October 20, 2011

Final Pacific Beer Expo Briefing... Upcoming Garage Releases... New Music Experiment...

Final Pacific Beer Expo Briefing

We have one final piece in the puzzle to announce about the lineup this weekend. One of the first beers we announced and then had to de-announce was Yeastie Boys' His Majesty 2011. Since then Stu has been promising a substitute to blow us all away and it will be xeRRex. For those who aren't satisfied with the 100% peat-smoked malt beer known as Rex Attitude, Yeastie Boys have set out to make the peatiest even peatier, apparently by using even more peat-smoked malt. The result is a 10%ABV version of Rex Attitute.

Now when Rex Attitude was released bars around New Zealand and Australia discovered that its presence remains long after the keg it came in is empty. Any beer poured through the same line for weeks afterwards continues to give up a tell-tale peaty note. Rather than risk tainting one of our own portable beer systems, or even one that we're borrowing, we'll be pouring this beer direct from the single use vessel it's transported in, through a disposable tap, into glasses.

Here are some more practical details for those of you bursting with curiosity:

• Your souvenir festival glass is a smaller version of the US Pint glass that we use at the bar. They are etched with the festival logo. We actually think they're rather desirable and in case you agree there will be a few extra for sale. Note that at 285ml they do make our standard serving size of 100ml look a little puny, although you can always order a double serving of beer.
• All beers, regardless of reputation or ABV will cost one token ($2.50) per 100ml sample.
• Everyone gets a set of starting tokens - eight, of which two are "food only" - which may be enough for some of you, but not nearly enough for others. When you need more you can return to the front desk and get more, or use the token issuing kiosk, which doubles as the glass swap station.
• There will be merchandise for sale at the front desk - t shirts and glassware, including extra of our festival glasses.
• There will be good, solid, tasty food on sale, prepared by our own in-house part-time chefs, Sam and Shiggy. Recent Wellington beer festivals (Matariki, Beervana) have set a pretty high bar for food, but we're confident that our menu on Saturday and Sunday will hold its own.
• We haven't yet managed to completely sell the event out, so we expect to be still selling tickets from Hashigo Zake up until the start time each day.

Upcoming Garage Releases

The experimentation going on in Aro Valley's former service station and garage continues at a heady pace. It would be reasonable to expect that providing three beers at this weekend's Pacific Beer Expo would exhaust their stocks of trial batches. But no, they're back on schedule next week with what is allegedly their most experimental beer yet. It's the second in their series-within-a-series - their collaboration with People's Coffee. In their own words:

People’s Project No. 2. Perhaps our most experimental and avant garde offer yet. A strong spicy golden Saison, infused with green unroasted coffee beans. Inspired by the pungent earthy aroma of green coffee beans, this beer is sure to polarise drinkers. Truly unique, No. 2 might be our finest hour, or our greatest failure. Try some and decide for yourself.

The week after will come another experiment whose details sound no less avant garde. We're not sure how much we're supposed to say about November 1's beer, but more details will be divulged at the Pacific Beer Expo.

New Music Experiment

If we ranked our favourite customers (and honestly, we don't) then new Wellingtonian Adam Page would be near the top. As well as being a celebrated and multi-skilled musician he's a passionate lover of good beer, which brought him to our premises on one of his earlier, less permanent visits to Wellington and he's been a regular and popular visitor ever since.

So there couldn't be anyone more suitable to be first to collaborate with us on a new venture - late night gigs in our lounge. On four successive Saturdays from November 19 to December 10 Adam Page and the Counts will appear in our very own subterranean venue. We'll elaborate a little more in the coming weeks.

November is normally a quiet month for us, but with the help of Adam and one or two other pretty special guests we're hoping to turn that on its head. We'll divulge more next week, if and when we've recovered from this weekend's activities.

October 13, 2011

Clayton's Project... Pacific Beer Expo... On Tap Soon...

Foreword

Some weeks it seems as though all the most interesting news happened last week or will happen next week. It really defies common sense that we can scrape together enough material here in what is really quite a small business to bother you all every week. Which is a roundabout way of downplaying expectations for what follows.

Maybe the next time we hit writer's block it will be good to have a stock of topics to meditate or even pontificate on. Feel free to propose any.

Clayton's Project

The guys at Garage Project have been threatening to not deliver a new beer for a number of weeks now. Next week they're going to deliver on that threat - after a fashion. Instead of a new beer they're bringing along their second "rebrew". It's another batch of Golden Brown. At the time (about seven weeks ago) it was described as "a nice juicy Brown Ale with plenty of hop character... Pale, Crystal, Chocolate and Aromatic Malt, with Columbus, Cascade and Ahtanum Hops. 6.2% @ 55BU."

At the time it drew lots of compliments and the words "best yet" may even have been muttered. This release we have when we're not having a release starts at 5pm on Tuesday.

To be completely fair, we should draw attention to the fact that Garage Project will be releasing more than one new beer next week, but all that will take place at the Pacific Beer Expo.

Pacific Beer Expo

After putting most of our cards on the table last week there is limited information left to impart about Labour Weekend's lineup. Or so you would think. In fact there are already one or two retractions to make, and some additions to announce.

First of all, we and Epic have decided that this event is not the time to release one of their few remaining kegs of Portermarillo. To compensate, but not replace, we can announce the first release of the second ParrotDog beer. The Matts have said a little about this new beer called Bloodhound Red Ale. It's described as a dark red ale built around floor malted maris otter malt with plenty of aroma and bitterness from liberal use of New Zealand hops. But the exact nature of the beer seems secondary when compared to the burning question: will it create the same kind of hysteria that BitterBitch did back on July 27?

On Tap Soon

While some rock star beers are waiting for their moment at the Pacific Beer Expo, some equally meritorious but longer established beers have found their way into our possession. In particular we've somehow acquired a keg of Three Boys Oyster Stout. It seems far too late in the year for this beer to appear - perhaps it's a show of support for a team wearing black.

In fact waiting to come on are most of the Three Boys range - Pils, Wheat, IPA, Golden Ale and the aforementioned Oyster Stout.

There are other rarities from the South Island coming up too. For starters we have not one but two new beers from Golden Eagle - Raindogs Amber and Summer Blonde. And Roger Pink has been brewing again, allowing us to pick up some Pink Elephant Mammoth for the hand pump.

More of Yeastie Boys' glorious accident - Red Rackham - is waiting to come on as well. This time it's imposing as a beer for the hand-pump.

We've a couple of Northern Californian beers returning to the taps too - Bear Republic's highly recommended Jack London ESB and from Moylan's their gratuitously bitter Nor*Cal IPA and Chelsea's Porter.

October 6, 2011

People's Project... Pacific Beer Expo - The Mother of All Announcements... Crime and Punishment... This Weekend...

People's Project

Next week we welcome the first fruits of a partnership that has been developing for a month or two now between the Garage Project and People's Coffee. There are whispers of a series of coffee-infused beers but first up is the beer simply known as People's Project No. 1.
It's described as "a rich, smooth dark roast coffee bockbier. This is a warming 7% bock with a complex malt character and a generous dose of rich and intense black coffee. It's a beer that we hope captures the best qualities of both of our favourite beverages."
As usual it will be available from 5pm on Tuesday. Recent releases have run out a little more than 24 hours after going on tap.

The Pacific Beer Expo - The Mother of All Announcements

With only two weeks to go the time for announcing a beer or two at a time is over. It's time we revealed many of the Californian beers that some of the participants must be holding out for. Few if any of these will be a surprise to regular customers. But we've never come close to having this many on tap at once and only a handful have been available anywhere else before in New Zealand.

• Bear Republic Carburator Doppelbock
• Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
• Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA
• Coronado Islander IPA
• Green Flash Double Stout
• Green Flash West Coast IPA
• Moylan's Nor*Cal IPA

Yes that list does include no fewer than four IPAs, and if we included every American beer that we have at our disposal the event would be in danger of turning into an IPA festival. Perhaps some people would prefer that. But we are relying on some of our local brewers to help avoid that not so terrible fate.
And so we take great pleasure in announcing another local beer that we hadn't expected to become available for the festival, but has. It's from Brewaucracy - the embryonic Hamilton brewing entity that came up with the ludicrously popular Punkin Image Ltd. This time it's a vanilla porter called Bean Counter. Apparently 300 litres have been consumed in and around Hamilton before Wellington gets our ration of a single 50L keg.

Crime and Punishment

We've been the victim of petty theft and vandalism since before we opened. This is, apparently, normal. Occasionally someone is stupid enough to commit these acts in a way that lets us know exactly who they are, or at least exactly what they look like. So rather than take such abuses lying down and paying for our losses out of takings we do like to be pro-active when we can.
Late last Saturday three customers were caught on security cameras poking, prodding, rolling and unrolling then eventually folding and sneaking off with one of our new, custom-made barmats. We also found footage of them attempting to take an empty keg with them as an extra souvenir.
Now the cost of one of these barmats is not particularly high and we have been victims of far worse. But it was still a pretty galling slap in the face, and since the theft took place in an area where security cameras routinely capture footage (that is almost completely ignored normally) we decided to let the thieves know that we knew what they'd done.
The result ended up on youtube, with links to it from facebook and twitter. After a little discussion and some dissent about the lengths we went to over our property, the message must have got through to the culprits and we received a phone call last evening offering apologies and a promise to return it. If all goes according to plan, then at about the time you read this the item is being returned and the footage removed from youtube.
Finally yesterday must have been a slow news day because the Dominion Post called later to get some quotes and write the incident up here.
Now if people want to suggest that this is an extreme and possibly privacy-threatening way to react to the theft of something of little value, then you may well have a point. Especially since we are frequently the victims of other acts of theft that we don't happen to catch on camera and so don't get to embarrass the perpetrators of.
But the fact is that causing shame to perpetrators like this is pretty much the only effective tool we have if we want to contain petty crimes against our business that doesn't intrude on the innocent. And every little theft like this creates a cost to our business.
We've since learned that our friends at Croucher Brewery have just been the victim of opportunistic thieves who took off with a large amount of their valuable stock. It goes without saying that the brewery have our sympathy.
No doubt the perpetrators of the kind of petty theft that we suffer from would differentiate themselves from the kind who would steal large amounts of stock from a working brewery. As if taking shiny things from a bar somehow gets an exemption from the legal code. But in the end each and every loss inflicted on us is a cost to our business and eventually to our customers. In fact on one occasion the victim of a theft that we used our security cameras to study was not us but a customer. So we don't apologise for being "anal" and "pissy" about these things, as we've been accused of.
Now part of our problem could be that many of the things we have for use in the bar are just so damned nice to have. Would it help then if we made some of available for sale? We can do that with some of our glassware. The custom-printed glasses of the American breweries we import are items that we can restock in future. So from today our Rogue, Green Flash, Bear Republic and Coronado glasses are officially for sale for $10 each.
Will this help or does merchandise have to be stolen to have cachet? If would-be thieves paid for their glass but told their friends that they'd stolen it, maybe everyone would save face.

This Weekend

Regulars will have observed that for all the hype and the throngs attending the Auckland waterfront, the event that we cannot name has made only an occasional difference to everyday life at Hashigo Zake. But Wellington's "biggest weekend ever" arrives this weekend and perhaps those who don't embrace the thought of rugby-inspired all night partying are planning to avoid downtown Wellington.
So our current expectation is that, for us, Saturday and Sunday will be a little like the Sevens:- while chaos reigns in Courtenay Place, we'll carry on in much the same manner as usual, except for the odd inappropriately dressed, dazed and face-painted refugee wandering in. We will have a security guard and we definitely won't be serving the sponsor's product, so we may just be about the safest place in the vicinity of Courtenay Place.

September 29, 2011

Next Week's Festivities #1... Next Week's Festivities #2... Rogue... Garage Projector... Red Rackham... Another Pacific Beer Expo Teaser... Sport on Telly... Snack Foods...

Next Week's Festivities #1

At the time of writing two pallets of beer from Nøgne Ø are fighting the traffic created by busloads of tourists and making their way from some northern port to our warehouse. This is the first time we've shipped beer directly from the Nøgne Ø brewery rather than via their Australian importer. As a result we had much more choice than before, particularly with respect to kegs. Not only that, we managed to snag space in a refrigerated container for the journey from Europe, which is pretty fortuitous.

The icing on the cake is that this more direct method of shipping has resulted in lower prices. Yes, you read that right - we've saved some money and are going to pass those savings on.

To celebrate, we're hosting a tasting on Tuesday of Nøgne Ø beer. By coincidence Tokyo-based beer writer Tim Eustace happens to be in Wellington. Tim has been associated with Hashigo Zake since well before we opened and is also a long-standing friend of Nøgne Ø's founder Kjetil Jikuin. He thought he was in Wellington to watch rugby, but we're coercing him into providing his insight into Norway's most adventurous brewery.

More details and bookings are at the Cult Beer Store.

Next Week's Festivities #2

We've had a steady flow of overseas visitors over the last couple of weeks and the influx should reach a new peak over the next 10 days or so, with the capital's last four games in the tournament we are forbidden to name. The question on everyone's lips is: what will we do with these foreign guests between games?

We have a solution for next Monday at least. We're taking a mini-bus to Martinborough for a thinking person's tour of good drinking and eating. Sadly Martinborough is without a brewery these days, but nearby Carterton has Crooked Cider so our tour will take in their business to break the monotony of one great Martinborough pinot after another. There will be a high quality winery lunch too. If you have an out of town visitor with gaps in their schedule send them down to us. More info is available at the bar.

Rogue

Nøgne Ø isn't the only brewery that we are taking a delivery from this week. After about six months asking, negotiating and, well, head-scratching, we've finally got a long awaited refresh of our stocks of Rogue.

There isn't a single beer in this shipment that we haven't had before, but the long absence of beers like Dead Guy, Chipotle Ale and Mocha Porter should make up for any lack of novelty.

Having said that, there is one innovation of a sort in this order. The high strength "XS" beers that previously came in magnificent but daunting 750ml ceramic bottles now come in 207ml bottles. You can expect to see them on our shelves by early next week.

Garage Projector

The Garage Project are all about experimentation and next week it's time for yet another unexpected turn. Their next beer is their lowest in alcohol so far at 4.5% and their first wheat beer. In their own words:

A light golden straw colour, this beer is based on the Belgian Wit style but with an orange and cardamom twist. This is not a hop driven beer. Instead it has an aromatic hit from the late addition red grapefruit, tangelo, orange and lemon peel, camomile flowers, vanilla bean and freshly crushed green cardamom.

Apparently they're still trying to settle on a "witty" name.

But there are several other pieces of good news too. Firstly the brewers have decided that it's time to start revisiting some of the early beers and are making random kegs of some of these re-tests available to us. Waiting to come on soon are twenty litres of a slightly modified Trip Hop.

More good news awaits in the news below regarding the Pacific Beer Expo.

Red Rackham

An unplanned Yeastie Boys release has turned up on our doorstep. We're not sure how open Stu and Sam want to be about this little misadventure, but we think that this love child of one of their regular beers and an interloping yeast strain may have more legitimacy than they realise. When there was indecision about whether to recognise this strong, amber and oddly Flemish-accented beer, we said send it to us. The result - Red Rackham - will be on tap very shortly.

There is an unfortunate consequence of this improvised beer. See below under today's news regarding the Pacific Beer Expo.

Another Pacific Beer Expo Teaser

For the first and hopefully last time, we have some bad news to announce. The aforementioned "improvisation" that led to the Yeastie Boys Red Rackham has thrown out their production schedule. As a result His Majesty 2011 won't be ready by Labour weekend. We're confident that this week's announcements will make up for that setback.

Now for the good news.

Liberty Brewing will be present at the festival. In fact Joseph Wood has said he'll come down from the 'Naki for it. He'll be bringing a new batch of his C!tra Imperial IPA. This may just be the closest he's come to what was the beer of 2010 for some of us - his Summ!t Imperial IPA. (We'd encouraged Joe to brew Summ!t again, but sadly the hops weren't available.)

And speaking of lower North Island nano-breweries, Garage Project will be rubbing shoulders with our iconic Pacific imports too. They have no fewer than three beers planned, starting with the in-theme Ring of Fire. This is a strong pale ale hopped with some of the most famous varieties from the four countries included in the festival. That means Sorachi Ace from Japan (though grown in the US), Centennial and Amarillo from the US, Galaxy from Australia and Nelson Sauvin from the South Island. Whose accent will be heard above the din?

But over-delivering on variety has been Garage Project's signature. They've invested in a couple of 20L casks for "gravity dispensing". This is a posh way of saying the beer comes straight from a hole in the container. The beauty is that of all possible means of dispensing beer this one should have the least potential for interference from oxidation.

For these two dispensers they are brewing two beers. One is an ANZAC beer, inspired not by sacrifices on foreign fields, but by anzac biscuits. It's brewed with oats and golden syrup and is hopped with a combination of Kiwi Motueka and Australian Galaxy hops.

The second is a thoroughly English-inspired pale ale but made with all New Zealand-grown ingredients. It has New Zealand grown Fuggles, Goldings and Styrian Goldings and Canterbury Gladfield Ale malt and has been given an extra long boil for flavour and colour. Like next week's witbier, it's still waiting for the humorous beer name generator to be rebooted.

Finally, the arrival of our new shipment from Oregon's Rogue means we can add their American Amber Ale to the lineup.

Sport on Telly

We've had a lot of fun showing many of the matches from the tournament we mustn't name in the bar. But we face the coming weekend with a slight sense of discomfort. Some of our favourite customers have loyalties to other sporting codes that happen to have quite important games coming up this weekend.

First there's the grand final of the AFL, which coincides with one or two rugby games. If our friend Steph can rouse enough people with similar tastes we'll have no choice but to give in to her wish and give this event priority. To this end she has enlisted the Australian High Commission, who called to lobby on her behalf just now. So we may just create a diplomatic incident if we don't give in.

Then on Sunday evening there's another grand final coming from Australia, this time in a sport we believe is known as "loigue". Again, if we sense that the will of those gathered is to give this game preference over the event we can't name, then so be it.

Snack Foods

We're quite excited about the latest addition to our range of snacks. Nuts and beer have gone together for a long time but we think we've found a pretty exceptional take on the humble nut to offer our customers. So from today cholesterol-free, protein-packed New Zealand-grown Chilli Macadamias are on the menu.

September 22, 2011

A New Tasting... Garage Projecture... More Pacific Beer Expo Info...

A New Tasting

Our own tasting programme has taken a back seat lately with Beervana and a certain event that we can't name confusing things. (In all seriousness we can't name it - we were "inspected" last Friday to make sure we had no signage naming the event that we were showing on our TVs!)

But around the end of this month a pretty special shipment from our favourite Norwegian brewery, Nøgne Ø, arrives and it deserves to be celebrated. Not only that, the event that we can't name has brought to Wellington Tokyo-based beer writer Tim Eustace. Tim was associated with Nøgne Ø long before they became the brewing legend they are now - he even came up with the name Dark Horizon for the brewery's legendary 17% Imperial Stout. So while he's in Wellington we're co-opting him to help present a run through our new supplies.

More details and bookings are at the Cult Beer Store.

And while we're on the subject of tastings, it's time we started dropping hints about an event in November. It will be another single-brewery tasting but the brewery will be a local one. It isn't one we've had a full tasting of before, but it is one of our most regular and popular suppliers.

Garage Projecture

The boys will be back with another experimental beer next week and it's another change of direction after Salt and Pepper Porter and Aro Noir.

Next week's beer is Hazel, Maple Mild. It's described as "a strong mild ale, infused with roast hazel nuts and secondary fermented with pure Maple syrup. The finished beer pours with a dense rich head and has a distinct nutty, toffee character."

We're rapt that the Garage Project continues to give everyone a reason to leave their jobs on a Tuesday evening.

More Pacific Beer Expo Info

It's many months since we first heard rumours that Renaissance Brewery had developed a barley wine. But the interval between the rumour and the fact has been excruciating. We believe this has been caused, at least in part, by a delay in the delivery of the 330ml black bottles that the beer is being packaged in. Luckily a month or so ago the brewery were good enough to let Hashigo Zake's staff sample a little, so we can vouch for the beer's quality.

So the beer that will be known as Tribute Barley Wine 2011 will finally be released on October 21st. While the Pacific Beer Expo won't be the official launch event, we think it's pretty fortuitous for all concerned that we can add it to our lineup the following day.

Since we're announcing the inclusion of a barley wine, maybe this is a good time to announce a beer in an even rarer style - Baird West Coast Wheat Wine 2011. This will be more of a preview of this beer, rather than a launch, as it isn't released in Japan until November.

Here are some of the already announced beers in the lineup:

• 8 Wired Double Brown
• Baird Kiwi Strong Pale Ale
• Feral Barrel Fermented Hop Hog
• Ballast Point Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter
• Yeastie Boys His Majesty 2011
• Rogue American Amber Ale
• Feral Boris Imperial Stout

So that's nine exceptional beers announced. There will be around twenty more, all of comparable quality and rarity.

As well as drip-feeding information about the beers available, we've been slow divulging other details about the festival. So here are a few more:

• Every attendee will receive a souvenir festival glass and eight starting tokens. Two of those tokens will only be redeemable for food. All other tokens can be exchanged for food or drinks.
• Drinks will be served in 100ml samples, costing a token each. Extra tokens cost $2.50 each.
• High quality, beer friendly food will be available. Every item on the food menu will cost either two or four tokens.
• Any unused tokens can be redeemed afterwards at Hashigo Zake for 80% of their original value.
• The festival's two sessions will have two halves. At the half way mark (4:30pm) the lineup of beers will change and a number of beers will be taken off and replaced. A few will be available throughout both halves. The programme will make it very clear what beers will be poured at each serving station and at what times.

Note that all beers will cost the same - no distinction is made for strength, style or country of origin. This is because we have faith that the beers being served are of a uniformly high quality.

September 15, 2011

Another Pacific Beer Expo Announcement... Garage Projectile... Closing Time... Excessive Phone Charges... Two Lagers... Cook Islands Beer... The Current Major Event...

Another Pacific Beer Expo Announcement

Following last week's thesis investigating why bookings for Saturday drastically outnumber those for Sunday, we were offered a deceptively simple alternative explanation. (Cheers Brent). Perhaps not everyone realises that the 22nd and 23rd of October are the Saturday and Sunday of Labour Weekend.

Any readers who were unaware of this detail of the New Zealand holiday calendar need not be embarrassed. Just go ahead and buy a ticket for both days.

Now for more details about the beer on offer over Labour weekend at the Boatshed:

• We can announce that after a far too long absence, fresh beer from legendary Oregon brewer Rogue is on its way. And so a keg of their American Amber Ale will join the fun.
• Joining the one previously announced Feral beer, we can add that we will include the one and only keg of Feral's Boris Imperial Stout currently on New Zealand soil.

And here's a reminder of some of the lineup that has already been announced:

• 8 Wired Double Brown
• Baird Kiwi Strong Pale Ale
• Feral Barrel Fermented Hop Hog
• Ballast Point Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter
• Yeastie Boys His Majesty 2011

Garage Projectile

Next week the boys are promising a full 40 litres of their next research brew. So we may even let people buy a large serving, although at 7.8% maybe a small serving will be more appropriate.

The beer is called Aro Noir - Dark Side of the Street. It's described as a pitch black, full bodied Stout, with a powerful malt base of English Pale Optic Malt, Dark Crystal, Roast Barley and Black Malts. The hop bill is all American with the citrus grapefruit character of Centennial and Cascade hops.

Jos added that it is definitely brewed on the dark side of the street, and it's entirely possible that their location on the north side of Aro St, at one of the Aro Valley's narrowest points, has the least direct sunshine of any address in Wellington.

Closing Time

Some of you (whom we won't name here) are uncannily attuned to when we open, but we don't often talk about when we close. We usually shrug it off by saying that our opening hours are "midday until late". Each night we close when our evening staff decide that there doesn't seem to be much point staying open any more (or when our liquor licence runs out at 3am, which is pretty unusual).

Occasionally this vagueness about closing time catches someone out and we have a disappointed would-be customer. Or maybe someone chooses not to come because they simply don't know whether we're still open.

So from now on we're adding a little more certainty to our opening (and closing hours). Here it is in a nutshell:

• We open daily at midday.
• From Sunday to Thursday we close no earlier than 11pm.
• On Friday and Saturday we close no earlier than 1am.

Implicit in the above is a commitment to stay open past those times where there is obvious demand.

Excessive Phone Charges

Occasionally Hashigo Zake's own staff find our phones running out of power and conduct a panicky search for an iPhone (or micro-USB) cable to plug into our laptop behind the bar. We've also had the occasional request from customers to charge their phones for them.

To make life easier for all of us we've invested dollars - honestly, several of them - in a universal phone charger that will stay plugged in at the bar for the use of staff and customers. It's at the end of the bar with the Mike's dispenser and hand pumps. It works with iPhones, phones with micro USB ports and a couple of others.

And fittingly this innovation comes just as the Dominion Post gave our free wifi a nice plug: http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/wellywood-or-what/5621682/Wellington-Unlocked-Free-Wi-Fi.

Two Lagers

We're not sure exactly how this happened, but we've somehow ended up with not one but two pale lagers on tap at once. Not only that - neither is from New Zealand. It could be decades before this happens again.

The beers in question are Green Flash Fizzy Yellow Beer and Waldhaus Diplom Pils. Perhaps the name Fizzy Yellow Beer was inspired by the slogan of Green Flash's neighbour, Stone Brewing.

If you take into account the presence on our taps of Golden Ticket's Emperor Strikes Black we currently have no fewer that three lagers on. Truly unprecedented.

Cook Islands Beer

We will have the beers of a brewery completely new to us on shortly. Matutu Brewery is based in the Cook Islands, and after extensive research spent on the beaches of Rarotonga we've been persuaded to pick up a couple of kegs of their Mai Lager. Look for it on tap during the next week.

The Current Major Event

As promised, we're showing every rugby match on two screens, but you can stay blissfully oblivious in the lounge. For anyone wondering whether we've been swamped by hordes of unnecessarily-friendly, blokish rugby fans, be not afraid! If anything the evenings of matches have been relatively quiet, while we've had some good natured, multi-national groups taking in the afternoon matches.

During last Friday's match between the All Blacks and Tonga we experimented with streaming the celebrated "Alternative Rugby Commentary" through our speakers. As amusing as this commentary was, it was out of sync with the pictures and lacked any of the sounds we expect with a rugby game (crowd noise, Wayne Barnes's thoughtful adjudications). So we'll hold back before putting it on again and invite customers to give their opinion on their preferred soundtrack for certain games.

September 8, 2011

More Pacific Beer Expo Announcements... Two and a bit Years... The Tournament We Dare Not Name... The Big City We Dare Not Mention... Garage Projection... Correction...

More Pacific Beer Expo Announcements

Tickets are selling particularly fast for the Saturday session of the Pacific Beer Expo. There are a couple of theories attempting to explain this.
One is that many of you want to leave the Sunday free to watch the final of the rugby tournament that it isn't safe for us to name. The festival will finish at 7pm, a full two hours before that rugby game. We specifically wanted to give people time to get comfortable in a nearby tavern, go home or completely ignore it.
Another theory is that some people are afraid that certain rare beers in our lineup will be emptied on the first day. Here's why this won't happen. (1) We believe the overall quality of the beers on offer will be so consistently high that few if any beers will be "singled out" and quickly drunk. (2) In the event of that happening we will take steps (including weighing kegs if necessary) to ensure that no more than half of the supply of any one beer is consumed on the first day. Actually, at the rate tickets are selling the smart option is to come on the second day where there may be less competition for the same supply.
We can also give some more information about what exactly is going to be on offer. Here are a few specifics:

• 8 Wired Double Brown - an Imperial Rewired with a touch of Coffee.
• Baird Kiwi Strong Pale Ale - another manifestation of Baird Brewing's liking for New Zealand hops.
• Feral Barrel Fermented Hop Hog.
• Ballast Point Victory at Sea Coffee Vanilla Imperial Porter - the final keg of the 2010 vintage.

Already announced:

• Yeastie Boys His Majesty 2011

(All predictions about what actual beers will be served at the Pacific Beer Expo are made in good faith and with the best information available at the time. However we cannot guarantee that every beer announced will make it on the day.)

Two and a bit Years

We've been celebrating two years of business this week.
Over the last few days then we've received some very articulate and considerate messages from suppliers and customers. We are lucky as a business to have your support.
Thanks also to Gavin and everyone at The Hop Garden, where our staff celebrated the birthday with some memorable food and drink. Likewise thanks are due to Hayley, Dylan and Denise who made it possible for everyone to get the same night off.

The Tournament We Dare Not Name

By the time you read this the event that may or may not be the biggest thing to ever happen in New Zealand is as good as under way. Now since this email is promoting a commercial activity and we aren't an official sponsor of the event in question, it may be a crime under MEMA for us to name the event. (But it wouldn't be a crime for a hotel to charge $1500 for a room on the night of the final - go figure.) And the odd rugby-sceptic among you might like us to take that as a hint that we should ignore it altogether.
But the fact is that the ability to appreciate good drinks can be found in rugby followers as well as rugby sceptics, and it may even be found in foreign rugby supporters. So as with many major sporting events we are happy to be the thinking supporter's option for a welcoming tavern.
We're confident that our targeted advertising will attract a subset of visiting supporters that is completely compatible with our normal clientele. We want you, our valued, regular customers to feel no need to deviate from your usual pattern of patronage.
So our usual goals with respect to sport apply:

• If you want to remain oblivious you can - we still aren't putting a screen in the lounge.
• We'll put live games on one or both of our high def TVs if there's support for it.
• If there isn't a meaningful game to watch, we'll turn the TVs off, although we will consider sincere requests to show replays of games.

But our goodwill to visiting supporters doesn't end there. From Saturday and every day until October 10 we're running an afternoon tasting letting visitors get to know New Zealand craft beer. The samples will be judicously picked from our range, the guidance will be as well-informed and witty as our staff can come up with and there will be some brief notes for everyone to take away.
So when your out of town guests start to stink like fish after three days send them down to us. The vital details are: bookings not needed, start time 3pm, price $25.
But it doesn't stop there. We know that certain good friends of Hashigo Zake will be spending some quality time in Wellington in the week leading up to the quarter finals on October 8 and 9. To help entertain them we're organising a guided trip to southern Wairarapa for a day on October 3. Food, wine and probably other beverages will feature. More details will follow, but feel free to reply to this email to register interest.

The City We Dare Not Mention

We in Wellington like to be ever so slightly patronising about Auckland, our (only numerically and geographically) bigger city. But this week the marketing and sales wing of Hashigo Zake Corporation descended on Auckland in a bid to raise the quality of the imported craft beer available. Our findings may surprise you.
Oases of craft beer exist but are better disguised than we're used to. For instance, who'd have thought that the Liquorland chain would be dotted with pockets of resistance to blandness at places like Newmarket and Forrest Hill? Check out these two shelves at Newmarket Liquorland, packed with high quality imports to back up a fine range of local craft beer.
This week Mt Eden's Village Winery joins the family of enlightened outlets stocking some of the same imports that Hashigo Zake's regulars enjoy. One of the nicest surprises must be the French wine bar and bistro called Winehot which is a stone's throw from Eden Park but will be serving infinitely better beer than what will be on offer at any world cup matches. But the last word in beer in Auckland remains Galbraith's Alehouse and its great to see their legendary lineup augmented by the occasional Californian gem.

Garage Projection

The boys at Garage Project are well ahead of schedule in their quest to develop 24 unique beers in 24 weeks. So they've been threatening to take a week off. But NOT YET! Another beer is ready and it's Salt and Pepper Porter. In their own words: A full bodied, robust porter, seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to the boil to give a sense of body and fullness to the palate with a restrained fuggle hop character.
Now as if brewing in tiny batches wasn't making the point, this week's beer is another of the Garage Project's extra tiny batches. It will be available in small servings only and we make no commitments about how many minutes from 5pm on Tuesday it will be available for.

Correction

Last week, while attempting to lecture Moa Brewing about the wrongs of their marketing methods, an over-zealous spell-checker inexplicably turned our description of Hansie Cronje from being "deceased" to "diseased". We apologise for that error. If only Moa would apologise too. (For the record, they issued what has been described as a "non-pology".)