 16 diners each night. So booking is essential. Get along to this page at the Cult Beer Store to book.

Garage Project Second Birthday

And it's with equally great pleasure that we make our second announcement regarding the week leading up to the Brewers Guild Awards and Beervana. On or about the 2nd of August it will be two years since Garage Project's Jos and Pete carried three puny cornie kegs of beer, brewed on their pilot plant, down the stairs to Hashigo Zake. Though the token volumes of beer lasted about 45 minutes, that launch event signalled the return of commercial brewing to Wellington.

Who'd have thought that in just two years they would be rapidly growing out of a brewery 50 times bigger than the one those beers were brewed on? And more significantly Wellington has been transformed into a thriving brewing centre instead of just being the place where the rest of New Zealand sent the beer they couldn't sell to their own locals.

To commemorate their second birthday Garage Project are venturing into the deepest, darkest recesses of their Aro Street site to dig out some kegged treats. We'll be putting them on tap at 4pm on Saturday August 3.

Wellington Brewing Photography Exhibition

Finally we can announce a third component of our Beer Week celebrations. Photographer Laureate of the New Zealand Brewing Industry, Jed Soane, will use our Red Room for the third time to exhibit a collection of his photos, this time showcasing the booming Wellington brewing industry. The exhibition will go up on the afternoon of August the 3rd, in time for the Garage Project 2nd Birthday celebrations starting at 4pm. They'll be up until the 11th.

10,000 Pies and New Release Tuesday

A quick query against the database behind our till system revealed that we're closing in on 10,000 pies served at Hashigo Zake. We're extrapolating that we'll pass the 10,000 mark next Tuesday.

Anyway, to celebrate 10,000 pies fittingly we've asked our own Sam Whitney to come up with a once in a lifetime pie filling that will go on sale next Tuesday, along with De Molen Pijl & Boog, a strong Belgian Ale that we just received from the Dutch brewery. Our commemorate pie will be the most decadent pie that we could conceive of without actually barrel-ageing the filling, incorporating oysters, mushrooms and truffles.

Pie and Pijl go on tap at 5pm next Tuesday, the 9th.

Music This Saturday

Appearing for the first time this Saturday are The Sly Collective - a new collaboration between Wellington musicians Ashton Sellars (Brockaflower), Ayrton Foote (The Bandits), Adrian Laird (Wellington Mingus Ensemble), Richard Thai (The Bandits) and Thomas Friggens (John the Baptist) paying homage to Jazz Fusion greats such as Herbie Hancock and John Scofield.

They're on from 10pm on Saturday night, with the traditional non-existent cover charge.