June 29, 2017

Downtown Aley

It’s official. According to the Dominion Post we’re having a “meaty street party” in our “garden bar” on Saturday. We’re not sure how these descriptors came to be used to describe our first ever extension into the daylight, but if the cap fits…

And speaking of official, our actual licence to serve drinks above ground on Saturday has come through.

Plans are humming along then and we’re looking forward to bringing the legendary Hashigo Zake portable bar out of mothballs and setting up alongside Salt and Wood’s food offerings, up in our enchanted archway throughout Saturday.

We have a useful piece of info for anyone reading this who is attending the test on Saturday. The stadium shuttle buses bringing patrons back from the stadium will be terminating right across the road from us.

Or… don’t even go to the game, and instead stay and spectate from the comfort of our improvised and mostly weather-proof bar, complete with a two metre-wide screen and a high definition image being projected onto it.

But the improvising doesn’t end there. We’ve had Garage Project deliver a couple of kegs of their nitrogenated stout called Snug, and on Saturday we’ll be pouring that through taps using nitrogen.

Also on tap will be a suitably English offering from Wild Beer Co, in the form of their Smoke 'n Barrels Summer - a smoked orange gose. And on the pilsner tap, both upstairs and downstairs, will be the Townshend brewery's homage to the touring team - Lioness.

Meanwhile our friends at Craft Beer College are staging a couple of Beer Bar and Brewery Walking Tours to coincide with the arrival of supporters of the team whose name can’t be uttered without checking MEMA. One of those just got underway with a stop right here, and there’s another tomorrow afternoon. If you know any visitors (or permanent residents for that matter) who would get a kick out of being guided through several of Wellington’s bars and breweries tomorrow, then we recommend giving them this link.

Here once again is Saturday's food menu, courtesy of our friends at Salt & Wood Collective:

BRISKET $15
12hr smoked shredded beef, bbq and smoked cheese sauce, served on tortilla chips

VEGE WINTER SALSA $15
jalapenos, smoked beans, smoked cheese sauce served on tortilla chips

BEER SAUSAGE $10
pork bratwurst braised in north end beer finished on the smoker served with mustard slaw on a soft bun.

4th of July

We pride ourselves on being a broad church with a diverse congregation, so almost as soon as we see off our guests from the UK and Ireland, we’ll be celebrating the country of origin of many of our favourite beers and bar staff – the United States.

[Let it be stated for the record that any celebration of the United States and the things about it that we like should not in any way be considered an endorsement of that country’s sort-of elected president and what pass for his policies.]

This year’s 4th of July beer list is looking as good as ever, including the last kegs of a few lines that we’ve hung on to, plus a couple of one-off beers brewed by our own staff especially for the occasion.

One of those beers is a clone of Ballast Point Grunion, that we’re calling Funion. The other is a clone of Deschutes Freshly Squeezed IPA that is tentatively called Uncle Sam’s Freedom Nectar, but we think we might be able to improve on that.

The kitchen will be serving Nachos and Freedom Dogs.  And there'll probably be decorations. Certain of us are secretly hoping that our stash of US-themed decorations went up in the fire last year, but the balance of probabilities is that our décor will be compromised by the presence of a little too much red, white and blue.

On Tap Now

• Wild and Woolly Beast of Burden
• Townshend BlitzGreig IPA (Handpump)
• Fitzpatricks Fitzpatricks Pale Ale
• Baird Fruitful IPA
• Oskar Blues G'knight Imperial RIPA
• Tiamana Meister
• Deep Creek Pontoon in a Monsoon
• Sawmill/Galbraiths Special Bitter
• Townshend Sutton Hoo (Handpump)
• Deep Creek Undercurrent Pilsner
• Mata Wai-iti Waka Pale Ale

Announcing... Smash 'n GABS 2

Once again we've been done what needed to and have procured a selection of some of the biggest hits of this year's GABS festival and we'll be putting a bunch of them on tap at the same time. The date... July 7, a week tomorrow.

The list will include what is probably our first ever beer from Hong Kong, plus a sensational and very sour cider.

We'll give full details seven days from now. 

Music!

Live music returns on Saturday week, the 8th, in the form of Black Spider Stomp, bringing a welcome dose of gypsy jazz.

Then on the 22nd it will be the turn of the Vincent Vega Trio.