Fresh Hop festivals — a guide
Laughing Bones, Neck Of The Woods come up with win-win deal. Altitude's adventurous collabs. Football fan celebrates with 29-year-old beer. Chips and beer — a matchmaking guide.
Happy Friday Beer Fans
And welcome to this week’s edition of all you need to know about beer!
I’ve got a lot of cool stories, but I wanted to start with Fresh Hop Season (and yes, I’m turning this into a proper noun and capitalising it).
I loved this picture from Bernard Neate at Twofold in Parnell, using fresh hops for the brewpub’s Tuesday Pils (with co-owner John Austin checking in!).
Bernard’s picture inspired me to do a quick round-up of some upcoming fresh hop events.
One of the best might be next Saturday, March 29, in Queenstown.
Altitude Brewing are partnering with Garston Hops and Gladfield Malt for a hop harvest party that involves the Kingston Flyer train, a boat and a wagon pulled by Clydesdale horses.
The all-day event takes you on a trip to Garston to see the fresh hops being selected and following them on the trip back to the brewery which includes a Clydesdale-drawn carriage taking the hops to The Kingston Flyer steam train in Fairlight, where lunch will be provided by Athol Shop.
After the train ride, it’s a boat ride back to Queenstown with Million Dollar Cruises and on to Altitude in Frankton for a post-harvest dinner courtesy of Smoke & Pickle and six beers, including a collab with Mount Holly in Vermont.
Tickets are $215 per person, but I reckon it’ll be worth every penny!
Altitude Brewing and Garston Hops Fresh Hop Harvest Celebration!
Good George in Hamilton have a fresh hop festival on April 5 at the Good George Dining Hall. There’s fresh hop beers from Good George (including a fresh hop cider) as well as guest fresh hop beers.
Two Thumb in Christchurch have their fresh hop festival pegged for April 12, with their own fresh hop beers as well as other local freshies for a total of 16 fresh hop beers from 12 local breweries, which is an impressive effort.
Tickets are $39 and includes a festival glass and four fills
And of course, Wellington’s Hopstock — hosted by Craft Beer Capital — is on from April 2-30. For the second year in a row they are doing an entire month’s worth of fresh hops.
There are bound to be more (Auckland?), so if you’re hosting a fresh hop festival or know of one, do get in touch.
And speaking of guides … I’ve written a light-hearted look at fresh hops and what to expect.
No bones about it, a win-win deal
Following on the heels of Sunshine Brewing looking for a possible merger, another couple of breweries have quietly created their own small-scale consolidation.
The soon to be open Neck Of The Woods in Tauranga, and Auckland’s Laughing Bones will be working together when Laughing Bones’ brew kit is moved south to take up residence in the new brewpub started by Scott Taylor, formerly of Deep Creek.
Laughing Bones owner John Morawski said the deal was unique.
“Yeah, I don't know what the right term is. I don't know if we sold brewery, or we're sharing it with Scott.
“Let’s say we have an agreement and that we are invested in Neck Of The Woods.”
Ironically Deep Creek, which Taylor co-founded, and Laughing Bones were both based in Silverdale, north of Auckland, until Deep Creek went into liquidation and folded.
And while the pair knew each other, the idea of forming a partnership came from a third party who helped them put two and two together to solve their respective problems.
“I had come to the decision that we needed to change our business model because of the way costs have increased and our overheads have increased,” Morawski said.
“We just weren't going to make it through in our current situation.
“I was talking to this person and I said things were getting increasingly more challenging, and this person said, there might be an opportunity for you to do this consolidation.
“Scott and I had a chat about consolidating our efforts and it just snowballed from there.
“He owns the lion's share of the brew kit and we have an agreement that we'll be able to brew Laughing Bones beer on that kit when required.”
Taylor said the move was a win-win.
“It is a way of us lowering our initial outlay and allows John to change his model and still keep his brand going that he has put so much love and dedication into over the past decade. I'm very familiar with John and his beers. We were [brewing] neighbours in Silverdale and often caught up at events and tastings.
“It's a great brew-kit that John has made some fantastic beers on, and we're really excited about the opportunity to build Neck Of The Woods brewpub with it and continue to produce Laughing Bones for John and Petra. We want to make it seamless for his loyal customer base and hope they appreciate the Silverdale connection.
“The only thing is with brewing both brands is that we may need to invest in a few more fermenters at some point, but that's a good problem to have!”
Laughing Bones will brew their core range at Neck Of The Woods, with Morawski travelling down to Tauranga for brew days.
Their one-off 440ml can releases will be done at Crafty Brew Co in West Auckland.
There’s no set date for the brew kit moving to Tauranga as Neck Of The Woods isn’t quite ready to open.
Morawski, who’s 72, says while he’s not ready to retire, he is keen to take “a half a step back and not do quite as much of the hard, hard yards that I do.
“I run this whole place myself, from top to bottom so there was a little bit of that to influence the decision. But most of it was just trying to get a better business model in place.”
Beer of Week No 1
Well, as you may recall this was supposed to be the North End beer I was going to talk about last week!
But better late than never right?
Anyway, what an absolutely fabulous beer. It’s funny, I adore so many North End beers but I tend to drink the more esoteric ones: the saisons, the Belgian-styles, the smoked doppelbock, Pit Boss (truly a gem!).
But I’ve been missing out. Big Time. Super Alpha is a very, very good beer. It’s not a pale ale as we’re so used to experiencing them, with big hop notes (either American or Kiwi). Instead there’s a nice fruity ester from the yeast, a punchy lemon note and lip-smacking bitterness. Crisp, clean and old-fashioned.
Super with food, I might add.
It’s a rare thing in a modern beer, if I may be allowed a little anthropomorphism: in that it’s fully aware of what it is and is entirely comfortable in being so.
Adventures in Beer
In the course of getting some info about Altitude Brewing’s fresh hop event, I learned the Queenstown brewery is putting together some of the most ambitious collabs I’ve seen for a while, with founders Eddie Gapper and Eliott Menzies literally travelling the world to hook-up with some of the best breweries on the planet.
Altitude are small — so small that one of their prospective partners didn’t believe they were real brewery and thought the whole thing was a scam!
Under the working title, Adventures in Beer, they’ve so far worked with Verdant in the south England and Urbanrest in Detroit.
“Collab discussions are usually held via email, brew days are run independently and beers released separately,” Gapper explained.
“It occurred to us that we could turn these amazing partnerships into something more valuable if we actually went to the other brewery and made the whole thing into an adventure.”
First up was a trip to Chicago and Detroit with Eliott going to the Festival of Barrel Aged Beer in Chi Town, before they drove through Michigan to see Hop Head Farms in Michigan to see how they produce hops at the southern end of the growing range in the US (a bit like Garston hops here).
“Zach, from Urbanrest Brewing in Detroit thought we were internet fraudsters when Eliott first got in touch. Why would anyone want to brew beer in Detroit visiting from New Zealand?”
The beer they produced is called Moment of Bliss NZIPA using Nelson Sauvin Bliss from Freestyle.
The pair met James Heffron, head brewer at Verdant, down in Garston at last year's hop selection. So when England-born Eddie was visiting family back home he went down to Penryn to see Verdant.
“Verdant already had their own Traveller's Series for collabs so it made sense to continue the theme and make Remarks NZIPA. It was eye-opening to spend time with a much larger independent brewery in the UK. From a similar starting point their journey has been way bigger and way faster than ours!
“The common theme in both of these partnerships has been the astonishing welcome and hospitality shown to us by the people that we've met. Truly heartwarming,” Eddie said.
“We’ve got eyes on some historic breweries in the Tirol, and some more modern outfits in British Columbia for more adventures in beer.”
Beer of the Week No 2
Speaking of collabs … I wrote about this beer last year when Double Vision were lucky enough to secure the house yeast from German brewing legends Schneider Weisse ahead of a Beervana collab.
This re-brew seems a much better beer than the first effort. Not sure what’s changed (experience with the yeast?) but I think this version is more mellow and well-rounded. Definitely feels like there’s more banana in the initial aroma and flavour. Great spice level and a lovely citrus-meets-tropical hop character.
It’s cross-cultural beer, with Kiwi hops meeting German yeast, and it’s a marriage that works a treat.
Lovely drop.
Chips and Beer — matches made in heaven
Sometimes this gig of mine turns out to be unexpectantly fun. Like when the New Zealand Herald’s Viva magazine asked me to match eight beers with eight varieties of chips!
Honestly, what a great idea, and I haven’t had so much fun in ages.
Largely, what I thought might work did as expected but there were a couple of matches that needed some tweaking.
My favourite, as I noted in the story, was Heartland’s Lime & Salt chips with McLeod’s Chili Pils. Sublime, if I say so myself.
The Perfect Beer And Potato Chip Pairings, Chosen By An Expert - NZ Herald
This story might be paywalled, in which case sorry. If you can’t read it try the screenshot below — you might have to save it and open separately to read properly — but it’s vital information that everyone must have 😄!
Tim’s Beer of the Week
Waitoa’s recent birthday may not have been a significant one, but on the other hand, in the present climate one could say that every year a craft producer makes it through with the doors still open is a significant one. So bring on the Imperial IPA (8.5% ABV)!
A New Zealand ensemble of Taiheke, Nelson Sauvin and Rakau are given a jolt of high alpha-acid grunt from American Simcoe and Columbus. That’s a reasonably complex hop bill, and the results are nothing short of sublime.
There’s the big aroma notes, grapefruit citrus, fresh fruit salad, pine sap and golden malt, but also pungent florals and gentle herbaceousness. Absolutely sumptuous on the palate, with the vast malt richness balanced by an equally massive hop character and profoundly mouthwatering bitterness. Beer of the year material right here. Woof. — Tim Newman
Community spirit reaches across the world
It’s a week, it seems, of cute little stories. And I loved this one from Christchurch pub Moon Under Water, who posted on their Facebook page about getting a wooden plaque from Blue Bell pub in the town of Cocking in England’s West Sussex.
The pub operates as a not-for-profit after being bought by the community to save it from being bowled for a housing development.
The community bought it in 2019, and the immediate impact of Covid closures put them on the back foot.
Earlier this year the pub, which is community-owned, announced it would have close unless it could raise around £30,000 to clear historic debts. They started a funding-raising page and Matt Kamstra, from Moon Under Water, decided to contribute in the spirit of solidarity.
“I still subscribe to most of the trade magazines in the UK just to keep abreast of what's going on in the industry.
“And there's often country pubs like that which they're trying to save. It's a big thing over there, obviously.
“And to be brutally honest, the name of the village made me chuckle so I thought I've got to throw some money at that.”
The pub was saved (naturally).
“And a few weeks ago we got a lovely email from Charlotte, who was instrumental in saving the pub, to say that her sister Sophie was visiting New Zealand and wanted to meet up for a pint. We were totally blown away when Sophie presented us with a plaque of thanks from the village for thinking of them all the way over in Aotearoa!
“What can we say?! This is what pubs and community are all about. And we're pretty damn chuffed that we now have a sister pub of sorts in Sussex, and I'm looking forward to visiting in October!”
Beer of the Week No 3
I was on a roll with wheat beers this week, so I figured I’d close out with a third one!
This is a wee gem from Alibi. It’s got the usual suspects lined up perfectly: doughy, banana & clove characters all displayed well.
The texture is incredible, like super soft brioche versus normal bread. It feels springy and light, but still lush and sweet.
It finished nicely sweet over tart, and even though I prefer drier beers, this one resonated with me, especially because there’s so much going on for a 4.5% ABV.
A 29-year-old celebration beer
I loved this story about a Newcastle football fan, John Booth, who put a can of Newcastle Brown Ale in his fridge 29 years ago, intending to save it for a celebratory drink later in the year — after what should have been Newcastle’s Premier League triumph in 1996.
But the team hit the skids late that season and were overtaken by Manchester United, so John decided to keep the beer for the next time...
… which came last Sunday when Newcastle beat Liverpool in the League Cup — the first time they’d won anything for nearly three decades.
The beer had survived three fridges before it’s grand un-tabbing.
“It did taste a bit strange I have to admit. It tasted very metally or tinny. I didn't drink all of it of course,” John said.
Which reminds me that I have a 13-year-old bottle of Emerson’s Clam Stout in my fridge — which I will open when the Highlanders win the Super Rugby title!
That’s it from me. Enjoy your beers (no matter how old they are) and catch you next week
Michael
Waitoa Release the Hounds Liquid Bold would go well with extra-thick crinkle-cut chips to match the complexity and high ABV.