After the flood ... a beer

A brilliant boutique festival. $ Supermarkets in gun for selling super-cheap beer. Upsides to CO2 crisis. What are the most under rated beer styles? Guinness reaches new heights $

What a week it’s been since we last touched base.

As you know Friday brought the deluge to Auckland and that’s caused some personal mayhem in our lives with our house having a big slip underneath it.

So apologies in advance for anything that happens in this email … beer has been the last thing on my mind in the past week as we decamped to Pukekohe to stay with friends.

One of the many slips near us, that blocked the only road out, which forced us out on foot to meet friends on the other side to decamp until assessors come..

But I will say that beer has been, also, a small saviour.

When you’re a bit stressed, that first beer and its ability to relax you can be a remarkable tool. I’m not in any way advising self-medicating with alcohol (and bizarrely for those following along at home with the standard drinks experiment, I drank less beer than normal last weekend despite the stress).

Just taking a moment to sit down and reflect over a drink, to pause, and to have that biochemical relaxant shuttle through your system can be a circuit breaker. Lots gets said about the evils of alcohol and it’s almost taboo to talk about any benefits of but I figure we’re all friends (and feel free to disagree with me if you want) and I feel I can say: there are definitely benefits, even if they are just psychological/emotional.

So anyway, on the Sunday evening after the deluge and when we’d been without power or water for two days and we were sitting with our neighbours in their much safer house on our cutoff street, my friend Rob said: “Beer?”

Rob is not a big beer fan. He’s from Cornwall and loves real ale and porter. None of this new-fangled hoppy stuff for him! He had some Peroni in the fridge. Like us, they had no power or water, so the beers were not warm, but they were not un-chilled either. Kind of a nice temperature. And I wish I’d taken a photo of the first one, with its huge, rocky white head. And it tasted divine. Honestly. It was one of the most enjoyable beers I’d had for ages.

And it reminded me of something I already knew about the beauty of beer. Well, a few things actually. 1) All beer is good, but some beer is better (I can’t remember who said that); 2)  the enjoyment comes from the people, the place and the circumstance, and; 3) the best beer is the one you’re having right now!

On another night if I’d been sitting alone, perfectly happy, and opened a bottle of Peroni (we all know I wouldn’t have, but imagine for a moment it was my only choice), I would not have felt the same way at all.

OK, so I’m rambling a little bit here but these circumstances and the wonderfulness of other people when you need them have made me re-think this beverage that I love so much. I know that while we often rabbit on about the taste of beer, the fact is the flavour, while hugely important, is just one aspect of its power.

Anyway, consider Peroni to be Beer of the Week No 1A.

---

Beer of the week No 1

The continuing examination of six-packed, sub-6% hazies continued last week, when, disorganised, I needed a quick beer grab at an unfamiliar bottle store in an unfamiliar suburb. I was almost despairing in the chiller at the almost-nil range of craft beer and was on the verge of giving up when I spied the rainbow-esque stripes of Parrotdog Birdseye. Hallelujah! It’s a testament to the power of Parrotdog’s distribution network that they can be found in the most unusual places (getting some Falcon APA in the Waverley Four Square last year was an unexpected surprise). Anyway, I was rapt, but I hand it over to the ultimate arbiter, my wife: “Absolutely delicious”. She has it up there, neck & neck, with Emerson’s Hazed & Confused.

---

A boutique beer festival

I wanted to give a big shout-out to a couple who know a bit about the power of Mother Nature.

Paul and Laura Finney escaped the Christchurch earthquakes to Kaikoura, only to be hit by another devastating quake a few years later just as they were setting up their new brewery-pub venture, Emporium.

Emporium make truly excellent beers and they also run a brilliant little festival. To my mind, Kegkoura is the festival of the future — a boutique event with a small, curated list of breweries. Intimate and focused.

So if you’re free the weekend of March 4, think about heading to Kaikoura … you get a gorgeous little town to visit, and a relaxing afternoon with great beers from Emporium, Derelict, Wilderness, Concept and Two Thumb. See what I mean? To have such high-calibre breweries in one place is amazing. To have only those five is something quite special.

There will be some one-off festival beers, plus live music and as much free mini golf as you can handle at the brewpub’s own 18-hole mini-putt course.

It’s Saturday, March 4 at Emporium Brewing, 57A Beach Road, Kaikoura and you can buy tickets here.

And before I forget, the Auckland Craft Beer & Food Festival scheduled for Spark Arena next month has been cancelled. There are lots of circumstances behind it and it’s a real shame.