Thursday, November 17, 2011

November 10, 2011

Dining Event of the Year... Townshend... Adam Page and the Counts... A Good Thing... Garage Project 21/24... On Tap Soon... Mikkeller in the Fridge...

Dining Event of the Year

As mentioned last week, we're very excited about the event at the centre of what is a surprisingly busy November for us. To the best of our knowledge, our Zibibbo / Hashigo Zake / Nøgne Ø Banquet, with Nøgne Ø Head Brewer Kjetil Jikiun in attendance, is about the most ambitious food and beer event staged in New Zealand this year. The matching of Zibibbo's rich, Mediterranean-inspired cuisine with the ambitious, complex beers of Nøgne Ø should be compelling.

The dinner takes place on Sunday, November 20 at 6pm (not 7pm as previously stated). Ticket holders can come down to Hashigo Zake from 5pm and enjoy a pre-dinner drink from Nøgne Ø's range from our taps. Tickets cost $165 ($150 to SOBA members) and are on sale at Hashigo Zake. Full price tickets are also available online here. Places are limited.

Townshend

We have one other pretty special event before the end of the month as well. It's our first ever tasting dedicated to the beers of Martin Townshend. We're already seeing a disproportionate number of bookings coming from customers with English origins, but it will be nice to hear some other accents too. This tasting is on November 29 at 6:30pm. You can book at the bar or here.

Adam Page and The Counts

And as if this month didn't have enough special occasions, this is a good time to remind everyone of our first ever musical "residency". For four Saturdays, starting on the 19th of November, we're hosting our favourite new Wellingtonian Adam Page and his band The Counts in our lounge for some late night jazz.

This series of gigs starts at around 11pm each night and there is no charge.

New Release Tuesday

Don't say we don't know a good thing when we see it. Garage Project's 24/24 programme of rapid fire experiments in brewing is nearing its end, but the cycle of Tuesday releases has been so much fun for all concerned that it would be tragic not to continue it.

Now we'll leave it up to Garage Project to explain the next phase in their plan for world domination, but we believe we will still see experimental beers from them, just not at the rate of one a week. Meanwhile we receive a steady flow of new beers from other local and overseas breweries. (In fact we generally put on around four new beers a week!) But few of these beers receive the fanfare they deserve. So when 24/24 is over the tradition of a release at 5pm every Tuesday will live on.

Garage Project 21/24

As mentioned, we're into the home straight of 24/24, and there are hints that none of the last four will be in any way small. On Tuesday it will be an American Barley Wine going by the name Hellbender. In Pete's own words:

A powerful American style barleywine with a huge malt grist and a hop bill responsible for consuming the last of our not insubstantial supplies of Amarillo, Centennial and Columbus hops. Big malt, big hops.

On Tap Soon

As usual, there are some pretty tasty treats due on tap over the next few days. Look out for:

  • ParrotDog's second beer and one of the hits of the Pacific Beer Expo - the hoppy red ale Bloodhound.
  • A rare keg of Invercargill Boysenbeery.
  • Our last keg of the 2011 batch of Renaissance MPA.
  • A one-off keg of Baird's wilfully tasty brown ale known as Angry Boy.

Mikkeller in the Fridge

As mentioned last week, we just received a small amount of a few Mikkeller beers. This afternoon we're going to try and find room for some of them in the fridge.

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