Brewery owner hailed a hero after shooting
Busting the myths of ale and lager. A festival to-do list. The crazy can-swap machine in Vietnam. Return of a cult favourite. Yeastie Boys turn back IPA clock. Westvletere available in retail.
Welcome to another brimful edition Friday Night Beers. It’s so full, you could call it an iceman pour!
We start with a sombre story but one with a positive angle. The co-owner of one of Colorado’s most respected breweries is being hailed as hero for his role in subduing the person who killed five people in a nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs this week.
Richard and Jessica Fierro have been celebrated for years for their award-winning beers and creating Colorado's first Latin-owned brewery to be led by a female head brewer, Atrevida Beer Co.
They were at Club Q with family on a celebratory night out when the 22-year-old shooter opened fire. Richard, a US Army veteran who served four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and another man, helped stop any further carnage.
Now, CBS reports, the brewery has been inundated with people buying merchandise from them after Meena Harris, the niece of Vice President Kamala Harris, directed people to the business's merchandise. Author and journalist Molly Knight also asked her more than 136,000 followers to help “crash their website” — by buying all their available online products.
Richard’s heroic actions among the horror mean plenty of people are discovering a brewery that lives by its motto: “Diversity, it's on tap!”.
The myth of ale and lager
First, spurred by a discussion with Simon Cooke from Froth Tech about yeast, I set off on a journey to discover why brewers use ale yeast in their pilsner and lager yeast in their IPA (as per the latest trend, Cold IPA). It’s a fascinating area and I hope I’ve done it justice. I was certainly one of those “geeks” back in the day who thought a) lager and ale as used on labels was totally reflective of the yeast used, and only the yeast; and b) that somehow lager was a bad thing. The latter is totally to do with the early years of the craft beer revolution when lager (in its global corporateness and green/clear bottle stigma) was frowned upon — a cypher for everything bad about beer.
I was so naive, and brazen, I once challenged one of the country’s leading brewers on the subject of “ales” brewed with a lager yeast — when it turns out that’s what many of our favourite craft breweries do!
Beer of the week No 1
Last week I noted that the world’s most expensive had just sold at auction for over $US500,000 (around $NZ800,000). Allsopp’s Arctic Ale was first brewed in 1852 for a mission to the Arctic to try to find out what happened to Captain John Franklin’s “lost expedition” of 1845 when two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became icebound in the previously unnavigated sections of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic.
Anyway, that made me think of North End’s collaboration with Emerson’s to celebrate the latter brewery’s 30th birthday. Sphere of the Winds is a 12.78 per cent Barleywine brewed as a tribute to those Arctic Ales, though in this case, it’s an Antarctic Ale. And well, if you were ever icebound on a ship in the polar circle this is the beer you’d want to warm you up.
Aged in a mixture of oak and stainless steel vessels for four years, this beer is not for the faint-hearted. The warmth engulfs you but it’s not a burning alcohol heat, just a lovely wrapped-in-wool warmth. The flavour is Christmas fruit cake with lots of orange zest and just the slightest tang from the yeast. It’s deep and complex and will be even better next winter, so get some and have one for Christmas before tucking the rest away for the truly cold months.
Events to diary
Wellingtonians I’m sure you’re aware that Beers At The Basin is on tomorrow at the Basin Reserve. Fingers-crossed for the weather gods to connect with the beer gods and make sure it’s a good day. On that note, I stumbled across a handy story on Stuff this week with a list of the many great food and drink festivals on this summer. It’s a good one to keep on file for future reference.
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