Cider industry loses a legend
Guinness lose court case, Bookbinder's reboot, new non-alcoholic craft release
Happy Easter everyone, and I hope you enjoy the long weekend with lots of lovely beers.
There’s a lot to get through this week but we start on a sad note by acknowledging the death this week of Alex Peckham of Peckham’s Cider. Alex and his wife Caroline fundamentally changed the cider industry in New Zealand. Alex was a pioneer in every sense of the word and Peckham’s brought old country, traditional cider to New Zealand and layered it with Aotearoa character and Peckham charm.
He will be sadly missed. If you want to get a sense of what Alex achieved this story from Eoghan Walsh captures it perfectly.
A quick follow up to the mention that last week that Three Sisters were seeking crowd-funding for their brewery expansion and brewpub upgrade. I don’t know how influential this column is, but the funding jumped significantly in the past week and they’ve passed their minimum target of $350,000 and are pushing towards $400,000. With 10 days to run they might not get all the way to $1.2m but they’ll still have a chunk of capital to work worth.
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Beer of the week No 1
I’ve been slightly obsessed with idea of Cold IPA for a while now. The idea of a lighter bodied, dry beer with the full hoppiness of an IPA sounds like something I should love, but I’ve struggled a little bit with a few I’ve tried. They’ve all been OK-good but not amazing-good. Simplistically I see Cold IPA as the other side of a line from an India Pale (Japanese?) Lager. The “cold” references the fermentation temperature in that they can be brewed with an ale yeast at lower temperatures to minimise esters, or alternatively a lager yeast at a higher temperature for slightly more vigorous fermentation that reduces the trademark sulphur notes of lager. Either way it’s about creating a blank enough canvas for the hops to shine. And when I had Good George’s Cold IPA this week, it clicked for me: it was dank, tropical and citrussy with low esters and good bitterness pushing towards astringent relative to the light body. It was slightly low on carbonation but too much CO2 would have pushed the perceived bitterness too high. The question is whether these beers have a home with consumers. For lager drinkers it could be way too hoppy, for IPA lovers it might be too light-bodied. But I loved this one.
Saucy brew
Once upon a time I helped brew a beer at Hallertau made with horseradish. It was for the old Beervana media collaboration that lasted a couple of crazy years. The tears that were shed over grated horseradish that brew-day could have filled a bucket! So I know the crew at Hallertau have history when it comes to pushing the envelope, and they’ve gone down the vegetable path again with a tomato beer. It’s only on-tap at their brewpub in Clevedon (and it’s probably all gone by now) but I’m half hoping it will become a seasonal release!
As Newshub reported, the beer was made after a Clevedon tomato farmer Anthony Tringham delivered 170kg of Curious Croppers to the brewery. The tomatoes were co-fermented with the grain to produce a pretty orange-hued beer. As for that horseradish beer… it tasted better than it smelled.
Jesse Sigurdsson’s Mixed Six
A regular feature of Pursuit of Hoppiness is our Mixed Six, where we ask brewers to talk about three of their favourite beers and three they love from other breweries. The latest issue focuses on Jesse Sigurdsson from Shining Peak.
Tis the Saison
“Saisons are at once elusive yet unmistakable. They might be boozy or weak, dark or pale, hoppy or sweet. Meet one in the glass, though, and you know it instantly. After a brewer-led renaissance that started to peak about a decade ago, breweries have discovered that drinkers tend to favour something more familiar. Still, saisons have enough support for breweries to make examples fairly often, and they’ve been moved firmly off the endangered styles list. Saisons may not hit the best-sellers list, but they’re not going anywhere, either. Rare is the case where a single beer accounts for the survival of a style, but it’s mostly true in the case of saison. Well, a single beer, an English writer, and an American importer.” — Jeff Alworth
The story comes with an accompanying podcast if you prefer that method of garnering information.
Bookbinder reboot
Speaking of classics has anyone tried Emerson’s Bookbinder since it won a trophy at the Brewers Guild Awards last year? As one of the beers that weaned me off mainstream beer more than a decade ago, I’ve always had a soft spot for Bookbinder, itself a lovely soft, gentle cat of a beer that just purrs with flavour.
All the same, I was surprised when Bookie appeared on top of the podium at the awards. After all it’s pretty amazing for a beer that’s almost 30 years old to suddenly become a trophy winner in the modern environment. Admittedly the competition in the British Ale class might not be what it once was but that’s been the case for a few years and in that time Bookbinder has pottered along picking up bronze and silver medals but never really shining.
So I decided to find out what changed …
Beer of the Week No 2
My first fresh hop beer of the season came courtesy of 8 Wired Battery Hill, somewhat confusingly tagged a New Hop Pilsner. For a moment I thought I was getting a pilsner with a new hop variety, but they mean newly-picked, from Clayton’s Battery Hill farm. It’s a clever way of differentiating themselves from the other fresh hop beers out there. This has two things going for it: it’s a pilsner and it’s hopped with Motueka, a classic NZ hop. With a fresh hop season that will result in a lot of Nectaron-loaded hazies (nothing wrong that, mind), this will stand in stark contrast. And Motueka is such a great fresh hop — all tingly, prickly lime and herbaceousness. The textural experience was as good as the taste.
There’s plenty more news for paid subscribers below, including three more beer recommendations for the long weekend, a new non-alcoholic craft beer released, the deceit that cost Guinness a big payday, the return of a classic Kiwi beer and a look inside Australia’s “craft beer capital”.
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