Pacific Beer Expo Update
There's a danger when building a lineup of beers and taking advantage of the choicest imports and seasonals at our disposal, that we end up with a very "bottom-heavy" festival. That is, this may seem a danger to some attendees. To others a lineup packed with high-gravity, flavour-packed beers is the best news possible.
Nevertheless we're tailoring the 2013 PBE lineup with extra care this year to make sure that there are plenty of sensible, easy drinking but still very interesting options. And so, we can announce the following inclusions in our lineup:
- Left Coast Tommy - a 4.1% session ale from the makers of Hop Juice.
- Green Flash Citra Session Ale - a 4.3% session beer that, admittedly, strongly resembles a 6.5% IPA in flavour, but without the loss of judgement.
- Kereru Pohutakawa Golden Ale - straight from a conditioning tank at Kereru's beautiful new facility near Maidstone Park in Upper Hutt, comes their easy drinking summer beer.
Of course we've already announced two inclusions from Singapore's Jungle Brewing - their Orange and Mango Tropical Wheat and Nutmeg and Mace Steam Lager will round out the easy drinking end of our spectrum of flavours.
Tickets continue to sell steadily. We recommend buying early for your and our peace of mind, either at Ticketek, or (while stocks last) here at the bar.
IP Watch
It's been a slow news day here at Hashigo Zake's Global News Headquarters, but on days like this a glance on the IPONZ website to see what trademarks are being applied for can salvage things a little.
Today's shocker was pretty obscure until we started putting the web's best known search engine to use. Because really... a simple application to trademark "Beer O'Clock" as a beer name seems pretty harmless. But it turns out that "Beer O'Clock" was more than just a one time slogan of one of New Zealand's mega-breweries. It's one of the most used colloquialisms the world of beer has. It has an entry in urbandictionary.com, there are multiple websites whose very names are based on the phrase and there's more merchandise out there (clothes, clocks etc) incorporating the phrase than you can shake a stick at.
Only an IP lawyer could explain whether that complete lack of originality is enough to warrant throwing the application out. But it begs the question, what opportunist would try and grab a trademark on a phrase that's so patently unoriginal? Turns out it's someone called Bruce Calvin Clark of Darwin in Australia.
Mr Clark has made quite a few interesting trademark applications over the years - in both Australia and New Zealand. For instance there's one across the Tasman for "New. Real. Lager.". Apparently those full stops are part of the name and really important. He made another trademark application for a beer called "Very Fine Lager". There's no sign that VFL and N.R.L. are actual beers. But for some reason there was a need to trademark them as beer names.
Clark's application for a trademark on "Beer O'Clock" went through a Lower Hutt firm called A J Pietras & Co. They've helped apply for trademarks on some pretty interesting names. There's "666", which we know as a Hamilton-based brewery but in some countries is an energy drink. But here "666" has been trademarked by the low-profile "Premium Brands Marketing Limited", along with other energy drink names like "Jolt". A J Pietra & Co, bless them, also represented the energy drinks company that trademarked "Big Cock" and "Huge Cock" and another drinks company that felt the need to trademark "S.H.I.T.".
The things you can learn on a simple government department's website.
On Tap Now or Soon
Right now, kitchen sink beer Green Flash Le Freak is on tap and will be followed by Ballast Point's hop bomb Dorado IIPA.
Nøgne Ø's malty Christmas beer God Jul (one of their three Christmas beers) is on tap right now, though not for much longer. It will be followed by the Twisted Hop's hop-less and trophy winning festive beer called Cheery, then Epic's legendary Coffee & Fig Imperial Oatmeal Stout.
We have an imposter on the wheat beer tap at the moment - Peckhams Kingston Black Cider. When it's gone look out for some Canterbury wheat beer in the form of Brew Moon Luna Wit and Twisted Hop Hefeweizen.
Also look out for up and coming locals Kereru Moonless Stout (on already) and Deeble's Pale Ale from Remedy Brewing.
And Lobethal Bierhaus' India Pale Al, the unassuming little brother to Double Hop IPA, is on tap right now and exceeding expectations.
Saturday Music
Carlos Navae returns on Saturday night to bring Latin Jazz and other testosterone-fuelled musical forms to our lounge. All cover charge-less and from 10pm.
New Release Tuesday
We've been waiting for the perfect time to unleash Mikkeller Spontenframboos on unsuspecting drinkers and Tuesday is it. It's a wild-fermented, raspberry-infused, barrel-aged sour beer. We've had others in the sponten- series by the bottle before and they've all been pretty mouth-puckeringly sour. This time the sourness will be on tap. From 5pm on Tuesday.
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