It’s official. I have just one week left with Epic Brewing Company before moving on to a Head Brewer role at a new brewpub in Hamilton. Changing jobs is always a tough decision and none have been more difficult than this one. My 13 months with Epic have been fantastic and filled with more beery highlights than ever:
NZ Craft Beer TV– This was an incredible project to be a part of. Capturing a moment in time in Kiwi brewing, combining the musings of brewers and developing a beer and getting a bit of content on to the internet. I learnt loads, got to meet some fantastic people and was instantly mesmerised by the quality of the NZ brewing landscape.
Mash Up – How to capture what we thought was a representation of New Zealand beer in a manner that all involved brewers would agree on? Writing a recipe and getting out there for discussion was the first step and it worked out pretty well! I’m really proud of this beer and think the brewers of NZ should be as well. Kudos to you all! We did slightly tweak the final batch, but I reckon it’ll get a Gold instead of Silver in the BrewNZ awards now 🙂
Hop Zombie – This is one of my favourite beers of all time. Working with someone like Luke means that you don’t really have to worry about the cost of hops per litre of beer or anything like that. It’s about delivering an experience, so we worked on doing just that. We only had enough hops to do 2 brews in 2011, which was a shame, because it was a popular beast! The first brew needed tweaking. We wouldn’t be brewers if we didn’t work hard to realise our dream beers. The second batch was exactly where we wanted it. I’m really going to miss this beer!
Barrels – Always fun to play with! I remember coming over at the beginning of 2010 to brew the Epic Thornbridge Stout and seeing a dozen or so brand new American Oak barrels that Luke was planning to fill with Armageddon IPA. I’d never seen or heard of new oak being used for beer ageing (though I’m sure it had been by many brewers). The beer turned out brilliantly, winning a Trophy at BrewNZ that year and the resultant Stout that was aged in them was brilliant and is still tasting amazing. Luke took something, turned it on it’s side and rolled with it. That’s cool! We had just as much fun in 2011 with the Barrel Aged IPA, this time blending it with fresh Armageddon to get the oak/hop balance exactly where we wanted it.
Victoria from Dish Magazine hard at work
ePicobrewery – I was never a homebrewer. I went straight into a trainee brewer role with a couple of science degrees under my belt and was armed with the knowledge that the late Jean-Pierre Dufour (my professor at Otago Uni and an amazing brewing scientist and educator) had given. I knew about metabolic pathways of yeast, the flavour chemistry of esters and higher alcohols and how fantastic Duvel and Chimay were (JP was Belgian, so we would do sensory analysis on Belgian beers in our lab classes) yet I’d never physically brewed a beer before my first job. This is where Luke’s 50 litre trial brewery came in to play. Luke and his father-in-law had lovingly built this up over the years and it had seen many a barley kernel and hop cone over the years. I got to have a lot of fun with this, pushing out a dozen or so brews over the year and figuring out what certain hops would do or how certain recipes for the Epic beers could be developed or improved. From Coffee & Fig Stouts to new hop varieties to experiments with Brettanomyces and malt varieties I’d never used before, it was such fun!
Flying Nun – Being approached to do a beer by this iconic New Zealand record company was super exciting. We got to develop a new Pale Ale, using a couple of hop varieties I’d only ever used in trial on ePicobrewery and work on getting something out there that was about aromatics, drinkability and focusing on a nice, dry finish. It was destined to be concert beer, so we were stocked that we got its “quench factor” exactly where we wanted it. I was probably a little young to know some of the earlier Flying Nun music, but as a student, bands like Head Like A Hole, Headless Chickens and Garageland were always listened to. I’m still stoked that we got to do their 30 year anniversary ale. It was a coincidence that Luke and I have been in brewing for 30 combined years as well!
Judging– I’ve always enjoyed beer judging and been really lucky to have been involved in both SIBA (The Society of Independent Brewers) and CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale) competitions, the International Beer Challenge, World Beer Awards and World Beer Cup with my judging hat on. 2011 saw me get the chance to judge at the BrewNZ competition. It’s always great sitting down with a bunch of brewers and beer experts and analysing beer after beer. Fingers crossed I get to do it again! (Picking up 7 medals in a Trophy for Armageddon was pretty awesome as well!)
Epicurean Coffee & Fig– I’m a big coffee fan and got to play around at Thornbridge with a Coffee Milk Stout, using locally roasted coffee from Sheffield roasters, Pollards. It was a great experience and I loved the process of transforming something that people just think of as beer into a brew that was similar to a cool, slightly sweet black coffee, with a nice, creamy head to boot! Based on that, we had loads of fun working with Victoria Wells of Dish Magazine developing the beer and putting it through it’s final permutations on ePicobrewery before brewing it on a large scale. I’m stoked with how this beer came out. It was a lengthy process, but it’s always worth it when you see someone try it and get their mind blown.
LARGER– I’m no expert on the masterful craft of brewing lagers and have been an ale man for the majority of my brewing career. Luckily, I’ve been involved in brewing a few though, so it was an amazing experience to take something like an Imperial Pilsner (or strong lager or whatever you want to refer to them as) and get it exactly where we wanted it. We were as nervous as hell with regards the amount of yeast we pitched (considering the strength of the wort) but it all worked out and we got something that I reckon is the perfect Summer treat.
Auckland – I’m a Taranaki man. Whenever the mighty Amber & Blacks would come up against the blue Aucklanders in rugby, it was always a mighty clash with us wanting to win. Generally, Kiwis are of the mentality that Auckland is rubbish and where they live is a zillion times better. After a year or so here, I’m gonna miss the place. Great people, a burgeoning craft beer culture and heaps of stuff always going on. It’s fun, vibrant and the traffic is nowhere near as bad as I anticipated. It may be due to my commute to work (I walk downstairs from apartment to office/warehouse), but who am I to question this minor fact…
Pretty sure my photoshopping skills won't be missed!
Epic – Thanks Luke and Wendy, I’m gonna really miss the place. Thanks also to the Steam Brewery team. It’s been great fun!
Another early morning start saw us weaving our way westwards of Auckland out to the historic township of Riverhead, home to one of New Zealand’s most awesome brewbar/restaurants… Hallertau. We met up with owner and head brewer, Stephen Plowman, who has been imagining and creating fantastic beer there since 2005. Together with his wife, Hayley, they run a great venue and the food is seriously top-knotch!
Hallertau itself is only 15 minutes drive from downtown Auckland, so if you have a nice, friendly sober driver available, it would be pretty much sacrilege if you didn’t go and check it out. Nestled off the Coatesville-Riverhead Highway, hop bines curl up the frontage of the building and with the giant palm trees outside (and the blazing hot sun like there was yesterday), you’d almost mistake yourself for being somewhere a lot more tropical! The team have done a brilliant job with their branding, from the Hallertau insignia, through to the simplicity of the beer numbering system at the bar and the intricacy of their speciality beer bottles. It’s the complete package and after a brief chat with Steve, we propped ourselves up at the bar and went through his range.
Hallertau Luxe or “1” was first up and this Kolsch was exactly as one would wish for. Lovely New Zealand hop notes of passionfruit and gooseberry weaved their way through this pale offering and with a little biscuity malt at the back of the palate, you could see that this would be a popular introductory beer to craft newcomers. We followed this with Statesman or “2”, Steve’s delectable Pale Ale. Some crystal malts, NZ hops and NZ malt had been transformed into this delicious brew, the biggest selling at Hallertau and a fantastic creation that balanced solid fruity hop character with a good malt backbone. Copper Tart, number “3” followed, a solid American Red/Amber Ale style beer but produced using mostly Kiwi ingredients. Wisps of toffee, some subtle malt sweetness and the hop notes that seem to be Steve’s trademark were spot on. Last but not least was Deception, “4” a Schwarzbier that was full of light coffee and deep chocolate notes, but with a subtlety and balance that worked wonders.
Steve rattled off accompanying dishes and styles of food as we tasted each beer, highlighting the epicurean approach that Hallertau embodies. The quality of their food is superb (as we were to find out later) and the ability to match their beers with the food from their kitchen is an important one!
Next up we tried a couple of other beers that Steve had on tap – the seriously impressive Minimus, a 3.8% hop bomb that Steve designed as a breakfast beer. Light in alcohol but with a humungous hop nose, this has to be one of the tastiest sub 4% beers in the New Zealand marketplace. We also had a taste of his Beastwars IPA which Steve thought up whilst listening to Wellington band Beastwars on the radio whilst brewing one day. He contacted the band and they were super-keen on the idea. It’s a big, hop-forward IPA and definitely worth a taste!
We then moved on to Hallertau’s more esoteric bottled beers. Presented in champagne-style bottles, we cracked open his Porter Noir. This beer is incredible. A combination of chocolate mousse and tart cherry pie on the nose, this beer is balanced to perfection. Rich and soft in the mouthfeel, but with just enough sourness from Brettanomyces and other wild bacteria, it’s amazing to see a Kiwi brewer taking on the sour-style beers and acheiving something as refined and tasty as this. The beer is aged in local Pinot Noir barrels that contain a stain of Brett native to the area. It’s definitely worth a taste.
We then cracked his big Barley Wine, weighing in at over 9%. Steve has aged it in the bottle for 12 months and based it on an English-style barley wine, underplaying a big aromatic hop nose that would be more apparent in the US versions of this beer type. Using all Nelson Sauvin as the hop variety, but keeping it well away from aroma additions, a long boil to intensify the caramelisation and an extended bottle ageing before release, this is fantastic. It reminded me a lot of some of John Keeling’s Vintage Ales (of Fullers in London), but with a more intense mouth-coating bitterness. High praise indeed!
Finally we cracked open Stuntman, Hallertau’s Double IPA. Made with all Kiwi hops, this smelt and tasted like it was done with the cream of the US hop crop. Big, piney and resinous, with undercurrents of tangerine, this was a fantastic finish to the range. As well as their own beer, they also have taps for other Kiwi craft beer and usually have at least one US craft beer on draught (Green Flash Le Freak was on when we were there). They also do their own fruit wines under the Pukeko Grove label and Steve makes a damn good cider as well!
If there’s one thing for me that was to come out of trying all of Hallertau’s beers, it was one word… Balance. Even though the hop notes rocketed from light, to huge and the bitterness went from slight to big and zesty, Steve always managed to get the balance in the mouth right. Whether it was ensuring the dryness of something like Luxe matched it’s lighter bitterness or ensuring the big, rich fruitcake and marzipan notes of the Barley Wine were balanced out by the big, mouthcoating Sauvin bitterness, he hit the nail on the head every time!
We went in and checked out the brewery, brewer Simon and their new assistant were hard at work brewing Luxe and the hops were smelling great. Luckily it’s been a damp summer, so they had enough water for brewing! All of their water comes from the skies, so a little rain is definitely important for these guys. We checked out the barrel-ageing room and our stomachs rumbling went back to the bar for some tucker.
A mountain of food appeared. Local sausages, some made with Hallertau beer, incredibly sweet and rich barbecued ribs, made for fingers to be licked. Salt and pepper squid, locally cured meats, sticky chicken wings, fries with smoked garlic aioli made in the kitchen. Get out there and go enjoy yourselves. I think we all deserve it!
From here we went to Steam Brewery out in Otahuhu. I’ll save that one for next week though…
After a brief hiatus from NZ Craft Beer TV where Luke and I got a wee bit busy with running Epic and the 5 beer releases we did last year, we’re back into it and finishing up the breweries we didn’t quite get to. First up is Waiheke Island Brewery and we got up at the crack of dawn, headed to the Auckland Ferry Terminal and jumped on the ferry. A cracking day, we cruised through the Hauraki Gulf amongst big boil-ups of kahawai and sea-birds diving for bait-fish, dodging the keen early morning fishing boats filled with locals pulling up snapper.We got in to the Matiatia terminal and were met by the owner of Wild on Waiheke, Rob Webb. Wild on Waiheke is a fantastic multi-activity venue nestled right in the middle of Waiheke’s wine growing area. Rob and his wife, Karen run a cafe/restaurant, brewery, vineyard and corporate activity/workshops all from the picturesque premises and after a day there, can say they do a brilliant job! Used often as a function centre for stag and hen parties, it’s combination of great food and beverages and a host of activities make it a veritable one stop shop! We headed past the vineyard and into the converted barn that houses a bar, shop, kitchen and showcases some of the great produce that is made on the island. From locally distilled rum (which I can say is pretty damn tasty) to local Pohutakawa honey and their own range of preserves and sauces, they have a great selection and something for everyone! There’s also a cool little playground in front of the spacious deck, making it a brilliant place for a family day out. A few beers and wines for Mum and Dad, an amazing burger or pizza from their extensive and well-priced menu and all whilst watching the kids enjoy an ice-cream or mucking about on the swings? Sounds pretty damn ideal to me!
We met up with New Zealand brewing stalwart, Alan Knight, head brewer of Waiheke Island Brewery. Alan has been in the industry coming up 25 years! An ex-pat Brit, originally he trained as an actor, but while living in Canada, he got sick of drinking the insipid lagers that used to be common place, took up homebrewing and then knocked on the door of a local brewery to see if they had work. Once they found out he had been doing all grain brewing (as opposed to brewing with malt extract), they pretty much hired him there and then and the rest is history! Alan eventually became a brewing consultant and is one of the more widely travelled New Zealand brewers, having clocked up 41 breweries in his 25 years, with 11 of them being in NZ!
We were super-keen for a nice early-morning beer taster, so Alan started us off with his Wharf Rd Wheat Beer. Based on a German Hefeweizen, this poured light and hazy. Alan finished it off with a small of lemon, not something I’d usually do myself, but the fresh citrus worked to lift the subtle banana and clove characters of this nice, dry wheat beer. It was brilliant. Next up we tried the Onetangi Dark Ale, which was close in style to a Porter. Alan told us that when the oyster season was in full swing (and their is a local farm which apparently does oysters to die for), they serve this beer with an oyster in the bottom of the glass. That sounds pretty close to heaven for me! The beer itself was rich with loads of milk chocolate and dark cacao nib on the nose. It’s body was sublime, rich and smooth with the lightest tickle of bitterness from the NZ Styrian Goldings he used. Was this the best dark beer we’d tried on our trip around NZ so far? Luke and I definitely think it may just have been. Alan went on to tell us how the slight brininess of the oyster worked perfectly with this beer. Who wouldn’t want a beer-pickled fresh oyster after a glass of something is superb as this?!?!
Next up, we had a taste of the Baroona Original Pale Ale. This was a Kolsch style brew, hopped to perfection with Motueka hops from the Nelson region. Again, Alan had nailed it. Massively quenching, beautiful hints of passionfruit and stonefruit and one of the cleanest, crispest finishes I’ve experienced for sometime. It was awesome. Alan is the master of taking fine ingredients, keeping recipes simple and nailing the beers. We finished off with the big 7.2% Matiatia Malt Beer and were pleasantly surprised yet again! With Pacifica and NZ Cascade as hops and a blend of 6 malts, this drank like a 4% session brew, going down like silk. Alan recommended this with a good, strong cheese, but I reckon I could have slowly sipped away on a few of them in the blazing Waiheke sun with ease!
After a few samples we had a look around the 1200 litre brewkit. Originally from Tauranga where it was set up as a Mac’s brewery, this simple 2 vessel brewhouse has definitely done it’s time for NZ brewing and I’d say that with Alan at the helm, it will do many more years! The cooling on his fermenters is all manual, so it’s lucky he only lives a few minutes away, meaning he often stops by at night to ensure his babies are fermenting away at the right temperature.
The beers are served from their own cooling tanks through a 47 metre beer line that runs direct to the bar! Not only do they do the 4 core beers, they also do an incredible non-alcoholic Ginger Beer called Hauraki Gulf Ginger, which was devised by Alan in his kitchen and uses around 30 kilograms of freshly juiced root ginger in every 600 litres! Alan also had his very first batch of cider on, which completed a fantastic range. The cider is awesome.
We then headed out into the vineyard and had a bit of a go at archery. Needless to say, the NZ Olympics team better look elsewhere for talent, though Leon from our production company, Augusto, nailed a few close to the bullseye. We then all took our turns at some laser clay bird shooting before heading in for an amazing burger and beer. I can’t recommend this place more highly and if you really want to try some great Kiwi beer, then jump on the ferry in Auckland and get out there as soon as you can. You won’t regret it!
The office beckoned however, so we headed back to the mainland to do some of that proper work stuff. It always seems to get in the way! We’re going to hit Hallertau Brewery tomorrow in Riverhead, west of Auckland and check out Steam Brewery and even ourselves at Epic. Another busy day beckons!!
I’ve spoken before about how beer can change over the years. I don’t really know a lot of brewers who develop a beer recipe and then stick with that exact recipe forever without ever taking into consideration any changes with raw materials. Maybe they do exist and I’d be curious if anyone out there knows of any brewers who adopt the “one recipe forever” philosophy.
My time in the world of beer has definitely taught me a thing or two about recipe development and the importance of raw material selection. Taking cues from what nature provides us means that we have to bend and twist our recipes and processes to be able to continue producing the beer that we have in our mind’s eye. I love the first sniff of a new season hops and the way that the brain takes that combination of aromas and builds a convoluted pathway that slowly morphs into how those wonderful smells will translate into a finished beer.
The same goes with the rush of saliva that accompanies that mouthful of dry, crisp biscuity malted barley. Almost as if those enzymes want to begin smashing up all of the starch granules the minute they hit your tongue (did you know that one of our salivary enzymes and one of the enzymes responsible for breaking starch down into more simple sugars in barley – amylase – are forms of the same enzyme?).
When it comes to a beer like Epic Pale Ale, we are constantly aware of the ingredients that we use. This beer uses only one hop variety, Cascade from the USA and because it is reliant on this for all of it’s hop character and bitterness, we find ourselves engaged in a month-by-month repartee with this enigmatic flower. The thing with hops is that they change. The changes may be subtle and impossible for most to detect from batch to batch, but they nonetheless occur. Whether it is the usual seasonal variation that occurs with almost every plant due to things such as rainfall, ambient temperature, the mineral content of soil or even external attacks on the plant from pests or diseases weakening the bine.
The other things to take into consideration include storage conditions of the finished hops and the hop chemistry of the varietals you are using in a brew. Let’s have a little look at hop storage. Alpha acids, the group of compounds known as humulones are responsible for the bitterness of a beer once boiled. They’re not the most stable of compounds meaning that after harvest, these alpha acid levels begin to fall and this can be exacerbated by storage temperature and the way in which they are stored. Different varieties tend to store differently with some seeming to lose more of their bittering potential over time. Hop aromatics can also change during storage, with some decreasing and others actually increasing in aroma potential.
Would you like some malt, water and yeast with that?
In our experience, US Cascade has tended to throw out a hint more grapefruit peel as it ages and the wonderful rosewater/Turkish Delight note that I instantly recognise as one of the main characteristics of Epic Pale Ale tends to dissipate slightly over storage. We store our hops at 1-2°C and because there is only one harvest per year, we have to be very aware of these changes, responding to them as soon as we can. There is a brilliant table in the book by Ray Daniels, Designing Great Beers, that shows figures from analysis of alpha acids in US Cascade after one year storage at varying temperatures. At 20°C, only 35% of the total alpha acids remain in the hop, at 1°C, 65% of the alpha acids remain, at -7°C, 74% remain and at -15°C, 81% remain.
My advice? Keep your bittering hops in the freezer if you can!
Our malted barley is another area in which we find it necessary to step in and alter the process when necessary. Using malts from as far away as the United Kingdom and Germany in our Pale Ale means that sometimes we may need to change our maltster based on what our malt importer can get in. With a change of maltster can sometimes come a change in malt characteristics. For example, going from Baird’s Caramalt to Thomas Fawcett Caramalt may mean there are slight alterations in malt flavour and colour contributions due to the degree of crystallisation or caramelisation during the kilning process. This has to be addressed as it happens so that we can maintain consistent colour and flavour in our beer. Sometimes however, it’s important to play a little and experiment with grist bills (and hopping rates) to ensure you can get the best results possible from your ingredients. If you can potentially make your beer taste better, then there’s only one choice really!
Which brings me to 2012 and our Epic Pale Ale. We’re patiently waiting for our new shipment of US Cascade hops to be packed up and shipped off, so there are a few months until the new season’s stuff arrives. When it does, this will see more reformulation as we look at blending the remainder of last season’s hops with the new hops resulting in tasty awesomeness (this is a technical term…). Our rebooted Pale Ale has had a few tweaks to it’s malt bill as well as an emphasis on bitterness from late/aroma hopping in the whirlpool and a bit of an increase in our dry hopping rate. Well, a bit more than “a bit”… we’ve increased the dry hop by a third!
If you’re curious in seeing if you can spot the difference between batches, any 500 mL bottles that have a Best Before date of 21.12.12 and any 330 mL bottles that have a Best Before date of 13.01.13 include our tasty rebooted Pale Ale. Also, we’ve just started releasing our kegs of this, so come February, all keg Pale Ale will be rebooted!
2011 was a great year. After 8 years abroad and living in South Korea and the United Kingdom, it has been great moving back to New Zealand and living again in this little slice of paradise. I thought I better put together a little precis of what I found great about the last year…
This one is pretty easy. When Luke and I were touring the country and filming for the Craft Beer TV series, we were blown away by the quality of the beers we tried up and down our fair isles. It was Dave Kurth of West Coast Brewing in Westport’s creations that had us seriously impressed. His International Pale Ale is my favourite NZ beer of the year. He also has the coolest sweaters/jerseys of any NZ brewer. Kudos.
He looks all innocent in his rugby shorts and workboots, but his brewing prowess is impressive!
Known for his awesome “Million Dollar Dream” followed by ramming a US $100 bill in his opponents mouth, Ted DiBiase was a wrestler of the 80s that would nullify his opponents with his aforementioned sleeper hold. The brewery that I think deserves this is Sprig and Fern in Nelson. Sure, they’re not really a sleeper in the sense that they’re super successful, running some brilliant pubs in Nelson and the surrounding area (with a new one due in Tinakori Road, Wellington in the coming months). Couple that with the fact that they won a truckload of medals at the 2011 BrewNZ awards (10 in total) and you can see why I think these guys may just be the ones to watch in 2012. Brewing legend and owner Tracy Banner heads up the brewing team and constantly delivers precisely brewed, flavourful beers that put a smile on my face every time I try them. Respect.
I reckon Tracy and her team have a lot more than malt hiding in those bags. One to watch for 2012!
The Ben Stiller Character out of that Mystery Men movie who is Angry all the time Award
Ben doing his angry face (and looking forward to some comments below)
I’ve been told in the past that I’m sometimes too positive when it comes to the craft beer industry. So I’m about to shock you all by posting something negative. Close your eyes and scroll down if you don’t want to read it!
The thing that has annoyed me about coming back to New Zealand is the contrariness of regionalism when it comes to brewing and breweries. I know that it’s mostly tongue-in-cheek and that banter between provinces (and especially banter between anywhere else in NZ and Auckland) is part of our culture, but would be great if we started seeing New Zealand as exactly that when it comes to our impressive array of breweries and beers. I’m not fond of the separatism that comes about from hailing one place as being the greatest and others inferior. It smacks of the Tall Poppy syndrome that reigns supreme over here. Sure… stand up and be proud of the great craft beer selection in the pubs and bars of your city, but as you do that, remember that it was not always so. Don’t complain if you can’t find craft beer in your local or your town or your area. Politely ask operators about stocking products you enjoy. That way we can create Craft Beer New Zealand. Country by country… 🙂
Those smaller ones will catch up eventually!!!
The Kelly Ryan Award for Employer of the Year
You’ve probably figured this one out by now, but I’ve had an incredible year working with Luke from Epic. Tweaking our current recipes to get them exactly where we want them, developing five new beers from brew process through to final packaging, touring the country with NZ Craft Beer TV, launching our new brews at pubs throughout NZ (and a couple in Australia), fiddling around on ePICObrewery – my first foray into homebrewing (I think my first ever brewday as a trainee brewer saw the production of around 100 000 litres of wort, so brewing 30 litres at a time has been lots of fun), supping loads of beers with The Beer Mule, it’s been busy and fantastic. (For the record, my undisclosed award for 2006 was joint win for Fyne Ales and Thornbridge Brewery and from 2007-2010 it was Thornbridge Brewery. I have a feeling that you, the intrepid reader may begin to notice a trend developing…)
Cheers, Luke!!!
The Bruvinity Award
Okay, I mashed together poor spelling of the word “brew” with the word “divinity” as I couldn’t think of a witty title for this award. I know that Søren isn’t actually the reincarnation of a Scandanavian god, but he does seem to be omnipresent at most brewing events, holds down not only his job as Renaissance brewer but also as Head Brewer of NZ’s Champion Brewery, 8 Wired Brewing and presents himself as one of the more passionate brewers I have met. He’s also a bloody nice guy and I imagine that if I was to ever meet a god, he wouldn’t talk with a New Zealand accent (I’ll admit that I keep thinking of Neil Gaiman‘s brilliant book, American Gods as I type this). I wonder if he has special names for his brewing tools… that rubber-headed mallet isn’t called Mjölnir by chance is it??
I'm sure there's an eight-legged horse around the corner (original photo from Jed Soane's wicked http://thebeerproject.com)
Blegendary Blumberjack Blogging Award
Alice Galletly of Beer for a Year has taken on the behemoth task of trying a beer a day for 365 days, keeping us entertained and updated on a (mostly) daily basis about the different brews she tries. She shoots from the hip, tells us exactly what she thinks and through her blog it’s great to see someone’s voyage of discovery. It’s not shrouded in technical jargon (as I know this blog is prone to be!), it’s full of amusing metaphor and more importantly, it makes me want to try some of the brews she describes. Nice!
Is it perspective or is that a large platter... 🙂
The DeLorean Future Brews
I pull out my Mayan Calendar/Nostradamus Prophecies/Harold Camping Malarkey
There are a couple of these. When they are released, I’m sure you’ll all be shocked and impressed by my amazing predictions and the said brewers will curse me and try and sue me for industrial espionage. Little do they know it’s because of my converted Mazda 6 (with a DeLorean chassis) and the magic speed of 88 kilometres per hour (because 88 miles per hour is naughty and that really stupid ad on tele about Mantrol alludes that it’s not cool to drive your car at 141 km/h). Here they are…
A 2.7% mild hopped at around 17 IBU by Epic
A collaboration Imperial Mexican Lager between Three Boys Brewing and The Four Horsemen named The Seven Rancheros.
A beer made solely with peat by Yeastie Boys. Each bottle comes with a miniature peat spade to aid ingestion.
DB Breweries develop a new craft range beginning with a 9% Double IPA. Joseph Wood from Liberty Brewing acts as consultant.
In fact, I’m sure you’re all pretty adept at coming up with some Delorean Future Brews yourselves… any suggestions??
Person Number 1: “You spelt it wrong, it’s l-a-g-e-r.”
Me: “No, I didn’t. It’s Larger. It’s like a lager, but it’s bigger.”
Person Number 1: “Oooooh, I see what you did there!”
Me: “Yes, yes you did and I am funny.”
Person Number 1: “No, you’re not. Puns are never funny.”
Me: “I’ll have to agree with you. They’re not funny… they’re punny.”
Person Number 1: <Punches Kelly>
Me: “Ouch. Did you just punch me because that action includes the word, pun?”
I was going to leave this blogpost at the above conversation, but thought the avid readers out there would want a little more information about our new beer, Larger and were less concerned at the fact that someone hit me for using puns. So, I’ll do what I always do and tell you a little story about how this beer came to be.
Our pretty new label...
Often here at Epic we get enquiries via email asking what beers we have, sometimes it may even be a sales order and sometimes, there are spelling mistakes. It’s most likely that the word that is spelt wrong is lager, where an erroneous “R” makes it’s way in. So, it made sense that if we were going to brew a big Pilsner-style beer, that we would annoy everyone out there and call it Larger. This now means we’re likely to get a load of people ordering the wrong beer at bars, bottle-stores getting confused and generally, a bunch of folk being miffed at us. Which is why it meant we had to make this beer taste awesome enough, that people wouldn’t worry about it’s slightly frustrating name.
So how does one go about doing this? I’ll be honest. My lager-brewing skills are somewhat limited. Sure, the first two years of my brewing career were spent with DB Breweries, pumping out hectolitre upon hectolitre of bottom-fermented lager-style beers and in my time at Thornbridge, we worked together with Birrificio Italiano and brewed a Pilsener called Italia. Here at Epic we brew our nice dry-hopped Epic Lager, but apart from that, my knowledge was sparse. The best thing to do in such a situation is taste beers similar to what you want to brew and read as much as you can about the brewing techniques.
Thornbridge Italia (courtesy of Leigh from goodpeopleeats.blogspot.com)
If we bounce back a bit to February 23rd of this year… Myself, Luke from Epic and a very important chap who ferries super-fresh bottles of beer from the USA to our own doorsteps, Dave “The Beer Mule” Summergreene sat down and tried a Port Brewing Panzer Imperial Pilsner. It had a big, rich malt backbone, quite sweet in character with a touch of caramel to help fight back against the huge noble hop character. It was big, bitter, balanced and beautiful. We were all super-impressed with the brew and pretty much decided there and then, that we wanted to do an Epic Imperial Pilsner at some stage. Dave had met Julian Shrago, Head Brewer and Owner of Beachwood BBQ Brewery in Long Beach whilst in Los Angeles and put me in contact with him. Julian had originally been a US National Homebrew champion with one of his IPAs. Obviously knowing his hops extremely well he then teamed up with the Port Brewing crew and they brewed the Panzer Imperial Pilsner as a collaboration. Julian told me how he’d been inspired by the Samuel Adams Imperial Pilsner back in 2003 and based on his knowledge of Double IPAs, went about creating the brew based on big hopping rates, but went with German Pilsner malt, German hops and a German Lager yeast strain. With that advice on board, we began thinking of a recipe…
Our inspiration! (Pic courtesy of fullpint.com)
April rolled around and The Beer Mule arrived with another selection of fine beers. We sipped our way through Uinta Brewing Company’s Tilted Smile and Karl Strauss Brewing Company’s Whistler Imperial Pils. I remembered back to a year before, drinking an Odell Double Pilsner that Doug had delivered to Thornbridge when working on a collaboration with us. They were all great beers and had seemingly taken the Double/Imperial IPA model and modified it with the use of cool fermentation, bottom-fermenting lager yeast strains and a big whack of hops more typically indicative of German and Bohemian Pilsner/Pilseners.
It was time to develop the recipe. We contacted Wyeast to discuss the possibility of getting a decent amount of Bohemian Lager Yeast sent over for us to grow up in a batch of our Epic Lager. We usually use California Lager Yeast in Epic Lager and were really interested to see how this strain would effect the flavour profile in this beer, as well as it being an essential part of the process in which we got a pitchable quantity of yeast for the Imperial Pilsner. The Bohemian Lager Yeast brewed Lager showed a slightly cleaner, crisper finish, a touch more bitterness and the tiniest amount of sulphur throughout fermentation. Although it was a longer fermentation and maturation with this yeast than it was with the Californian Lager strain, I was personally impressed with the characters that this yeast had brought to the beer. It probably wasn’t enough to make a considerable difference to the overall character of Epic Lager, but it exhibited characteristics that we knew would be perfect with our Imperial Pilsner.
The wonderfully fragrant, and lightly biscuity Pilsner Malt
For the grist, we decided on Weyermann Pilsener malt as our base. We wanted a nice, clean malt grain character and the German malt was perfect for this. It makes up part of our grist in the original Epic Lager (along with Bohemian Pilsener malt), so we knew how it behaved in a brew and were pretty pleased with it’s flavour profile. The aim for this beer was to hit around 8.5% alcohol by volume with an Original Gravity of 1.077 and a Final Gravity of 1.012-1.013. This would mean we’d need some good attenuation from the yeast to get the beer as dry and clean as we wanted it. I was nervous about this… the last thing we wanted was an underattenuated strong lager!
The bitterness we were aiming for was quite high at 70 IBUs, but this was tempered by the fact that we chose one of my favourite bittering hops, Pacific Jade. This hop exhibits an intense Noble hop character in that it is very low in a hop alpha acid called Cohumulone. This alpha acid is often responsible for a harsh bitterness, so a low level can give a softer perceived bitterness in the finished beer and in my opinion, Pacific Jade is one of the best at giving a well-utilised, soft, clean bitterness.
This little guy helps us with some nice, soft bitterness at low levels
Pacific Jade was paired throughout the brew with three hops of German parentage. Liberty and Santiam, both grown in the US and the hops used in our Epic Lager, were used liberally throughout the flavouring and aroma additions, their Hallertau ancestry lending well to the character we were after in this brew. These were joined by US Tettnang, another of the noble hop varieties and finally finished off with some Kiwi-grown Kohatu. The blending of US and NZ hops had worked well for us in our earlier Hop Zombie, so it made sense to do something similar with Larger. The plan was also to do a massive dry-hop with Larger, using Liberty, Santiam, US Tettnang and Kohatu over a number of dry hops based on how the flavour of the beer was progressing during the lagering process.
When it came to water chemistry and the mash regime, it was all down to compromise and trying to coax as many fermentables as possible from the grains. The temperature-stepped mash started low to really work the maltase, peptidase and β-glucanase enzymes and this was followed by an increase to push the proteases and β-amylases. The majority of the mash rest was done at 66°C to favour α-amylase activity and limit dextrin content. The grist itself was mashed quite thin, emulating the type of liquor:grist ratio that is used in continental decoction mashing (even though this was solely infusion). This thinner grist was chosen as it helps to aid amylase heat resistance at the water mineral content we were looking at using. Because Auckland water is very soft (in fact it is quite similar to the water profile of Plzen), it was decided to use only a small amount of Calcium Sulphate in this beer. The lower calcium concentration was part of the reason a thin grist was used and hopefully the low level sulphate ions would bring some crispness and dryness to the finish.
Just like the blog before this one, we now wait for our beer to be finished. It is sitting patiently in tank, exactly one month from brewday today and developing the flavours that we want. It’s slowly picking up the aromatics from the massive amount of dry-hopping. The finish and bitterness are exactly where we wanted them, the lower alpha acid hops are working in a different way than the big high-alpha beasts we used in Hop Zombie, providing us with something big, yet refined. The body is perfect, nice and light and summery, which is convenient considering this is to act as our Christmas release beer from now onwards!
Less than a month to go…
Our keg tap badge... who will be the lucky recipients of our small number of kegs??
Sometimes the road to creating a beer can be a long one. Brewers of old, with their porters aged in vats, 21 year old ales and the like, as well as those more modern brewers of wood-aged loveliness would testify to that statement. Sure, brewers are slightly more impatient than winemakers or whiskey producers when it comes to wanting to make something drinkable as quickly as possible, but there are times when we have to realise that some things take exactly that… time.
Our latest beer has been a six month labour of love, and that was just us getting to brew day! Not all brews have this much time and energy invested into them, but this one has been fun, had a lot of challenges and will hopefully be a great beer.
Back at Thornbridge, I worked with Simon Bower of Pollards Coffee and we developed a scrumptious Coffee Milk Stout with a blend of beans. I’m a massive coffee fan, so it was a fun project and involved lots of coffee bean steeping trials as well as some labour intensive lactose dissolution (thanks to James Kemp of Buxton Brewery for that!). Lactose is not a big fan of dissolving in water, but as JK found out, stirring will get you there eventually 🙂 The resulting beer turned out exactly as hoped, it was like drinking a cool, slightly alcoholic pint of slightly sweet coffee, replete with crema on top (the joys of handpulled cask-conditioned ale).
Coffee plus Stout plus Lactose equals Pollards
With that experience in mind, I thought it would be pretty cool to work with a New Zealand coffee roastery and sent out a few emails to the New Zealand Coffee Roasters Association, who then put me in touch with Jess Godfrey from Caffe L’affare, a roastery based in Wellington. She was really excited about the concept and so began the process of choosing the beans that had the characteristics we were looking for. I was sent some analysis sheets from the roasters at L’affare, Kerry and Dan and went through their cupping notes. Cupping is the process in which the flavour and aroma characteristics of the roasted, ground beans are ascertained and involves weighing a set amount of ground beans, placing with hot water and going through a series of sensory analyses. But more about that later…
The initial samples that Caffe L’affare sent us were Guatemalan Asobagri, Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, Ethiopian Sidamo, Colombian Pitalito Huila, Brazilian Monte Alegre and Honduran. Sample bags were cracked open in our office and we nosed through them all. The way of using the beans in the brew meant we were looking for aromatics more than anything else. The roaster’s tasting notes described fragrance, aroma, sweetness, acidity and flavour amongst others, so we looked at our notes and compared them to theirs. There were a couple of beans in particular that really stood out for us and they were both from Ethiopia – the Sidamo and Yirgacheffe and they both exhibited a dominant citrus character, with a subtle floral background. The only way to really know for sure that the character would work in a beer though was to brew one.
As luck would have it, Epic was due to take part in the Beervana Media Brew Challenge in which brewers were paired off with media pundits from around New Zealand. We were paired with Victoria Wells, Editor of Dish magazine, whilst other brewers were paired with the following; Writer Haydn Green and Paul Croucher of Croucher’s (Rotorua); radio broadcast journalist Sean Plunket and Carl Vasta of Tuatara; Simon Morton of Radio NZ’s This Way Up and Stu McKinlay of Yeastie Boys (Wellington); Lucas de Jong of TVNZ Breakfast and Pete Gillespie of The Garage Project (a Wellington brewery launching this week); Geoff Griggs, beer writer, and Soren Eriksen of 8 Wired (Blenheim); Matt Markham of The Press and Ralph Bungard of Three Boys (Christchurch) and Michael Donaldson of Sunday Star Times with Richard Emerson of Emerson’s (Dunedin).
Victoria came along for the day to brew with us on our little ePicobrewery set up and we decided to mix things up a bit and use some Turkish Figs in the boil. Initially just a fun idea, we realised that these were gonna add some interesting character to the brew. To get as much character as possible out of the figs, I caramelised them up with some of the Stout wort, which resulted in a sticky, delicious mess, and internalised vocalisations of that “Now, bring us some figgy pudding” song. Probably lucky for Victoria and Luke that I internalised them, to be honest.
The stout itself was a blend of malts. The Malt of Champions, Maris Otter made up the bulk of the grist and was accompanied by it’s good friend, Mr. Oat Malt and a few of their ragtag bunch o’ friends, namely Mike Melanoidin, Andrew Abbey, Chris CaraAroma, Carol CaraAmber…
At this point in time, my great idea of personifying malt types as if they were members of a motley Munch Bunch instantly faded into oblivion. It just didn’t seem to work at all. Damn it. The other malts we used were Black, Pale Chocolate, Chocolate and Roast Barley.
Corky Coconut... a fitting Munch Bunch character for this beer, I think...
This was quite a complex grist, but in the back of my mind, I always ponder the legs of a stout. If it’s gonna be a bit on the strong side and you can get the grist just right, then you’re going to have something that will reward you over time as it matures away in the bottle. The chunky, intense CaraAmber and CaraAroma were there to provide some body and some ageing potential… Initially, these malts can come across slightly intense with a roasted bitterness, especially when combined with the other dark malts in the beer, but as the beer ages away (somewhere cool and dark, not on your windowsill in the kitchen!), they push out complexity, they soften and they open up a world of new flavours. I love the darker malts for these exact reasons. They are like inverted assassins… hiding in the wilderness, being patient, then all of a sudden leaping out and unkilling a bunch of great flavours.
The water for the mash has also been treated with Calcium sulphate (gypsum) and Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). The Auckland water is quite soft and it was important to get this right. Calcium is important for some of the enzymes that work away during the mash rest, helping to reduce the pH and providing some heat stability to the amylases responsible for breaking up the starch molecules. It’s also important for a bunch of other things… pH stabilisation, protein coagulation and bitterness extraction in the boil and even yeast flocculation. The sulphate ions are important for a bit of crispness and dryness in a beer. Because of the smooth character that the oat malt provides, coupled with the slightly high finishing gravity of this beer, these were important to create a balance that shifted the beer into the realm of drinkability (well, sippability really… this is 8% alcohol!!).
The bicarbonate ions actually do the opposite of the calcium ions and increase the pH. This helps reduce the acidic, harsh compounds that dark malts have, meaning the resulting character from these malts will be more palatable. The sodium ions actually give an impression of sweetness, so again would help with the balance of drinkability. Brewing is the art of compromise and begins with your water. Always something to keep in mind when developing a recipe.
Every brew needs a montage. This is no exception... Media Brew Challenge Brewday!!!
Back to the brew… Victoria, Luke and I brewed up a storm and I ended up adding whole beans to the finished wort. We chose the Caffe L’Affare Ethiopian Sidamo bean as our first trial bean, impressed as we were by their vibrant aroma. The fermentation went to plan, I toasted up some coconut in the oven and added some of this to the fermenter prior to it going into the fridge for a period of cold conditioning. The beer was then bottle conditioned and off it went to the Beervana Media Brew Challenge. Collision (as we had named it then) cleaned up the competition with an awesome 41/45 score. We knew we were on to a winner!
Our magical fermentation cellar... Well, actually our Epic HQ office and an oil heater...
But it could be better… Whilst in Wellington, we caught up with the Caffe L’affare crew and spent a few hours with them at the roastery. We cupped a bunch of different beans, discussed their characters and had a look around the roastery with roasters Kerry and Dan. It was amazing to talk shop with them, discuss different coffee bean varietals, processing techniques and the amazing myriad of aromas and flavours that the humble bean could provide. The cupping did prove one thing to us… our choice of the Ethiopian Sidamo bean was a fine one. Even during the cupping process, this bean exhibited the characters we were after… citrus, zesty and subtle floral touch. Kerry and Dan explained to us that they could get this bean in two different forms, either Dry Process or Wet Process…
Getting ready for some Cupping action at Caffe L'Affare's roastery in Wellington
There are many arguments of the merits of the processing method on the character of the beans, but these tend to depend which country the beans are from. Generally, it could be said that wet processing is the more modern method where the fruit is removed from the bean prior to drying. The smaller parts of the fruit mucilage can be removed either by a short fermentation process or by mechanically scrubbing the clinging flesh from the beans prior to drying, yielding a bean with higher acidity and a cleaner, brighter, more fruity character. Dry processing is the more traditional approach where the whole bean, fruit covering and all is dried in the sun to the appropriate moisture content, prior to machine de-hulling, which removes the dried flesh. This results in a bean that can be more heavy in body, with more smoothness and complexity.
There could be only one thing to do… trial the Wet Process Ethiopian Sidamo against the Dry Process Sidamo and see which gave us a better aroma. This next set of trial brews, saw the beans been added at the end of fermentation (along with the coconut) as this was the method that would likely be used if we were to upscale the recipe. The beers were eventually bottled after an extended cold maturation, we waited for refermentation to occur and tried the two. Both beans were great, but the wet process edged it. It had more intensity, a little more chocolate, cleaner fruit characters and made our decision easy. We had ourselves a bean for the job!
Meanwhile, all other details that involve getting a beer from idea to package were going on. We were working with our suppliers to get a new 750 mL Amber bottle to put this baby in. We were working with our design company on an awesome new label design and concept for a range of beers that would be a little quirky. Steam Brewery (where we brew our beers) were working hard getting their packaging line sorted so that they could take these bottles, bottle cases were designed and ordered… the machinations and the associated bouts of temporary insanity that these entail were clanking and grinding away, culminating in our big brewday!
The day before, I spent a few hours patiently caramelising figs and the barbeque burner in our warehouse. 30 kilograms, done in batches until the plump, sweet figs (Lerida variety from Turkey) began to push out the tiniest wisps of rich, dark caramel… I’d sit there, mesmerised by the bubbling fruit until a bubble would burst from their surface, a plume of steam and toffee smoke letting me know that it was time for the next batch to go in.
A behemoth lump of diced, caramelised figs... hardly looks like a couple of hours work!
Everything went as planned, Luke, myself and Steam brewmaster Shane Morley went to work and teased some deep, dark rich wort from the assembled grains and soft Auckland water. Lashings of Cascade hops were dumped into the brew – the perfect companion to the citrus/floral Sidamo bean that was to be later used. The biggest challenge though was the figs… we lowered them into the boil, loosely wrapped in muslin and tied to some stainless steel wire. The boiling wort weaved its magic, sucking out the fruit and caramel goodness, a bit of homeopathic fig memory now in every bottle (and no, I don’t believe in homeopathy and you should all read Ben Goldacre‘s Bad Science.
We let the Wyeast American Ale Yeast II munch up all the goodness for 6 days before the beer went on to chill. The stout was tasting great… deep brown in hue with a silky. medium body and deep, roast flavours. Hints of char and dark, alcohol-steeped fruits… a touch of flavour that reminded me of those small dried-up raisins… the runts of the litter that sit there all shrivelled and lost at the bottom of your bag of mixed fruit and nuts… the last currant that no one wants because it looks over-dried but is actually rich and sweet and deep in flavour. Yeah, I got some of that character as well…
If I had some buttons, a carrot and a scarf, I could have made a Coffee-Bean Man!
The assorted speciality grains had done their trick, the complexity, the wisps of leather and roasted astringency, the intensity was perfect, exactly as it had come across in our trials. The mild Cascade bitterness integrated well with the smoothness that the oats had supplied. Happy? Yes!
Thirty kilograms of freshly roasted coffee beans from Caffe L’affare and eleven kilos of toasted coconut were the next editions. Stainless steel wire and d-clamps were sanitised, muslin bags steeped in peroxyacetic acid to sanitise, then rinsed with hot water… bags hygienically loaded with lots of beans and coconut and we were ready to place them in the tank. Shane from Steam had organised for a couple of eyes to be welded onto the inside of the fermentor for us, so everything was securely fastened and it was “Bombs Away” as the fragrant packages were sent to their demise in the freshly fermented brew. It was important for us to have a system where we could remove the coffee and coconut either together or independently once the flavour in the conditioning tank was where we want it, so this will hopefully do the trick.
Now is the tough part. We wait for the water and alcohol solubilisation of all of the wonderful flavours and aromatics from the coffee and coconut. The coffee will come to the fore, ideal for when the beer is fresh. The coconut will linger in the background… It’s there to bind flavours together, to act like those wonderful American Oak lactones that shout Vanilla and Coconut swear words at you as they travel down your gullet. The figs are quiet… dark and silent and lurking until the beer begins to show some age. It’s here where the synergistic relationship with the roasted malts brings forward some vinous notes.
For those non-New Zealand readers, “choice” is a term that Kiwis tend (or tended) to use to refer to something being cool, nice or just plain awesome. For example, “Check out my Mazda RX-7, bought it today!” to which the answer would be “That’s choice, bro”. I would use different words, but hey, RX-7s were never for me…
As most of you are aware, Luke Nicholas of Epic Brewing Co. and myself (also of Epic Brewing Co. as of this year) embarked on a 17 day road trip back in January and February that saw us visiting and filming 44 breweries and resulted in a collaboration beer called Mash Up, the world’s largest collaborative brew. We are still trying to get this out there as a bunch of webisodes, with each one highlighting breweries or areas that we visited.
My lovely tea-stained Mash Up coaster. I guess it should be beer-stained!
The idea behind this was to get some footage of what it is that these breweries are doing, having a chat to the brewers and owners and generally allowing those in the comforts of their own armchairs to have a glimpse inside some of Aotearoa’s great breweries. The challenge with such a mission is that it cost money. Campervans and film crews and food and brews along the way. Sometimes we had amazing custom from people along the way, other times it cost us a bit. Then there is the editing. This also costs keg-loads of money and we assumed that the sales from the beer throughout the year would cover the costs of brewing/production/packaging as well as the trip and the editing. It didn’t.
So a shout out was made on Facebook and Twitter for people to buy a Mash Up instead of a green-bottled beer to show their support, not only for our project, but for a certain rugby team that was playing in a certain final a few weeks back. I’m sure now that the event that couldn’t be named due to hardcore copyright madness is now able to be named, but just to be on the safe side, I won’t name it. I can give you a hint though… it’s initials are the same as the following… “Right Wing Capitalists”. No link between the two of course.
Then Luke had an idea… We need about $10 000 more to complete the editing, a batch yields us around 10 000 bottles and the $1 profit we make per bottle would pay for it! So we’re gonna brew another batch tomorrow, which should see Mash Up around for the next couple of months. I’m not gonna beat around the bush. We hope people buy it and we get to finish the NZ Craft Beer TV project. That’d be cool.
We’ve also taken the liberty to alter this recipe a bit… We’re using more NZ malt than the previous batches and we’re gonna increase the dry-hop to balance out this change in grist. Better than the first two batches? We hope so!
And the back of the coaster... Mmmmm, Jimmy's Pies....
So, if you drink a Mash Up, take a pic and post it on the NZ Craft Beer TV page or elsewhere in Facebook to show your support for the project. We’ve had some awesome support from a few brewers around the country who have given the recipe a whirl: Martin Bennett from The Twisted Hop, Joseph Wood from Liberty Brewing, Fraser Kennedy from Ad Lib Brewing and we’ve heard rumour that Dave Kurth from West Coast Brewing and Stephen Plowman from Hallertau Brewery are also gonna give it a go. The recipe is also on the NZ Real Beer Forum if any of you keen homebrewers out there want to have a go. We’re thinking that we’d like to try your brews, we’ll judge the best one and give you a sweet little prize.
Shot fellas (Do you see what I did there? I finished with another Kiwiism…) “Shot” means “thanks” and “fellas” refers to you lot!
The pretty fellas. The ones that always have a tube of moisturiser in their after-match bag and often tend to have some sort of aftershave spray that they insist they put on in the changing rooms so that the forwards can get together and punch them.
While the forwards are the guys that do the hard yards up front, it is the responsibility of the backs to pass, catch and kick the ball in the hope of scoring loads of fabulous points so that their team comes out victorious. While there are 8 forwards, there are only 7 backs, most probably because the forwards always want to win if they have to ever fight the backs…
I digress…
Number 9 – Half Back
The most raucous member of the team is usually the link player between forwards and backs. The ability to ferret in, throw forwards out of the way, snaffle the ball, question every decision the ref makes, show disgust at the dodgy calls and scream adulation when the team does well are all attributes well sorted to the feisty scrum half. I’ll be honest, this decision was a tough one for the Thirst XV selectors, and the other candidate will be named in the reserves (as a super-sub of course) but the player likely to be wearing the mighty Number 9 jersey on the pitch is none other than Luke Nicholas, Mr. Epic Beer himself. Never afraid to stick his head out of the gopher-hole and with the knack to make an underhopped lager blush with shame, Nicholas would bring a great set of skills to the team. Antagonising opposition players and fragmenting the refs calls would be his strong points and I imagine post-game, Nicholas would lather himself with pure lupulin glands instead of the standard “soap-on-a-rope” option. Great players that spring to mind? A cross between Graeme Bachop and George Gregan…
"Product placement? I don't know what you're talking about..."
Number 10 – Fly Half/1st Five Eighth
The playmaker and clinical to a tee, this position is one of the most important on the field. The ability to make or break a game with a deft chip kick, ninja-like offload of the ball or a low, hard tackle mean there is no room for error. None other than Tracy Banner, Sprig and Fern Brewer extraordinaire could fit into this role. Originally from football territory in the north of England, a cool demeanour and a scientific eye would make Banner an unstoppable tactician on the field. With her brewing prowess encompassing a range of 18 or so beers and ciders as well as a handful of pubs, the ability to analyse play on the field would be a walk in the park. Those early days surrounded by Everton and Liverpool supporters would also pay off with Banner’s boot being one of the more formidable in the game. Kicking goals from anywhere on the field would be a breeze for her and her skills at reading play on the field would mean that hardly a player would get past her text-book tackles. Carter and Wilkinson… beware!
Super skills - The ability to pour 8 pints of beer whilst showing how to execute the perfect spin pass is a walk in the park for Banner
Contact: Martin at The Internationalist – 09 479 3095
Take a great little bistro bar nestled in the East Coast Bays area of the North Shore, a team that are mad on great food and flavours and a couple of Epic brewers and it’s got to be a good’n! We got contacted a few months back by Martin Cahnbley of the Internationalist, sat down with him and head chef, Karl and went through our range of beers, suggesting a few food matches as we went along.
The Internationalist team then put together this menu and I’m already counting down the days until we get to go and enjoy this scrumptious looking degustation, which is gonna look something like this!
Epic Lager with grilled Periperi prawns
NZ Craft Beer TV Mash Up with Duck liver vol-au-vents & red peppers
Epic Pale Ale with 3 different cheese blinis
Epic Hop Zombie with prosciutto and melon
Epic Armageddon IPA with beef carpaccio and garlic-butter sauteed oyster mushrooms
Epic Thornbridge Stout with beef pie served on mash with caramelised stout reduction
Epic Barrel Aged IPA with vanilla custard tart, topped with lychees, drizzled with IPA syrup and a globe of French Vanilla Ice Cream.
Who’s coming??
Use your imagination... Goblets o' Beer & Tables o' Food...
beeRevolution 