January 3, 2013

Happy New Year... The Best of 2012... Single Hop IPAs... Music this Saturday... New Release Tuesday... Victory at Sea... Wellington Anniversary Weekend...

Happy New Year

Welcome back, all of.. well.. some of you. We wish our customers all the best for 2013. We also thank those of you who stayed in Wellington over the Christmas and New Year period and made it worth our while staying open. We'd also like to thank all the Wellington hospitality businesses who helped us by either closing or applying surcharges.

Our Best of 2012 Survey

The observant among you would have noticed that it's now 2013, so it's now a sensible time to reflect on 2012. We've had a lot of fun with our survey over the last two years, it's time we rolled out this year's version.

Little has changed. There are one or two more questions. And this time every multiple choice answer allows you to write in an alternative. We'll keep an eye on any of these and will add any (sensible) alternative answers back in as options for future respondents.

Anyone who wants to be influenced by last year's results can check them out at http://hashigozake.co.nz/2011survey.pdf.

You may take the survey here. We'll keep it open for a week or two and announce the results at a glittering, $200-a-head awards dinner later in the month.

Single Hop IPAs

One of Mikkeller's recurring experiments is the Single Hop IPA series. In the past we've been able to showcase a number of these and we recently received a load of kegs from the latest round of parallel single-hop brewing. It's going to be an education for many of us, with varieties like Galena, Super-Galena, Mt Hood and Cluster plus a few old favourites like, Citra, Amarillo, Cascade and.. ahem.. Sorachi Ace.

For those unfamiliar with Mikkeller's Single Hop series, these are IPAs brewed with recipes that vary only in the single hop variety that each one uses. They're all 6.8%, and usually delicious - unless the hop used is a "problematic" one.

Super-Galena is waiting in the wings and we'll be working through them steadily after that.

Music This Saturday

We decided not to interrupt our programme of live music over this period and we're pretty pleased with the result. It has kept Saturday nights (and New Year's Eve) humming at a time of year when supposedly you're all out of town.

This Saturday it's the return of Neil Billington, this time with his own blues band, which includes some pretty familiar names. The Chicago blues start at 10pm.

New Release Tuesday

After last week's Mikkeller two punch, we're sticking with a European brewer and launching what should be a flavour bomb from De Molen. It's their Rye Amarillo/Cascade IPA. After a succession of big De Molen beers packed with coffee, malt or both, an American hopped rye IPA at a mere 6.6% ABV will seem like light relief. But we've got a feeling this won't lack for flavour.

As usual the new release gets newly released at 5pm on Tuesday.

Victory at Sea

We've just had word that our first new consignment of Ballast Point Victory at Sea in two years is somewhere in the Wellington metropolitan area. It's likely that we'll have it available in bottles by the weekend and maybe even on tap soon.

For the uninitiated, Victory at Sea is a 10% ABV Imperial Porter flavoured with coffee and vanilla. It was wildly popular last time we got it in and we understand that it was the inspiration for Mike's brewery's recent (very good) Coffee Vanilla Porter. This time we've got more than the staff can drink on their own and hope to see it get out to plenty of other outlets.

Wellington Anniversary Weekend

Anniversary day is just a few weeks away. As a parochially Wellington-based business we're keen to celebrate our city's birthday. So over Anniversary Weekend we'll be dedicating all our taps to Wellington-brewed beer.

Even a year ago this would have been an awkward thing to attempt and would have required a lot of cooperation from the breweries to make sure we had enough volume and variety of beer. This year we look forward to not only having great local beer occupy the taps for more than three days, we'll have no trouble sticking to our usual practice of steady rotation.

The Wellington Anniversary Tap Insurgency will start on the evening of Friday, January 18 and continue through until the end of Wellington Anniversary Day, January 21.

December 27, 2012

Music This Saturday... New Year's Eve... New Release Tuesday...

Music This Saturday

As a central city, underground bar we choose to deny the need for New Zealand's traditional summer shutdown and urban evacuation. And so it's very much business as usual here, right down to our weekly institutions including this Saturday night's musical slot. This week it's taken by Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band. If you've ever wanted to take in one of Darren's gigs but were perhaps discouraged by their sheer popularity, this Saturday may be your best chance to find a comfortable pozzy, cradle a nice sipping beer and take in the glory of authentic blues played in a subterranean environment.

The doity old blues played filthily (Darren's words) start at 10pm.

New Year's Eve

Having been in business a few years now, we can look back at our own records and tell a little about how our customers behave when certain annual events roll around. And we have definitely learned that for our customers an increment to the portion of the date denoting the year has about the same significance as a typical Saturday night. Which is fitting since both occasions are equally predictable and momentous, even if one happens 52 times more frequently.

So this year we're treating December 31 (next Monday) quite a lot like a Saturday night - we'll get ready to serve a few more rum and cokes and pinot gris and we'll have musical support from the Nick Granville Trio from 10pm, at no charge. And we expect, in fact we promise, a lot less mayhem and carnage than you'll see on Courtenay Place.

New Release Tuesday

Another institution carries on serenely over the New Year period. New Release Tuesday will be back on New Year's Day with a Mikkeller two punch in the form of Hop Burn High and Hop Burn Low. These are top and bottom fermented versions of what are otherwise identical beers. The wort for both is essentially that of an Imperial IPA. And they both come through at a nice round 10% ABV. Fortunately the 2nd of Jan is also a holiday.

They'll both go on tap at 5pm on New Year's Day. Or perhaps, since few if any of you will be coming from a day job, we'll flick the switch earlier in the day.

December 20, 2012

Business as Usual... The End of Time... Two New IPAs... Upcoming Music... IP Watch - Enduring Freedom Edition...

Business as Usual

At the risk of boring regular readers, we'd like to emphasise once again how little will change for us over the next few days. We have no choice but to close on Christmas Day (starting from 11:30pm the night before) but will be trading as usual from Boxing Day until Good Friday next year. Our Saturday gigs in the lounge won't stop and there will even be an extra New Years Eve show (see below). And we'll apply none of those annoying holiday surcharges.

The only component of our regular offering to suffer will be New Release Tuesday. With Christmas Day a Tuesday it would just seem wrong to have it a day late or early during a period when many of our regular customers are away, so New Release Tuesday will have its first hiatus since it started as an institution earlier this year. But it will be back on New Year's Day.

Strange as it may seem this email will be back next week. It's hard to tell what we'll have to say and it's unclear whether anyone will be reading it, going by those terribly useful out-of-office replies you send back to us. You know, the ones detailing everywhere you're going and what awards you've won lately. Oops - no that's just Luke Nicholas.

The End of Time

Joseph Wood has been talking up La Fin du Temps, his Mayan-doomsday beer, on the social networks. On facebook today he wrote:

...Brewing the beer was a labour of love. For the best part, I absolutely do not enjoy using whole flowers in my brewing system. Regardless, I had a fairly generous 10 grams per litre of the whole flowers throughout the boil and in the hopback. Then the yeast… well, let’s just say that at 1.091… you need a LOT of yeast to ferment the wort....

...I am extremely proud of this beer. When a brewery is known for its ability to produce big hoppy beers, and big malty beers it can be a struggle to break the mould and attempt something different. I would describe this beer as an imperial Saison… but please don’t let the style connotations guide your experience.

The full text is at Liberty Brewing's facebook page.

It's our habit to put new releases on at 5pm. We could wait until 7:30pm and make a little extra income by making everyone buy other drinks first, but who would be that cynical?

But tomorrow we suspect a lot of you will be drifting home from your jobs a little earlier than usual, so we'll aim to get this beer on nice and early in the afternoon (subject to it being delivered from our warehouse nice and early).

Two New IPAs

Last week we described Ryefix IPA, a collaboration between Australia's Northdown and Denmark's Beer Here, brewed at Invercargill and being sold by us. It's proven to be a pretty rich, tasty IPA and we've already been through a keg over the last two nights. It's available in bottles right now and will be back on tap in the near future.

Also out in time for Christmas is ParrotDog's new American IPA that they're calling PitBull. It seemed a pretty apt name even before the Matts set about intellectualising it:

How quickly and easily America forgets its heroes. Owned by three American presidents and given the highest military honours of any other breed, the American Pit Bull Terrier is a very misunderstood dog. It was even used as America’s canine military mascot during the First World War. However, it’s own extreme power and aggressiveness – which ultimately led to its much less-than-favourable status in today’s society – cannot be underestimated.

And neither can this beer. PitBull has a huge, pungent American-hopped aroma that leaps out of an equally sized rich, golden malt base. The finish is very bitter. This is our most aggressive beer yet in terms of malt, hop and alcohol levels – you've been warned!

Pitbull, which is a limited release, will be on tap very soon.

Upcoming Music

Popular blues band The Nick Granville Trio return this Saturday and will also be back for an extra performance on New Years Eve. And the equally popular Darren Watson will be back with his Underground Blues Band on Saturday the 29th.

IP Watch - Enduring Freedom Edition

Our regular updates from IPONZ regarding trademark activity have had surprisingly few shockers in the last week or two. What has been interesting is a sudden rush by a few brewers that we actually respect to trademark some of their well known and original beer names.

So we're casting a slightly wider net to bring in a shocking misuse of a term we like. Following a tip-off from Hugh of Hopscotch in Auckland we've learned that there's a bar in Ponsonby called Freeman and Grey whose beer taps are 100% controlled by Lion Nathan but are calling themselves a "freehouse". Hugh has taken it up with the Commerce Commission. We wish him luck. Next thing Lion Nathan will be opening their own chain of "Cult Beer Bars". Today's nonsense suggestion is tomorrow's business plan.

December 13, 2012

Immediately below Beer Decadence... The End of Time... Rye IPA... Music This Saturday...

Beer Decadence

As foreshadowed in last week's email, next Tuesday Garage Project will unveil what might be the most extravagant beer ever made commercially in New Zealand. The story began when Boundary Road mailed five dollar notes to 22,000 people and Garage Project invited recipients to donate them to a "fermenter fund". The amount raised wasn't quite enough to fund any serious stainless steel purchases, so instead it was used to fund the purchase of the most expensive ingredients possible for a beer.

The result is a Belgian Blonde Ale fermented with a Champagne Yeast, and conditioned on White Truffle infused Honey and fresh grated White Truffles. And we'll be launching this affront to brewing's blue collar roots on Tuesday at 5pm.

The End of Time

Plenty of people seem to have been conflating the alleged Mayan prediction of the end of the world (scheduled for 21/12/2012) with the numerically quaint date of 12/12/12. So really, anyone celebrating having survived yesterday is in danger of looking pretty silly in eight days time.

But for many the question is not "will the world end next Friday?" but "how will we survive?". Yes apparently the end of the world is somehow survivable. Just as well because there's not much point flogging Let's Get Ready to Rapture coffee mugs if you aren't around to spend the proceeds.

But as even the Decembertwentyfirstists admit, they aren't quite sure how the end will come, so it's hard to see what measure will really see any of us through. In other words, we guarantee that the survival strategy we are about to give is as effective as any and every other one.

That strategy is to come along next Friday and inoculate yourself against the end by drinking Liberty Brewing's La Fin du Temps (incorrectly called La Fin du Monde last week) which is an experimental, small batch, strong Saison. Then when you wake up on the morning of December 22 try to remember that we're something like eighteen hours ahead of Mayan daylight time.

Rye IPA

A month or so ago we were visited by Adam Betts of Melbourne distributor Northdown and Christian Skovdal Andersen of Danish brewing company Beer Here. They were on something of a tour, mixing white water rafting with some white-knuckle brewing at Tuatara and Croucher, that we believe will result in some collaborative releases in the near future.

They also visited Invercargill Brewery to make a Rye IPA hopped only with Australian "Ella" hops. The resulting beer is Ryefix IPA. At the time of writing kegs and bottles of this beer are on their way north to us and in a day or so we'll be rushing this onto our shelves, taps and to our wholesale customers.

Incidentally Ella hops were once known as "Stella" (just as a slightly better known Australian hop is called Galaxy) until an objection from whichever corporate entity now owns the Stella Artois. No we're not making this up.

Music This Saturday

We host a new musical act this Saturday, just in case there was a danger that some of our regular acts became too much of a good thing. They're Scarlet, a two piece jazz and soul combo. They're on at 10pm on Saturday with the now traditional $0 cover charge.

And just quietly, the 2013 Fringe Festival programme came out yesterday, and there's a small development in our role as a performance venue.

Finally, and still on the subject of live music, Hashigo Zake's management mourns the recent tragic death of the unique performer and uncannily nice Wellingtonian, Steve Andrews.

December 6, 2012

Beer Decadence... More Beer Decadence... Tropical Beer... Music This Week... Christmas Rituals... Something Free!...

Beer Decadence

Way back in late 2011 a certain company specialising in the production of RTDs and green bottle beer that we'll call erm... "Independent" launched a beer brand that we'll call ahm... "Boundary Road". As part of an early brand-building exercise they enlisted volunteer tasters who would later receive a letter with a $5 note paperclipped to it, a little like this.

Many of us were puzzled by this practice of signing up members of the public then just sending out five bucks as reward - an amount that on its own was token but if done 22,000 times dwarfs the annual advertising budget of most of New Zealand's craft breweries. Since Boundary Road didn't seem to need to the cash, Garage Project invited recipients to donate their Hillaries to a Garage Project "fermenter fund".

Now the eventual use that the collected monies were put to will be explained next week. But in the meantime Garage Project invites those who passed on their Boundary Road notes to remind us who you are by getting in touch (replying to this email will do). And maybe leave a little of the evening of December 18 free.

More Beer Decadence

Allegedly the Mayan calendar ends next Friday (December 21) and the world's going to explode. Liberty Brewing have taken this little understood threat seriously and are inviting us to accept the planet's fate and drink a beer fit for the end of the world. Although going by reports from New Plymouth this beer's yeast doesn't appreciate the urgency of the situation and is taking longer than expected to ferment out. But Joe is confident that by Friday December 21 his La Fin du Temps strong saison will be ready to drink.

Now for many of you the 21st will be your last day of work for 2012. (Perhaps it was the upheaval that would be caused by the sudden departure of most of New Zealand's workforce on December 21st that clouded the view of the future for the Mayans, inadvertently triggering today's confusion.) It seems a perfect circumstance for a radical, big new beer from the extraordinary Liberty brewery.

Tropical Beer

Our next Tuesday New Release is another from Singapore's Jungle Beer. In Singapore's climate it seems their fruit-infused wheat beers are enormously popular, to the extent that there are several variants. And international visitors frequently comment on how Singapore-like Wellington's early summer is. Tragically we missed out on the durian-flavoured beer, but we did pick up a couple of others, including this week's new release - Tropical Wheat - Pink Guava and Soursop.

Now before anyone thinks we've sold out and are stocking beer-flavoured alcopops in the style of Stone's notorious (and fictional) Extreme Lemony-Lime, there's another side to this beer. It turns out that Soursop is something of a wonder-fruit with cancer-curing powers. We look forward to demand for this beer resembling the great 1999 mussel-rush.

And speaking of beers perfect for the Wellington, ahem, summer, it was about a year ago that a visit by Nøgne Ø's Kjetil led to the release of Summer Sommer, an attempt by him and Garage Project to create a southern hemisphere Christmas beer, using rye malt and pohutakawa honey. For a tiny batch of beer it over-achieved, picking up a trophy for Best Speciality beer at the Australian International Beer Awards earlier this year. There was even a video made.

Next week Garage Project release the first large batch of Summer Sommer. We look forward to putting it on tap, and if pieces fall into place it may back up our fruity, wheaty friend in Tuesday's new release slot.

Incidentally there are hopes that a batch of Summer Sommer will be brewed at Nøgne Ø some time in 2013.

Music This Week

On Saturday night The X-Ray Catz return to mine the mineral-rich ground beneath the meeting point of rock and roll, rockabilly and swing.

We'd like to offer discounted admission to people with dancing shoes, but there's no charge to start with. From 10pm.

End of Year Rituals

This will be our business's fourth Christmas & New Year period since opening and over the years our attitude to the holiday season hasn't changed. And that is that our duty is to maintain as consistent a service as possible for our regular customers. So apart from Christmas Day, when we're legally required to stay closed, we'll be opening as usual at noon every day. And we will not apply any of those annoying holiday surcharges.

Experience tells us that new year revelry and quality beer don't necessarily go hand in hand and we've learned not to expect New Year's Eve to be a big night for us. Nevertheless we owe it to our customers to provide an alternative to whatever it is you call what goes on in your average Courtenay Place establishment. So we will have live music on New Year's Eve from the Nick Granville Trio.

Our annual survey, which we believe leads to the most reliable and considered report on what's good in New Zealand craft brewing, will be back very early in the new year. (Because no-one would be stupid enough to choose Best Of 2012 awards before the end of the year, would they?)

Something Free!

Thanks to Sky TV we have a couple of massive "Summer of Cricket" posters. Free to a good home.

November 29, 2012

Hobbit-Themed Beer... Mexas Ranger... Upcoming Emerson's Beer... Craft Beer College "Exam"... Live Music... The 2012 Santa Session...

Hobbit-Themed Beer

A little while ago we featured a beer called Our Precious, that we smuggled over from Oregon at great trouble and expense. That beer was the result of a collaboration between Graeme Mahy of Hamilton's 666 Brewing and the multi-award winning Oregon brewpub called Pelican.

As is often the way with collaborative beers, the beer has been re-brewed by the party that had originally travelled to take part. In other words, Graeme has brewed a local version of Our Precious. It went on tap yesterday. For those who missed out on the Oregon-brewed version it's a superb "New World" Pale Ale.

Yeastie Boys have brewed what we understand is a more "official" Hobbit-related beer. It's Golden Perch, "named for the pub that reputedly served the best beer in Tolkien's Eastfarthing". It's a 4.4% golden ale and will appear on one of our hand pumps any minute.

Mexas Ranger

Next week's new release is one we've been looking forward to since rumours of this beer emerged months ago. It's a variant on Mikkeller's incredibly popular chipotle porter (Texas Ranger) but with five kinds of chilli, almond milk, cocoa, black beans and avocado.

It will be on tap from 5pm on Tuesday, before the Santa Session!

Upcoming Emerson's Beer

Yes you read that right. Nothing has changed about our policy of buying from breweries other than Heineken DB and Kirin Lion Nathan. But until the end of the month Emerson's remain independent and the ever-gracious personnel at the brewery were good enough to get in touch this week and let us know that they had some of our empty kegs! So we're getting them filled this week - probably with Weissbier.

Craft Beer College "Exam"

Craft Beer College's inaugural season of tastings comes to a close this Saturday, with an exercise in the important and demanding task of tasting beer "blind". Attendees' ability to discern what they've tasted will be monitored with prizes given to the most discerning. In fact Hashigo Zake is contributing one or two pieces of swag to make sure the prizes are desirable.

Anyone interested in attending should get in touch by emailing info@craftbeercollege.co.nz.

Live Music

This week Darren Watson and his Underground Blues Band return. On past experience this is all that need be said to promote this event.

The 2012 Santa Session

Next Tuesday's 2012 Santa Session is more or less full. If one or two people were to waste no time and proceed to the Cult Beer Store they might pick up the last places.

See you all on Tuesday!

November 21, 2012

Breaking With Tradition... Garage Project Releases... Craft Beer College "Exam"... Live Music... The 2012 Santa Session...

Breaking with Tradition

We're breaking with a tradition dating back to the end of the first decade of the 21st century by sending this email on a Wednesday. This is to correct a grievous omission from last Thursday's email. On that day we failed to draw attention to an event of some significance happening, ahem... [shuffles papers, mumbles] this evening.

Yes this very evening we have the pleasure of being the first outlet anywhere to tap a keg of the 2012 release of Tuatara American Pale Ale.

This beer has enormous significance for many of us. To be blunt, its release a couple of years ago was the first time in years that hopheads took Tuatara seriously. It paved the way for Aotearoa Pale Ale, Conehead, Mayday and Double Trouble. But this APA is dependent on the supply of those decadent US hops.

So we're delighted that Tuatara have made a large pile of kegs of the stuff available for us to serve tonight and (depending how tonight goes) for a few more days after that.

Those arriving on or shortly after 5pm should find some pretty generous samples of the beer being doled out too. We're also expecting many of Tuatara's key personnel to be on the premises at the appointed hour.

Now we are also aware that a certain other institution of the Wellington craft beer phenomenon returns this evening - Regional Wines and Spirits Beer Options. For the last couple of years we've sponsored prizes in this event, only to see them come back tucked under the arms of members of a team made up of staff from Hashigo Zake and Craft Beer College. We're undeterred and will, once again, try to supply some swag that gives competitors an extra incentive to unseat the reigning Beer Options champions.

Beer Options competitors are welcome to return to Hashigo Zake after the competition to sample some of the new batch of Tuatara APA. And if you latch on to Dave or Shiggy you might even be able to sponge a taxi ride.

Upcoming Garage Project Releases

There's an unintended theme to this week's news. Just as Tuatara release their clearly American influenced beer, Garage Project are about to release a succession of beers with American "inspirations". The first of those comes on Tuesday. It's California Über Alles, an interpretation of the famous but not so common California Common style. (As in Anchor Steam™.)

The vital info is that California Über Alles is brewed with US Northern Brewer hops, Pale, Vienna, Crystal and Caramel malts and California Lager yeast. We're told that in the next few weeks Garage Project will be releasing batches of Pils'n'Thrills, Golden Brown and Angry Peaches - all with US connections. There's more info on Garage Project's own site.

Note that as a beer made for general release California Über Alles isn't part of Garage Project's 24 More programme. But we know that more experiments in that series are waiting in the wings. We expect more from 24 More before Christmas.

There's some bonus news for fans of Wellington's most garagey brewery. All pretence of secrecy over their trip to Tuatara about a month ago has been abandoned and we can talk openly about their "contract brewed" batch of Red Rocks Reserve. When you turn up at someone else's brewery with your own hot rocks it hardly seems to fit the classic definition of a contract brew. The reason Garage Project took themselves and their rocks to Paraparaumu was to take advantage of Tuatara's bottling capability. So a massive batch of Red Rocks Reserve was brewed and it all gets bottled this Friday. We'll have stock in time for next Tuesday's California Über Alles release - maybe even earlier.

In case anyone has forgotten, Red Rocks Reserve is the beer that results from taking the wort for a pretty tasty, hoppy red ale and passing it through and over ultra-hot rocks, in an adaptation of the tradition of stein-brewing.

And at the risk of repeating a point made earlier, we're very excited to see two Wellington breweries collaborating.

Craft Beer College "Exam"

Craft Beer College's inaugural season of tastings comes to a close on December 1st, with an exercise in the important and demanding task of tasting beer "blind". Attendees' ability to discern what they've tasted will be monitored with prizes given to the most discerning. In fact Hashigo Zake is contributing one or two pieces of swag to make sure the prizes are desirable.

Anyone interested in attending should get in touch by emailing info@craftbeercollege.co.nz.

Live Music

We have to acknowledge another failing in last week's email from us to you :- we failed to mention last Saturday's live gig. But last week's shortcomings are this week's steps on a path of continual improvement.

So we can announce that this Saturday evening live musical entertainment will be provided by the Tony Mad Trio performing Texas Boogie in the tradition of Stevie Ray Vaughan. From 10pm and at no charge.

The 2012 Santa Session

A handful of places remain for the 2012 Santa Session, coming up on December 4. More details and bookings are at the Cult Beer Store.