10 to try for Dry July

Parrotdog rapt with Smith's NZ IPA Challenge win. New Zealand's craftiest street. A sobering insight into the beer industry. An excise exercise. French president's problematic guzzle. All about stout.

Welcome to another Friday wrap of beer news and views.

As always there’s a chunk of news to get through and we start with Parrotdog’s delight at winning Smith’s NZ IPA Challenge last weekend.

The annual Queenstown features 36 New Zealand-hopped IPAs battling for the coveted snowboard trophy.

“We’re stoked with this one,” Parrotdog brewing director Matt Warner told me. “We’ve been wanting to tick this one off. It’s just one of those competitions that we hold in high regard that we hadn’t been able to win until now. We’ve had people’s choice before but it’s great to get the judges’ choice this time.”

The Smith’s NZ IPA win adds to other notable achievements at the New Zealand Beer Awards (champion medium brewery), New World Beer & Cider Awards, and Malthouse West Coast IPA Challenge.

Warner says the recipe for the winning beer — which is a small-batch, keg-only release — will be scaled up and re-released, probably in August, as part of the brewery’s new limited-released programme of 440ml cans.

The beer is hopped mainly with Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka, with a little bit of Nectaron and Motueka. Warner says the key was being able to brew it with “fresh” Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka pellets.

“It’s a pretty classic New Zealand IPA — lean and dry and let the hops shine. But it all came down to the quality of the hops. Both the Nelson Sauvin and Riwaka were 2023 season hops that we’d selected. We knew when we opened the bags the beer was going to be fantastic.

“The pellets were big-time fresh — intense and expressive — almost like fresh whole cones.”

Warner said the Riwaka came from NZ Hops Ltd and Nelson Sauvin from Freestyle.

The Smith’s win caps a big month for Parrotdog, who have just released the first beers in their new limited release range. They had previously stopped the Reincanation series in which the beers were all named for important people in the Parrotdog story.

The first releases in the new series are two double IPAs, one hazy and one bright, and with new artwork.

“The Reincanation series was about the people and now we’re putting the focus back on the beers. There’s another couple in the pipeline and then we’ll release that NZ IPA.”

Warner has also been stunned by the success of their just-released stout, Black, in six-pack format, saying a second batch is underway because demand has been so high.

There are only a handful of breweries that do stout six-packs and Warner said the brewery worked hard on pitching the beer just-right — 5% ABV, flavoursome and  drinkable. And he’s not afraid to say they looked at what Mac’s and Monteith’s do in this space with their approachable stouts.

“We wanted it to be interesting, super-balanced, and drinkable and it’s been really well received. We did a lot of research and development on this beer, and when it came time to release, we actually blended two smaller batches so we could get it bang-on.”

And so to …

Beer of the Week No 1

Fair play, Parrotdog, they have absolutely nailed this recipe. It does remind a little bit of Black Mac, not in the taste, as it’s more refined than that, but in the attitude of grab a six-pack for some Friday night easy drinking. You get subtle chocolate, a hint of coffee, a scrape of ash and light, flowing palate weight that’s surprisingly refreshing. At 5% ABV it’s approachable and delicious.

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10 to try for Dry July

My first Dry July, I survived on lime and soda for my fix of fizz.

I’ve never been a big drinker of juice or soft drinks and while going without beer for a month wasn’t hard in itself, I often struggled with the absence of a beverage when eating out or socialising — lime and soda becomes boring very quickly.

I think of it like an actor without props, or more likely the way reformed smokers sometimes express it — they miss the theatre of physically holding a cigarette as much as the smoking itself. And I definitely missed having a glass of beer at hand, in my hand. After a while, lime and soda just doesn’t cut it. You’re totally aware that your “prop” is a fake.

That Dry July turned into an empty, soulless month in which even my wife was bored by me.

To do Dry July now would be a breeze. I could go virtually anywhere and get a non-alcoholic beer. I can take six-packs of the stuff to friends’ houses. As I write this, I have a stash of some 30 non-alcoholic cans in the fridge (I know, I know, in theory, I need one more!) but I’m not actually doing Dry July … but I’ll still have plenty of AF beers in the coming month.

The truly wonderful non-alcoholic beers on the market make it easier to socialise sober. There’s no FOMO. And quite frankly, some of these beers are delicious in their own right.

If you’re doing Dry July I’ve got a starter kit of my favourite 10.