BrewNZ part one
Here we are in Sunny Wellington. Yes. Really. OK, so it absolutely pissed down when we got here on Thursday, and we got totally saturated walking from pub to pub, but that’s OK, as the sun started to peek through yesterday. Saturday has now dawned with barely a cloud to be seen, and the prospect of many hearty brews just waiting to be sampled!
For those who don’t know, BrewNZ is New Zealand’s only (to my knowledge) beer festival. Fairly disgraceful when you consider that we are a British colony, and England alone has over 4000 beer festivals per year. Anyway, for this year’s BrewNZ, James, Alexandra, and myself made the trek to the other “tron” to see what was to be imbibed.
After locating our apartment building (The Terrace Apartments), we found a map and worked out where festive brews were being served. It was getting close to lunch time, so we made our way to the Malthouse, and enjoyed a pint of Sunshine Brewery’s “All Malt Ale” (or some equally bland and unmemorable name). It was a tasty drop, but could have been improved by more body, a longer finish, and a slightly better hop balance. I courted controversy by taking the Monteith’s Wild Food option for lunch, and having the Jugged Hare. What was controversial about that, you ask? The beer match was the Monteith’s Radler - a fairly nasty offering that tastes of lollies. Surprisingly, it really did work well with the citrus notes in the gravy and meat, and provided a nice little lunch option. Unfortunately, I finished my meal and still had plenty of beer left. It tasted awful without the flavoursome meat to offset it. I downed it a little too quickly, and we moved on to the Emerson’s Bookbinder. James and I both LOVE this beer. It was even nicer on tap. A real treat, and a low-alcohol option also, at only 3.7%. Floral, herby, surprisingly full bodied for such a low-alcohol beer. Fantastic. Alex had a wheat beer, which tasted more like a wit. A better Hoegaarden than Hoegaarden, but the name of the brewery escapes us at the moment.
It was fair pissing down by now, so we came back to apartments, had a bit of a rest after lunch, then headed out in search of more good beer. We started with Shed 22 (a.k.a. the Wellington Brewing Company. The folks behind Macs Sassy Red, and the “real” Lion Brown). Their festive beer is another they are brewing under contract to Macs - Demonic Ruby. This is a HUGE beer. 6.5%, full of toffee and smoky caramel flavours. It is a rich dark amber, with hints of ruby (hence the name, we guess), and slips down dangerously easily. So far this is one of the best beers I’ve had. It reminds me of Young’s Old Nick, but vastly superior. I’ll be going back for more.
After the Shed 22 experience, we were feeling quite optimistic about the rest of the BrewNZ festival. We plotted a rough course on the map to allow us to avoid most of the still-pelting rain, then made a dash to the Courtney Arms. Big mistake. This bills itself as an “English pub”, and has St. George memorabilia and dart boards for Africa. Very friendly staff also, but unfortunately we were there for the beer. They didn’t have a festive brew on, but we saw they had Young’s Special London Ale on tap. This is a bit of a fave of James and I, so we had a pint each. First up, it cost $10 per pint! Secondly, it tasted so skunked, we wondered if the keg had been there since the pub first opened. We downed it, grimaced, and wandered, somewhat defeated, to the next pub. Bodega! That’s more like it. Our faith was rekindled. More extremely friendly staff - thank you “Steph”, you rocked - and free samples of the THREE festival beers that were on there. The beer was a bit disappointing, but as we hadn’t paid for it, that wasn’t so bad.
The Cock and Bull entry was the King Kong ESB. This was my biggest disappointment, as I expect quite a lot from the Steam Brewing Company. Their product is consistently excellent. To be fair, there was nothing wrong with the ESB, it just didn’t live up to its name, or to my expectations. It was well balanced, almost to a fault, as with the BrewNZ theme (The Magnificence of Malt) I expected more malt dominance. It finished early, and left nothing of itself in the mind. I will have to sup a full pint of this on a clean palate in order to give it a more balanced and less hurried trial. Can you tell that I want to like this beer?
The Twisted Hop brewery entered an unusual beer called the Islay Porter. I was unable to judge this as a beer, as the underlying brew is like a blank canvas, and is totally overwhelmed by the Laphroaig scotch whiskey that is added to the brew. I love Laphroaig, but beer needs to taste like beer, not watered down scotch. I won’t be trying this again.
The third brew at Bodega was the Tuatara ESB. This was another very well balanced beer, though it left more of an impression than the ESB. It had more of a hop profile, with the fuggles hops really coming through. Probably not appropriate to the theme, but a nice beer nonetheless. Not a great, but a good enough.
This is getting long, so I’ll skim over Friday’s efforts, as they were largely disappointing. We started at the Occidental with Monteiths Maximalt. Why bother? I mean seriously, do Monteiths even understand beer and brewing, or do they simply brew the same bland crap, and add different amounts of ethanol and colouring to each variety? The best I say about the Maximalt is that the 6.5% brew left us with a happy glow, which almost overrode the non-existent flavour, texture, aroma, and appearance. Monteiths, you are taking the piss.
We couldn’t stay away from Shed 22, so after a long, and somewhat misdirected walk around the Crack Houses of Newtown (sorry James), we popped in there for a few pints. We had the Sassy Red (just a great bitter. We love it.), the Verboden Vice (a boring but true-to-style wheat beer), a Demonic Ruby (I missed it already!) and a James Squire IPA. Awful beer. Avoid. Feeling a bit unsteady on it, we headed to Imbibe Antipasto for the Emersons offering. The Lunar Dunkel is an excellent drop. James was not as impressed as I was, but I loved the toffeelike dunkel. It was almost a meal in a glass though, and I struggled to finish my pint. Finish I did though, and we staggered home to prepare for Saturday, and the festival itself at the town hall. Stay tuned.