Bood&Feer

Hello!

As you’ve probably noticed, this blog’s gone into hibernation, from which it’s probably not going to return. I am now contributing to the Bood&Feer blog, which is primarily concerned with beer and food matching, as well as cooking with beer.

Workin’ It

Ever wondered what it’s like to work at a beer festival? Well, I can tell you. It’s terrible. You spend all day trapped behind a counter, spilling beer on yourself, and pretending to laugh at drunk people’s jokes.

I’m kidding, it’s not like that at all.

Working a beer festival, whether you’re doing it for love, money or sex, is definitely work, but it’s also an immense amount of fun. You get to spend an entire day talking about beer, hanging out with beer people, and learning more about, well, beer. Sounds like a good way to spend a day to me.

With this in mind, I spent Saturday helping out on the Two Birds stand at the Ballarat Beer Festival. Two Birds Brewing is the creation of Jayne Lewis and Danielle Allen, formed about 18 months ago. They’ve currently got two brews in their nest – Golden Ale, a sessionable little drink, and Sunset Ale, a gorgeous amber/red ale, which shows off the talents of crystal malt (and brewer Jayne). As you can tell, I like them both very much (especially the Sunset Ale), which made talking to the punters on Saturday pretty easy.

The view from the taps – hay bales!

The Two Birds / Old Salt stand

While every beer festival is as different as its venue, certain things are constant. Beer festivals tend to have a community feel with brewers lending each other forgotten items (gaffer tape, pieces of keg couplers, pens) and swapping stories. There’s beer geeks hunting out unique brews. There’s also plenty of non-beer-geeks trying new beers, being impressed and just enjoying themselves, happy and relaxed. I’m not saying it’s all rainbows and sunshine; some people can be rude and a few have a little too much to drink, but these people are definitely the exception to the rule.

I know volunteering’s not for everyone and that’s good – we need someone to be the punters! However, beer events across New Zealand and Australia rely on volunteers, an army of people unpaid in wages, but often rewarded in session tickets, t-shirts, beer and good karma.

New Zealanders has many opportunities to get involved. The Society of Beer Advocates (SOBA) has various beer festivals and events throughout the year; to keep up to date with them and support a great cause, join up now.* Hashigo Zake often needs volunteers for their events – keep an eye on their news page for information. And then there’s the mother-of-all-beer-events: Beervana.

Here in Melbourne, the Australian International Beer Awards is looking for stewards and the Great Australian Tap Spectapular will soon be recruiting. In Australia, it’s advisable that you have an RSA (Responsible Service of Alcohol certificate) if you’ll be serving beer. An RSA is not hard to get though, just an afternoon of class and a 20-question, multiple choice quiz and you’re done.

These are just a sampling of the events available – keep an eye on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook for information on other events. And while you’re making plans  – try of Two Birds Sunset Ale and see what I’m raving about. Malty, malty goodness.

*How sexy is the SOBA sign-up page looking?

‘Faux Craft’ is Stupid

A few weeks ago Melbourne blogger ‘Ale of a Time’ (aka Luke) posted a rant about the stupidity of the term ‘craft’ beer. Personally, I’ve always kind of liked the term, but then I like craft. I like to imagine that a craft beer has had as much thought, quality ingredients, and skill put into it as a sock that I’ve knitted. To me, it seemed more appropriate than microbrew and less wanky than boutique beers. But I could see Luke’s point. Particularly when he concluded that as far as beer is concerned, ‘Some is good, some is less good, some is made by evil companies, some is made by nice people. It. Is. Called. Beer.’*

A couple of days later, I had a few beers with Luke and I found myself agreeing with him more and more. But as we chatted we realised we could not remove ‘craft’ from our vocabulary. We’d be chatting along and – boom – there is was in the middle of a sentence again. It is an established part of the way we discuss beer. It would take considerable effort to change it. There is, however, nothing to stop us from preventing even stupider terms becoming commonplace. I am speaking of ‘faux craft’. It’s been rumbling around for a while and when I saw it used in Hashigo Zake’s post ‘The Truth About Faux Craft‘ I finally snapped.**

A little like ‘craft beer’, ‘faux craft beer’ almost makes sense – until you have to define it. For example, a faux craft brewery is not really a brewery – it’s just a brand, with the beer still made by a big brewery. What then of Hancocks? Hancocks, as far as I know (being a little more removed from the news than I used to be) is brewed at Stoke, which many would consider a ‘craft brewery’. Sure, Hancocks makes out like they have their own brewery, but how often do brewing companies in New Zealand promote that their beers are made at a contract brewery? Let’s face it, a lack of full disclosure about where a beer is brewed is hardly uncommon in New Zealand.

Which is why I’m strongly considering adopting Luke’s mantra of ‘It.Is.Beer.’ It’s a little easier for me to do here in Australia where I’m quite ignorant of who owns what. Also, since I’ve been here, a lack of funds and a certain amount of politeness has meant I’ve drunk beers that I’d probably wouldn’t have tried in New Zealand. And I’m going to continue to do so. I’m going to judge a beer on its own merits. I won’t be surprised if I discover that some ‘craft’ beers will be the equivalent of grandma’s macramé – ugly and faulty – while some ‘mainstream’ beers will be machine-made socks – nothing fancy, slightly boring, but well-made in their manner. But I am sure that good beer, which has had a well-though-out creative recipe, quality ingredients, and impeccable brewing skills, will show through. And that’s what I’ll continue to buy and support with my dollars.

* Which I think is a point Phil Cook has made before. With a music analogy. Of course.
** I thought the tasting was a great idea and well done – it is the term and only the term that I am criticising.

Golden Pints

It’s been a big year of beers, beer events, and beer news. We’re all looking back at the year that was and making plans for the year that will be. For us beer writers, it’s time for the Golden Pints, an entirely unscientific process that involves reaching back into so fairly foggy memories and trying to decide what our favourites of the year were. It’s bound to put more emphasis on more recent beers and inevitably some great beers will be forgotten.

Here are my Golden Pints for 2012. I didn’t include some of the categories because they didn’t apply to me – I haven’t bought beer online this year – or because I thought they were stupid (aren’t all new beers experimental? How new is a new brewery?) and added in a category – Best Homebrew. On reflection, I’m a little worried about how high alcohol my favourites were – does that reflect on me or the New Zealand beer scene?

Best NZ Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer: Yeastie Boys PKB
This was the hardest category to choose. In the end I went with what I would order on tap given the choice of any New Zealand beer.

Best NZ Bottled or Canned Beer: Yeastie Boys / Liberty Brewing nevaRaven
Again, I had to go with, if I could have a bottle of anything right now, what would it be and I’d love to have a glass of this in my hand. So complex, yet so drinkable. It’s a beer you can sit down with and almost converse with. A close second would be West Coast Brewing Barleywine – although I’d like one of those in my hand and another dozen stashed away for ageing.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Coronado Stoopid Stout
This beer may have been responsible for me missing my bus, getting lost on the way home, and various other stoopid activities, but I love it nonetheless. It is everything an Imperial Stout should be – big, gloopy, and delicious.

Best Overseas Bottled/Canned Beer: Nøgne Ø #100
Looks beautiful, tastes beautiful. Marvellous malt.

Best Homebrew: Kelly Milligan’s ‘Junior’ 
It’s very rare I’ll have the same beer three times in a row, but I did with Kelly’s ‘Junior’ and American Amber Ale hopped with Cascade, Willamette, and Columbus (3:2:1).

Best Overall Beer: Garage Project Double Day of the Dead
I’ve chosen to go with Kieran Haslett-Moore’s definition and use this catergory as ‘best beer drinking experience’. I arrived at Galbraith’s soaked to the skin and freezing. The fire was going, it was toasty inside and then I got my hands on a Double Day of the Dead. It was the perfect beer for a not-so-perfect moment. The chilli and alcohol were warming, the chocolate was sweet and oddly reassuring, and overall it was just nicely put together.

Best Pumpclip or Label: Grumpy Boys Porter and Yakima Monster
The Grumpy Boys Pumpclip (below left) was the antithesis of design. Brewer Sam drew it on his iPhone and sent it off to the Malthouse who printed it off, laminated it and stuck it on during Beervana. To make it even more comical, it was twice the size of the other more thoughtful labels. (And it’s so true – they really are grumpy boys). My other favourite is the exact opposite – carefully designed by Barry Hannah, the Yakima Monster badge (below right) is detailed and draws you in to the crazy world of hoppy monsters.

Best NZ Brewery: Liberty
I hate to give Joe any praise, ’cause it’ll go straight to his head, but have you tasted the stuff that’s come out of his shed this year? Yakima Scarlet, Burning Evil, XPA, Renalls Toward Muriwai, Never Go Back, High Carb Ale….just so damn tasty. He’s good with the hops, but also seriously amazing with malt.

Best Overseas Brewery: Mountain Goat
Admittedly, I haven’t drank a lot of beer since arriving in Australia, but when I have had the opportunity, I’ve headed down to the Mountain Goat brewery. In addition to being a great venue, their beers are consistently good and their Goldilocks is one of the few golden/summer ales I will happily drink all day long for it’s hoppy goodness.

Pub/Bar of the Year: Galbraith’s Ale House, Auckland
Galbraith’s is a great pub and this year it was excellent. Wonderful selection of beers on the guest taps, the Cask Ale Series and some seriously delicious food – especially the soup and the Scotch eggs!

Bottlestore of the Year: Newmarket Liquorland
The best place to get beer in Auckland if you’re not in the CBD. The selection is amazing and there’s a car park right next to an on-ramp. All you need in an Auckland bottlestore.

Supermarket of the Year: New Plymouth New World (honourable mention)
I spent most of the year living in Otahuhu and the supermarkets there don’t stock a lot of good beer. I would like to give New Plymouth New World an honourable mention – their range isn’t huge, but they stock Epic, Tuatara, 8wired, Invercargill, and many more. And remember people, this is a supermarket that calls bok choi  ’Chinese cabbage’.

Best Restaurant Beer List: Hop Garden
Hop Garden counts right? Sure it does.

Best Beer Blog or Website:  Crafty Pint
I was a bit nervous about moving to a new country where I knew next to nothing about the beer scene, but the Crafty Pint is an invaluable resource. In addition, the articles are really well written, and the newsletters come regularly, but not too often.

Best Beer Twitterer: Dave Kurth @westcoastbrews
Dave’s a man of few words, but when he does speak/tweet, it’s often hilarious, insightful, offensive, or a mixture of all three.

Best Online Brewery Presence: Hallertau
Hallertau has a gorgeous and informative website, and they post regularly, but not too often on Twitter and Facebook with a nice mix of promotion and just ‘hey, this is cool.’ Also, they destroyed one of the Breakfast presenters with chilli. Awesome.

Best Event of the Year: Auckland Bar Hop
Yes, it’s my own event and yes, I didn’t really get to drink anything, but I am so ridiculously proud of this event, I’m going to put it out there anyway. Also I’d like to thank (again) everyone who came along and had a good time.

In 2013 I’d most like to… get in more practice at tasting and judging. Over the last year Greig McGill has nagged encouraged me to get involved with judging and (to my surprise) I really enjoyed it. And, it’s an excellent excuse to try more beers!

New Favourites

I am loving having a new city to explore and would like to introduce you to a couple of new favourites of mine:

The Local Taphouse, St Kilda
I didn’t have the best introduction to The Local. Wandering around in thirty-plus degrees, I walked past it twice. When I did realise that was what I was looking for, I thought it was closed. But, after I’d calmed down, I realised there was a flight of stairs leading up to what may will be one of my favourite bars in Melbourne.

The Local is small and perfectly formed with a bar area, outdoor deck, and an air-conditioned lounge. There’s twenty beers on tap from Australia and the world and you can get a tasting tray of five beers for $15. The Local have the best method for ordering tasting trays. The staff member (in my case a friendly ex-Hop Garden Kiwi) hands you a sheet with the tap list, you circle the beers you want, and you’re handed back with list with the beers filled in on diagram. Simple. No debates over which beer is which.

My selected brews were: Birrificio Toccalmatto Sibilla (a nice little Saison), Temple Brewing Scarlet Sour (needs more sour), Bridge Road ‘The Scrotch’ and 4 Pines Brewing Zumbo Charlotte Wit (the last two were good, but I’d let them warm up too much). The stand out was True South Summer Ale – a Kolsch I could’ve drunk all afternoon. Clean, balanced, and refreshing. The food was amazing too; a pulled pork sandwich with more pork than bread, pickled cabbage, and apple sauce. But more amazing food was yet to come when I visited….

Brother Burger and the Marvellous Brew

….and had the best burger of my life. And I’ve had a lot of burgers. It had crumbed mushrooms, peppers, spinach and best of all there were ten craft beers on tap. Ten. At a burger joint. Mind-blowing, I know. To go with my burger I had the Mountain Goat The Naz Chocolate Porter (very yummy) and a Kolsch I can’t remember the name of, which was good, but not as good as True South (seriously, I need to find more of that Kolsch).

The venue is as cool as the name. A long, slightly dark room with a grill along one side, the chairs and tables are funky and the staff are friendly. I will definitely be heading back to Brother Burger, as least another nine times – more if they add more burgers to the list!

The details:
The Local Taphouse, St Kilda
184 Carlisle Road, St Kilda
www.thelocal.com.au

Brother Burger and the Marvellous Brew
413 Brunswick St, Fitzroy
www.brotherburger.com.au

Melbourne: Birds and Beers

I arrived in Melbourne last Friday and was quickly struck by two things: one, I have frickin’ amazing friends, and two, Australian birds are large, loud and odd.

I hopped off the airport bus and was whisked over to Richmond, where my friends, Fi and Mike are putting me up until I find a job (I told you they were nice). Once my luggage was stowed, we were off to Slow Beer, a craft beer bottle store with an on-license. That’s right, you can drink while oogling the beer – and there’s a lot of beer. Mike gave me a 15-minute intensive course on Victorian beers, schooling me on beers and breweries. Having been here a while, he’s managed to work his way through quite a few of them and was happy to impart his knowledge.

When Slow Beer closed, it was off to find some dinner at a crazy place called ‘The Hungarian’. The menu alone is worth a visit, with gems like ‘Hokkein noodles: we don’t serve these on any day. We’re a Hungarian restaurant’ and ‘BYO wine: $2. BYO beer $3. BYO well-behaved children: priceless’. And you read right: you were allowed to drink your own beer at this place. Fortunately we had just the thing – a flagon of Moor Illusion Black Ale. Now, if I was fussy, I could’ve said it need a touch more bitterness – but fuck it, I was at an awesome restaurant with awesome people eating awesome food, so it tasted awesome.

The next day I was woken early by the aforementioned ridiculous birds, but it was okay, because we were heading for Beers by the Bays, the most chilled out beer festival I’ve been to. Held in the members’ parking area of the Mornington Racing Club, there was plenty of room to laze about, very few queues and lots of beers to try.

There were also very large and slightly scary crows. But this isn’t a ornithology blog, it’s a beer blog. Fortunately, the Victorian beers are the opposite to their birds. They’re easy drinking, sedate and do well with hops, malt, water and yeast – there’s no need to get fancy. (Admittedly, it may have been the festival aiming at a wide audience). Stand out beers were True South IPA, Cavalier Imperial Stout, and my beer-of-the-day, Southern Bay Brewing Co. Metal Head Robust Porter.

I love this beer. The brewery website says: ‘We wanted a mosh pit of malt so we mashed six different grains and made them jump up and down, push and shove each other into harmony like the tune of a robot guitarist shredding out pentantonic licks.’ Which is oddly accurate. There’s a little bit of chocolate, a little bit of caramel and a whole lotta malt sweetness, which is balanced by the hops. It also had a kick-arse t-shirt (see left), which also led to us renaming it the ‘Robot Beer’, with appropriate hand gestures.

So that’s Melbourne so far. The beers are good, the people are awesome, and the birds are weird. There’s still a lot left to explore (going to the Mountain Goat brewery tonight!) and I’ll try keep this blog up to date – but I may be having too much fun!

Also, if anyone knows of any writing or editing positions going in Melbourne, please drop me a message at kateljordan at gmail dot com.

The Sky is Not Falling

This morning news broke that Lion Nathan have acquired 100% of the shares in Emerson’s Brewery. The news has had mixed receptions and I’d probably estimate a 30:70 split between positive:negative. I’m in the 30% and here’s why:

1) Do you know Richard Emerson? Can you imagine him saying ‘okay, let’s dumb down all the beers?’ I’m not claiming to know him well, but I can’t imagine that happening. I don’t know the second or third in command that well either, but I do know many throughout the country – they’re in beer because they love it.

2) It’s not 1999. Craft beer now has a much larger, very verbal following, who will keep an eye on developments. The Macs buy-out was 13 years ago – hell, I was in third form – times have changed people. I would like to think that craft beer could even be profitable (imagine that!) and that Lion bought Emerson’s for a reason.

3) If you boycott Emerson’s products, you are increasing the likelihood of Lion deciding that craft is not profitable and ‘do a Mac’s’. If you continue to support the brewery in its new (slightly altered) incarnation, there is more chance that it won’t change.

4) Making money is not evil. The Emerson’s team worked for two decades to build up an amazing range of delightful beers – they deserve to be rewarded both in praise and money so that they can afford to do things they couldn’t do when they were broke and working ridiculous hours getting the brewery running.

5) An amazing Kiwi brewery now has access to one of the biggest beer distribution networks in the country. There’s a good chance we’ll see Emerson’s bottles in Lion bars and  outlets – we may even get taps. This would allow Emerson’s reach into the provinces – and even overseas. I’m sorry, but as someone departing for Australia in a week, I can’t see this as a bad thing.

6) We (by which I mean drinkers and brewers) need to find a way to work in the same world as the big boys. They’re not going away any time soon – they still control at least 80% of the market and even if they are on their way to a slow death, it’s going to be a very long process. They are still, for the near future – at least this way we may see Emerson’s in restaurants.

Lastly, I just like to ask when the Kiwi beer scene became so full of haters and doubters. Have a little faith people. At least give it a couple of months to see how things will turn out before you start running about claiming the sky is falling. You can call me naive all you like, but I’ll still try to see the best of people – even you.