July 25, 2013

Today!... Music On Saturday... Whoops Apocalypse... New Release Tuesday... Photography...

Today!

Years of planning and manoeuvring by Wellington brewer Andrew Childs come to what should be a triumphant climax this evening with the release of Celia Wade Brown Ale (a.k.a. Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale) under his own brand - Behemoth Brewing.

The beer was brewed a year ago under the "Wellington in a Pint" umbrella, as a collaboration with Yeastie Boys at Invercargill Brewery. This time it's purely a Behemoth release, and was brewed at the Twisted Hop in Christchurch.

In Andrew's own words:

A coffee brown ale that symbolises Wellington, the city I adore. With Havana PNG organic coffee beans, New Zealand Hops, British malts and yeast (the Mayor is British after all) this beer has combined what Wellington runs on coffee and craft beer, with just a hint of politics, that melds together into something beautiful.

We're launching the beer at 5:30pm tonight. Andrew's flying down from his flash job in Auckland and we believe the person the beer is named after might be in attendance as well. And as certain people have been quick to point out on the social networks, there will be a few complimentary glasses of it for early birds.

Come and see how a homage to Wellington, brewed by an Auckland resident at a Christchurch brewery tastes.

Music on Saturday

This Saturday Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band return.

Now shortly after the recent seismic activity Darren joked on facebook about wanting danger money for playing here. Perhaps this is a good time to point out that Hashigo Zake is not on the City Council's list of earthquake prone buildings. In fact not only are we not on that list, we have a letter from the council stating that our building has been surveyed and is quite definitely above the threshold for being considered earthquake prone. So any ground-shaking and consequent building damage that goes on while Darren plays is purely his responsibility.

We'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to correlate the list of earthquake prone buildings with the list of recently earthquake-damaged buildings.

The blues begin at 10pm.

Whoops Apocalypse

A couple of months ago the "Four Horseman of the Hopocalypse" - Steve Plowman of Hallertau, Luke Nicholas of Epic, Joe Wood of Liberty and Kelly Ryan of Good George - got back together to brew another ludicrously hoppy Triple IPA. Some of our kegs were lying around at the brewery and so they were filled and dispatched to our warehouse with so little fanfare that we didn't even know they'd arrived.

We've been alerted to their existence and one of those kegs is lined up to come on tap. Fittingly it will replace Liberty Sauvignon Bomb when that finishes.

Now feedback from the Auckland launch of this beer suggested that some of the locals there found it "too hoppy". We're taking that as Auckland speak for "just about right".

New Release Tuesday

Next week we're going back to the deep well of interesting beer that is our recent De Molen shipment. This time it's an all-Citra sessionable IPA, weighing in at just 4.8%. It goes by the imaginative name of De Molen Single Hop Citra. In fact De Molen have a whole series of single hop IPAs at this strength. If this goes well we may invest in other varieties in future orders.

De Molen Single Hop Citra goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

By the way, this week's new release - Fitzpatrick's Imperial Porter - is still on tap and we were pretty impressed at how well it turned out.

Photography

Regular readers may recall that during "Choice" Beer Week next month, we're not only having our very own nano-film festival, we're once again showing an exhibition by popular local photographer Jed Soane.

But there's more. Only it's not here. Nearby bar Goldings Free Dive are holding a competition to uncover great examples of amateur beer photography. Sound a little left field? We're confident that some pretty cool images are going to emerge from it. And possibly some pretty disturbing ones. The mind boggles.

July 18, 2013

The Latest from Tauranga

Last month we managed to acquire a keg of Fitzpatrick's New Zealand Pale Ale, which confirmed what we already believed - that the Tauranga nano-brewery is destined to make some great beer.

Next week we're putting the brewery's third beer (that we and Untappd know of) on tap. In fact it's going to be our official new release. It's an Imperial Porter that Craig Fitzpatrick says is modelled on the great Gonzo Imperial Porter from Flying Dog. This isn't a complete surprise given the way Craig talked up Gonzo after he had been a steward at the 2009 Brewers Guild Awards. (Gonzo took away a gold medal.)

In Craig's words it "weighs in at 75 IBU... has a heap of Cascade and Centennial. Finished full bodied at 1.022 and 8%."

Fitzpatrick's Imperial Porter goes on tap on Tuesday at 5pm.

SOBA Winter Ale Festival

The lineup at SOBA's Winter Ale Festival is actually looking pretty stellar, and we say this not only because a few of the goodies are coming from Hashigo Zake's own stocks. For one thing it looks like it will be the first time any of us can sample the output of Mike Neilson's new Panhead Brewery. And then there's the infamous Super-Afrodisiac from Funk Estate. Not to mention new beers from Baylands and Garage Project. In fact it could be the most stellar lineup of festival beers outside of the Pacific Beer Expo.

Any tickets that are left are at http://www.soba.org.nz/shop/2013-mid-winter-ale-festival.

More Beer Week Events

Plans for week starting on August the 3rd are evolving. Today we can announce a few more details:

As we did last year, we'll be extending our usual Saturday night musical offering to include the Thursday and Friday. So we'll have live music from 10pm on the 8th, 9th and 10th of August. Specifically:

• On Thursday the 8th it will be the Tony Mad Trio.
• On the 9th we host the always popular Darren Watson's Underground Blues Band.
• And on the 10th we'll host the X-Ray Catz.

Since the season of beer events once again clashes horribly with the Wellington Film Festival, we're coming to the rescue of those frustrated that they can't quite enjoy both simultaneously by hosting our own nano-festival of beer related documentary films. And yes, we have the perfect name for this event: Reel Ale.

Reel Ale will kick off at 3pm on Monday the 5th. On that afternoon we'll host New Zealand's second official screening of Beer Hunter: The Movie, the recently completed documentary profiling the late, great Michael Jackson. We'll rescreen Beer Hunter on Wednesday the 7th.

On Tuesday the 6th and Thursday the 8th at 3pm, we'll be screening Suds Country USA. This film is all about San Diego and its recent brewing history. We think this is an interesting documentary for a couple of reasons. One is that it features a lot of our favourite breweries. But for anyone enjoying the current resurgence in brewing in Wellington the parallels with what went on in San Diego are glaring. So watching Suds County USA is weirdly like watching present-day events but presented as history.

The even better news is that these will be no dodgy hand-held captures or torrented screeners. Both films are legit copies that we have the right to screen publicly.

Finally we can elaborate a little on what we're up to on Saturday August the 3rd. Not only is Jed Soane's exhibition of photography of Wellington breweries opening at the same time as we celebrate Garage Project's second birthday :- between 4pm and 7pm we'll have Vicky from the Dumpling House on the premises, frying and selling her full range of dumplings on the spot.

Also, it looks as though one of the goodies that Garage Project will offer up for their birthday will be a collaboration brewed when Josh and Karl from Moon Dog visited Wellington back in February.

Remember to go to http://hashigozake.co.nz/beerweekevents.html to see our calendar of events during Beer Week.

Music on Saturday

In true Wellington fashion our music this Saturday comes from another permutation of some of the same musicians we've seen in different combos over the last year or so. So from 10pm it's Nick Granville playing guitar, James Illingworth on keyboards and Lauren Ellis on drums making up Granville, Ellis and Illingworth.

Behemoth Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale

Last year Andrew Childs devised Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale as part of Wellington In A Pint. The beer was one of the competition winners and a batch was brewed. The competition may have been consigned to the recycling bin of history, but the beer remains part of Andrew's plans for world domination. Nor has he let being turned into a temporary Jafa stop him from revisiting his very Wellington creation.

So... now operating under the Behemoth brand, Andrew returns in 2013 with a new edition of Celia Wade Coffee Brown Ale. And the new version gets a launch at Hashigo Zake on July 25 - a week tonight.

In the interests of balance in an election year, we invite any brewers out there to be inspired by the candidacy of any other mayoral contenders.

Old Friends in New Packages

Anyone who has been pining for Rogue's Double Dead Guy should be advised that it has returned in a new form. It's now labelled XS Dead Guy and comes in the same magnificent resealable ceramic bottle as beers such as Old Crustacean. And anyone purchasing the bottle for consumption on the premises may ask to get the empty bottle rinsed and put in a paper bag to take home and put whatever you like in.

Finally, Liberty's New Zealand IPA, Sauvignon Bomb, which was a huge hit when Joe brewed a small amount a few months ago, hits the market properly this week, with kegs and bottles becoming generally available. We'll have bottles in our fridges by knock-off time tomorrow and should have it on tap some time soon as well.

July 11, 2013

Craft Beer College Exam... Voodoo Doughnut Beers... Princess Lost... SOBA Winter Ale Festival... More Beer Week Events... Next Week's New Release... Music On Saturday...

Craft Beer College Exam

The Craft Beer College's "Exam" takes place on Saturday. We use inverted commas because final / lolly-scramble / game / tasting might be a better description. Beers will be served and questions asked that are intended to reveal who has been paying attention during previous tastings. But the event can also be seen a chance to sample some pretty tasty beers AND pick up some very nice swag. In fact some of that very swag will come from our own collection of brewery-sourced glassware, attire and, maybe, prophylactics.

To join in the mayhem, contact Craft Beer College by email.

Voodoo Doughnut Beers

In all the excitement surrounding the Fourth of July last week we may not have made it clear that some of that day's tap offerings came from a very large shipment of Rogue beer that had just arrived. There are more treats to elaborate on from that shipment, starting with not one, but two beers inspired by doughnuts from Portland's Voodoo Doughnuts.

A while ago we were lucky enough to get a supply of Voodoo Bacon Maple Ale. That proved popular and sold out, so now we've not only been resupplied, but have gone one better and got a supply of Voodoo 2 - Voodoo Chocolate, Banana and Peanut Butter Ale.

Rogue's mastery of, ahem, unconventional methods of brewing and packaging will also be enjoyed by anyone ordering Chipotle Ale soon in the near future. Insist on drinking from the correct glassware!

Princess Lost

From a couple of nights ago there is a massive hole in Hashigo Zake's personnel. Our very own princess is to return to Japan. Rei was with us back on opening night on September 10, 2009 and apart from the occasional absence while she holidayed in her homeland, she has been an incredibly popular member of staff ever since. As someone who claims to not actually like beer, Rei has been a complete anomaly amongst our staff, but employed an encyclopaedic recall of beer descriptions and some degree of personal charm to more than compensate. She will be missed.

Any regular customers wanting to farewell Rei can come along next Monday evening and get in the queue to buy her a plum wine.

SOBA Winter Ale Festival

The SOBA Winter Ale Festival is approaching quickly. July 20 is just nine days away. SOBA's ruling elite are crowing about how good the lineup is going to be, especially since it includes a couple of goodies from Hashigo Zake's own stash. Specifically :- Moon Dog Dasher's Envy (a Christmas beer, which is appropriate for a winter festival) and De Molen Hel & Verdoemenis (meaning Hell and Damnation, which is kind of puzzling alongside a Christmas beer).

Tickets are at SOBA's website.

More Beer Week Events

Last week we announced a few of our Beer Week events, starting with the Garage Project Second Birthday Celebration on Saturday, August 3. Now it turns out that August 3 is two days too early to be considered part of the Brewers Guild's Choice Beer Week, which leaves us with no choice but to label our agenda simply Beer Week. Sigh.

As some of you are probably tired of hearing, Melbourne celebrated Good Beer Week back in May. (Is this a good time to mention that Good Beer Week ran for nine days?) Anyway, some of our brewing friends made good use of their time in Australia. ParrotDog took advantage of the chance to team up with 3 Ravens and Two Birds to brew a beer they called Fly By Night. It's a Black IPA made with, naturally, Falconer's Flight hops. And a handful of kegs from this batch are on their way to us.

Yeastie Boys meanwhile made a second visit to the fabulous Lobethal Bierhaus in the Adelaide hills for a second collaboration there. (The first, a moderate strength golden bitter called Bruce has become a hit in Adelaide and is permanently on tap at the Wheatsheaf.) This year they've gone for a darker, stronger beer with a twist that might just still be a secret. It's to be called Wendy, named after the other bulldog of Lobethal's owner/brewer Alistair.

From left, 8 Wired's Søren Erikson (just a visitor that day), Sam Possenniskie, Stu McKinlay and Lobethal's Alistair Turnbull.

The following announcements might just be subject to change as both beers still have to be extracted from Australia:

On Monday, August the 5th we'll launch Fly By Night. And on Wednesday, August 7th we'll launch Wendy.

By the way, we're also taking advantage of this order of Wendy to bring over a pallet-load of other Lobethal beers, which is pretty good news, we believe.

To view the full range of events at Hashigo Zake between the 3rd and 10th of August follow this link.

Next Week's New Release

This week's new release was from De Molen which may have alerted some of you to the fact that a new shipment has arrived from the Dutch brewer. So we're gonna ride this wave and make next week's new release a De Molen beer as well. It's Lentehop, an IPA fermented as a lager, which some people therefore dub an India Pale Lager.

The arrival of this shipment also means that we have some pretty extraordinary bottled beer to sneak into the fridges as and when we can make space.

Lentehop goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

Music On Saturday

This Saturday harmonica virtuoso Neil Billington returns with his band for two hours of Chicago blues. From 10pm and at no charge.

July 4, 2013

Today... Tatsushi Collaborative Dinner... Garage Project Second Birthday... Wellington Brewing Photography Exhibition... 10,000 Pies and New Release Tuesday... Music This Saturday...

Today

Today's the Fourth of July. (Another June has gone by.) Our once-a-year opportunity to celebrate our favourite citizens of the world's one and only superpower - people like Jon Stewart, Daniel Ellsberg, Stephen Colbert, Edward Snowden, Sam Whitney... Not to mention the brewers who transformed the phrase "American beer" from a joke into an unstoppable movement.

So we've turned almost all of our taps over to US beer today and we think it makes for a compelling and varied line up and some pretty ostentatious tap handles. Specifically:

• Speakeasy BIG DADDY IPA
• Coronado FROGS BREATH IPA
• Rogue JUNIPER PALE ALE
• Rogue NITRO SHAKESPEARE OATMEAL STOUT
• Ballast Point OLD BARMY APRICOT ALE
• Rogue HAZELNUT BROWN ALE
• Left Coast HOP JUICE IIPA
• Coronado OLD BLIGHTY ESB

While regular customers will need little in the way of guidance regarding these beers, we must add a couple of comments:

• Today marks the launch in New Zealand of San Francisco's Speakeasy brewery. We're confident that Big Daddy IPA will meet everyone's expectations of a great northern Californian IPA.
• Rogue's Shakespeare Stout is nitrogenated rather than carbonated. Serving beer this way is new for us and this may be the first time that a nitrogenated stout has been dispensed from a key keg in New Zealand. We're looking forward to trying this famous oatmeal stout with the promised silky texture that should come from this particular treatment.

Better still, in something of a departure for us, we invited American-style barbecue specialists Three Little Pigs to set up in the nearby outside space that we, ahem, don't actually own, and serve their amazing food. From late this afternoon they'll be offering the following menu:

• Pulled Pork Sandwich
• Beef Sandwich
• BBQ Tasting Plate

Tatsushi Collaborative Dinner

It is with great pleasure that we make the first of a number of announcements about what we'll be up to during the week of the Brewers Guild Beer Awards and Beervana.

Tatsushi is the new favourite restaurant of our in-house expert on things Japanese and food-related - Shigeo Takagi. He's worked with Tatsushi's founder, Tatsushi Mikuni, to come up with a menu matching the restaurant's food with fine beer, most of which will come from a fresh shipment from the acclaimed Japanese brewery Baird.

So on August the 6th and 7th we're proud to co-host a dinner at Tatsushi of Japanese cuisine matched with beer. Tatsushi is one of Wellington's littler eating places and there will be room for just 16 diners each night. So booking is essential. Get along to this page at the Cult Beer Store to book.

Garage Project Second Birthday

And it's with equally great pleasure that we make our second announcement regarding the week leading up to the Brewers Guild Awards and Beervana. On or about the 2nd of August it will be two years since Garage Project's Jos and Pete carried three puny cornie kegs of beer, brewed on their pilot plant, down the stairs to Hashigo Zake. Though the token volumes of beer lasted about 45 minutes, that launch event signalled the return of commercial brewing to Wellington.

Who'd have thought that in just two years they would be rapidly growing out of a brewery 50 times bigger than the one those beers were brewed on? And more significantly Wellington has been transformed into a thriving brewing centre instead of just being the place where the rest of New Zealand sent the beer they couldn't sell to their own locals.

To commemorate their second birthday Garage Project are venturing into the deepest, darkest recesses of their Aro Street site to dig out some kegged treats. We'll be putting them on tap at 4pm on Saturday August 3.

Wellington Brewing Photography Exhibition

Finally we can announce a third component of our Beer Week celebrations. Photographer Laureate of the New Zealand Brewing Industry, Jed Soane, will use our Red Room for the third time to exhibit a collection of his photos, this time showcasing the booming Wellington brewing industry. The exhibition will go up on the afternoon of August the 3rd, in time for the Garage Project 2nd Birthday celebrations starting at 4pm. They'll be up until the 11th.

10,000 Pies and New Release Tuesday

A quick query against the database behind our till system revealed that we're closing in on 10,000 pies served at Hashigo Zake. We're extrapolating that we'll pass the 10,000 mark next Tuesday.

Anyway, to celebrate 10,000 pies fittingly we've asked our own Sam Whitney to come up with a once in a lifetime pie filling that will go on sale next Tuesday, along with De Molen Pijl & Boog, a strong Belgian Ale that we just received from the Dutch brewery. Our commemorate pie will be the most decadent pie that we could conceive of without actually barrel-ageing the filling, incorporating oysters, mushrooms and truffles.

Pie and Pijl go on tap at 5pm next Tuesday, the 9th.

Music This Saturday

Appearing for the first time this Saturday are The Sly Collective - a new collaboration between Wellington musicians Ashton Sellars (Brockaflower), Ayrton Foote (The Bandits), Adrian Laird (Wellington Mingus Ensemble), Richard Thai (The Bandits) and Thomas Friggens (John the Baptist) paying homage to Jazz Fusion greats such as Herbie Hancock and John Scofield.

They're on from 10pm on Saturday night, with the traditional non-existent cover charge.

June 27, 2013

Frog's Breath... SOBA Winter Ale Festival... Craft Beer College Exam... Weekend Music... Fourth of July... Next Tuesday's New Release... This Weekend's Charcuterie Tasting...

Frog's Breath

A year ago a slightly unusual beer snuck onto our shelves - Frog's Breath was then a new beer from San Diego's Coronado. It was a 6.5% IPA with the rind of limes, oranges and lemons added to the boil. The result was a beer many of us thought was absolutely delicious, even if it had more sediment than just about any commercial beer.

The second ever batch of Frog's Breath is back in 2013 and we've snapped up an extra large order of it. It will make an appearance on tap and we'll be waiting nervously to see what becomes of all that pith when it's poured from a keg.

For those wondering, the name is a reference to the beer's origin as a home brew developed by two former navy frogmen.

SOBA Winter Ale Festival

The SOBA Winter Ale Festival, also known occasionally as "Matariki", is back in 2013 after an extended search for a new date and venue. That venue is the Hunter Lounge at Victoria University and the date is Saturday July 20. This event sold out easily in 2011 and 2012 and is an incredibly popular get-together for Wellington's community of beer lovers. But then the readers of this email probably already know that.

Tickets are at SOBA's website.

Craft Beer College Exam

Craft Beer College's 2013 curriculum comes to a close with the world's least demanding exam on Saturday July 13. That is to say it's undemanding unless you're keen on taking home some fairly desirable prizes, in which case it might actually be a little competitive.

Participants in the tastings they've been running might be at a slight advantage, but the event is open to all. To join in, get in touch with CBC by email.

Weekend Music

It's a rare double header this weekend and both acts are heavy hitters. First on Friday it's a rare appearance by the one and only Adam Page and the Counts. Adam will be joined by regular collaborator Riki Gooch and Phoenix Foundation's Tom Callwood.

To reinforce just how funk-forward tomorrow evening will be, we've dubbed it Fat Funk Friday and will be encouraging all present to partake of some Funk Estate Oh Lordy!

Then on Saturday night it's the turn of a man who can play the blues with absolute credibility even when he's right in front of an air conditioner. That would be Darren Watson and his Underground Blues Band.

And what would you expect to pay for not one but two nights of amazing live entertainment in the same underground lounge? That's right $0.

Fourth of July

It's seven days until American Independence Day, which is quickly turning into the unofficial, worldwide day of celebration of US craft beer. This year we're not only raiding our keg store, we're also fast-tracking the arrival and distribution of orders of beer from multiple US breweries so we can line up a whole eight taps of American beer.

We've already announced that we'll have Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA (as discussed last week) and Coronado Frog's Breath IPA (see above). We can also announce that we'll have Rogue Shakespeare Stout on tap, which isn't completely new, except that this keg will be nitrogenated and so will be poured with the famously silky texture of a nitro stout.

Remaining details will be liberated independently between now and July the 4th, but will include some pretty amazing returning favourites.

We're also going to try something pretty revolutionary (for us) in the way of food, with American-style barbecue being prepared by Three Little Pigs just outside our premises and for sale to our customers.

Next Tuesday's New Release

Next week it's another one-off keg from Left Coast that's particularly fitting for the middle of winter. This time it's their Oatmeal Stout. We aren't spoiled with information on this beer, but have reason to believe that it's also known as Zombified. It will be on tap from 5pm on Tuesday.

This Weekend's Charcuterie Tasting

This Sunday our second ever Charcuterie Tasting, in collaboration with Big Bad Wolf, takes place in our lounge. We were afraid that we might be forced to postpone as Big Bad Wolf have been closed for a couple of weeks after a nasty refrigeration failure. But we've been assured that we're all good to go on Sunday afternoon. (This event is sold out.)

June 20, 2013

Glassware, Part 2... Who's Your Big Daddy?... Sunturnday... On Tap Now or Soon... Funk 1... Funk 2... New From Liberty...

Glassware, Part 2

Last week we wasted minutes of your and our time explaining why we settled on the glassware that we did, some three years and ten months ago. This time we actually have something new to reveal.

For smaller servings of tap beer, we've always used stemmed glasses of one or two varieties. They hold a little over 300mls. They're ok - maybe even slightly better than ok. We probably would have gone on using them, if it weren't for a fact-finding expedition to Adelaide's famous Wheatsheaf Hotel last month.

Now we've been hearing about the Wheatsheaf for a while - from such credible sources as Adam Page, Yeastie Boys' Stu McKinlay and Lobethal Brewery's Alistair Turnbull. And our delegation wasn't disappointed - the Wheatsheaf is a magnificent bar in more ways than one. It seems to be comfortably the most important venue for interesting beer in Adelaide, as well as being a great band venue and a big old neighbourhood pub.

Some years ago the Wheatsheaf took the dramatic step of investing in glassware from the German producer Spiegelau. Referred to there as "Fancies" these were the kind of glasses that we would admire but generally dismiss as being far too fancy and delicate for a bar. They are made of relatively fine crystal, are pleasant to hold and have a tulip shape that makes it easy to savour aromas, provided they aren't filled to the top. But there they were, in use and surviving the rigours of daily use in a noisy Adelaide pub.

On the premise that if you're going to steal, steal from the best, we're unashamedly copying the Wheatie and have invested in our own supply of Fancies. And they replace our old stems today.

Our Fancies have come with 300ml fill lines marked on them, so we'll be intentionally leaving a gap at the top when pouring them. No doubt that will upset a few. But for anyone hoping to really savour their beer and not afraid of ordering slightly less at a time, we encourage you to try drinking from a Fancy.

Who's Your Big Daddy?

It is with great pleasure that we announce that we'll soon be stocking the beers of celebrated San Francisco brewery Speakeasy. We'll not only be serving them here at Hashigo Zake but making them available to our wholesale customers around the country. So feel free to have a word with your dairy owner.

At a time when our decadent, pinky-out, IPA-sipping ways are threatened by a resurgent neo-prohibitionist movement, it's refreshing to bring the products of a brewery whose branding mocks an era of prohibition. Who knows, if the Wellington City Council's draft Local Alcohol Policy is as much of an assault on the hospitality industry as some claim, every Wellington bar wanting to continue trading may have to convert to an unlicensed speakeasy.

Speakeasy's flagship beer is a classic American IPA known as Big Daddy. Kegs of this beer are halfway across the Pacific right now and we're going to be scrambling to get it on tap at Hashigo Zake and a few other bars around the country on the 4th of July.

Speaking of which, we look forward to revealing more about celebrations on the USA's national day between now and then.

Sunturnday

Apparently in Norway, the winter solstice is called 'solsnu', or 'sun turning'. It's called that because of a belief that the sun was changing direction in its path around the earth. At least that's what Nøgne Ø's Kjetil Jikiun told us and he should know - as a former long haul airline pilot he probably watched it happen.

To celebrate this astronomical phenomenon, Nøgne Ø brew Sunturnbrew every (northern) winter solstice. It's a smoked barley wine - made with a decent proportion of peat-smoked malt.

We've been waiting for winter to put our first keg of this cult favourite on tap and what better day than the southern hemisphere's winter solstice. After a glass of this perhaps the sun will change direction. Or perhaps water will go down the plug-hole in a different direction.

On Tap Now or Soon

This Tuesday's new release was so good - and so popular - that we put a second keg on straight after the first. So Baylands Black IPA is still on tap.

We have a couple of rareties from Hamilton waiting to come on tap - Avarice IIPA from 666 and Bale Out from Brewaucracy. We've had Avarice before, although rumour has it that not everything went right with the previous batch and this one is promised to be on form. Bale Out is a hoppy American wheat ale.

ParrotDog's seasonal American IPA PitBull was a huge success when it came out late last year. So news that they've brewed another batch is welcome. Now it turns out that one last keg of the original batch has been unearthed. We'll have that on tap soon.

The Mussell Inn's contribution to the Great Australasian Beer Spectapular was Bush Baby. It's another variation on the great Captain Cooker - this time with kawakawa leaves and some rata honey in addition to manuka leaves. And it's good.

We have a keg of Garage Project's extremely successful California Common beer - California Über Alles. We're also getting a keg of their radical new Sauvin Nouveau - a highly hopped pilsner that also happens to have a good amount of Sauvignon Blanc juice blended in with the more conventional water.

We also have a keg of Schippers Chinook IPA, made with NZ grown chinook hops.

Funk 1

We've a mini-season of funk acts in the lounge. This Saturday local "surf funk" act, The Digg, appear for the first time.

Funk 2

Our first ever live musical performance was from Adam Page and the Counts. Adam and co are so in demand these days that there seems little chance of getting them back for the very Saturday night slot that they inaugurated back in late 2011. Instead we've managed to book them for a Friday, so we present Fat Funk Friday, next Friday the 28th.

To help the funk go down we're looking at some kind of a deal on selected Funk Estate bottles. More details close to the time.

New From Liberty

The first ever large batch of Liberty Darkest Days Oatmeal Stout left the brewery this week. We'll have bottles on sale today and probably on tap soon as well.

And Liberty is collaborating with Dragon's Fire Chillies again. For this year's Chilli Eating Contest they've produced a Bhutty Chocolate Stout - a chilli chocolate infused double stout. It's our new release at 5pm next Tuesday.

June 13, 2013

Glassware, Part I.

Yes it's the news story of the year - Hashigo Zake's stunning two part exposé on the contentious subject of glassware for beer. Or maybe it's just a slow news day.

A man walks into a bar and ask for a pint of craft beer. Before he gets served three fights start - one over what a pint is, one over what craft beer is and one over why it has to be a man who walks into a bar.

Like craft beer, the pint is one of the most overused and misused terms in the lexicon of the beer drinker. Someone asking for a pint in New Zealand may end up with a vessel containing any amount between 330ml and 600ml. But unlike "craft beer", the pint at least has a strict definition. Or does it? For people with a certain accent a pint can only mean 20 fluid ounces or 568.261485 millilitres. (And oh, we live to hear that word "proper" used as a prefix for "pint".) A cursory glance at Wikipedia suggests that that the 20oz Imperial Pint is a modern innovation dating back to just 1824. Before that a pint was more often 16oz or 473 millilitres.

As it happens, that 16oz pint survives and is often known as the US pint. It's the standard serving size for beer in the US, which means when we pick up branded glassware from US breweries, they will typically be that volume. Interestingly when we acquire branded glassware from breweries in other countries they're often that size too, suggesting that the US pint is a kind of default serving size in the craft beer world. Whatever craft beer is.

Now back when Hashigo Zake opened we settled on the US pint as our standard "large" serving. We thought that the size is a sensible one. 473mls is a reasonably large serving, but we thought that serving 568mls at a time of beers between 5% and 8% ABV was irresponsible and expensive. And it means that we can swap in the branded glassware of our favourite breweries without having to agonise over the volume.

And by the way, yes we do intentionally understate the volume on our menu to allow for the beer's head.

We also like the aesthetic of the glass known as a "shaker". And for a busy bar they're quite practical. Not everyone agrees with us. We acknowledge that for the fussy drinker trying to savour and study their beer, this type of glass is not ideal. Which is why we have alternatives, of which we'll say more next week.

Now back in 2009 when we made our choice we were aware that some Wellington bars used glassware that resembles the US Pint glass discussed above, but wasn't quite the same. This happens in other parts of the world too, in same cases inciting claims of cheating. It turned out that our research was a little off. It's apparent that virtually every Wellington bar uses the "cheater pint", leaving us, poor, naïve fools, serving 12% more beer than everyone else without anyone realising.

It's obvious then what we need to do. We must immediately replace all our 473ml glasses with the more common 425ml glasses. Naturally we won't change our prices and only the handful still reading this will be aware, since the 425ml glass is so fiendishly, brilliantly deceptive.

As if.

So nothing to see here, move along, the status quo remains. Next week though we'll make an announcement about our glassware that will actually be new and interesting. Honest.

Meat Mania

Bookings for our encore tasting of pairings of Big Bad Wolf products and beer were coming along nicely. That is until a couple of days ago when, in a short space of time, all the remaining places got snapped up.

So we get the message - the demand for this event is far from satisfied. Now if we repeat the event once more in late July or early August we'll be running into the period around Beervana, the Brewers Guild Awards and even Wellington On A Plate. Which is probably what we'll do. Stay tuned.

On Tap Now or Soon

• Can anyone spell C!tra? On tap now and about a third of a keg left.
• There's a little of this week's new release, Left Coast Baltic Porter, left.
• We have a keg of De Molen's coffee infused imperial stout Mout & Mocca coming on in a few days. It's in the 99th percentile on ratebeer.com and the second to last reviewer said "This is an incredibly wonderful beer!". The most recent reviewer said "A harsh, sweet, boozy, dirty dark beer. Low drinkability". We like divisive beers. They're why we have more than one tap.
• From Townshend we have his so-called India Pale Lager Scissor Jack.
• And our old friend Coronado Idiot IPA is back.

Baylands Black IPA

New local brewery Baylands have made the first keg of their new Black IPA available to be our new release next week. Aidan is promising a complex beer with a cocktail of four American hops, many of them starting with "C".

Baylands Black IPA goes on tap at 5pm on Tuesday.

X-Ray Catz

Coinciding nicely with this weekend's Vintage-Orama festival, we have the X-Ray Catz playing in the lounge on Saturday night. We're back to the usual 10pm start but the non-existent cover charge is unchanged.

A Little Actual News

Following a hysterical plea (literally "Front up or be closed down") from the local branch of the Hospitality Association, Hashigo Zake today sent a delegation to a meeting at the Wellington City Council. The subject was the soon to be drafted Local Alcohol Policy. While the nature of the meeting bore little resemblance to what the Association implied, it was interesting to hear arguments from the likes of Police, the Retailers Association, assorted medical experts, hotel operators and of course our own local Hospitality Association.

One clear outcome of the recent debate on the alleged misuse of alcohol is that retailers and bars are in some kind of a battle to blame each other whenever anyone gets drunk. While Hospitality (and others) repeated the pre-loading/side-loading mantra, the representative of supermarket operators came up with a new platitude - "it's the last drink that matters". And it seems there must have been some kind of side bet among some of the speakers to see who could utter the word "vibrant" the most times in their allotted five minutes.

Most of the deliberations come down to what future constraints there will be on bar closing times in downtown Wellington. We believe that at Hashigo Zake we have little to worry about because we don't generally stay open as late as the times that are being discussed. However it does seem that the Hospitality Association are trying to persuade the Council to make official Courtenay Place's status as Wellington's nightlife ghetto, by allowing later closing times there. Since craft beer bars generally avoid Courtenay Place and the street remains in the grip of the big breweries it could mean that people wanting a drink late at night will be denied much in the way of choice. More disturbing is the lack of understanding that nightlife stays "vibrant" (word of the day) by regularly reinventing itself in new locations. Instead it seems that Wellington's bar culture will be mandated to remain penned in Courtenay Place. Oh dear.

Congratulations though to the mayor, who asked the best question of the day, to the police. The gist of it was: In rural areas where there's no particular nightlife, do people drink much? No answer was available.