Garage Project deliver the "magic"

Garage Project, Three Boys big winners at Brewers Guild Awards. Popular Wellington brewery closes. Metallica star's memorial beer. Should you drink beer in a heatwave? Plus three recommendations.

Happy Friday beer lovers,

There will be a lot of tired brewers around the country tonight after last night’s New Zealand Beer Awards. We’ll have a in-depth look at who won what in a minute.

There’s also a strong musical theme to this email, so if that’s your thing and you’re not a paid-up subscriber, best do that now.

There’s been a lot of new free subscribers in the past three weeks (thanks to anyone who’s sharing this!) so it’s worth repeating the great value in being a paid subscriber.

First you get lots of beer news and commentary from New Zealand and around the world, which, like beer, takes some time to create. Second, for your annual subscription of just $1 week, you get the print version of Pursuit of Hoppiness delivered to your door six times a year.

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Three Boys, Garage Project big winners

Pete Gillespie of Garage Project with a bottle of Chance, Luck & Magic

The New Zealand Beer Awards, hosted by the Brewers Guild of New Zealand, were held at Emerson’s Brewery on Thursday night, and broadcast to satellite hubs in Christchurch, Nelson, Wellington, Hamilton and Auckland.

There were some memorable winners of various category trophies and I’ll share the full list further down. But I wanted to say a huge congrats to Badass Beverages for winning the Wheat & Other Grains category with their Hefe Metal. Dave Pearce, who started Badass, is a Pursuit of Hoppiness contributor with a real love of music so it’s one that’s close to home, so to speak.

Plus it was great to see Emerson’s have a home-town win in British Ale styles with Old 95, their old ale that started out as an annual release. There was Old Ale 93 and Old Ale 94, before Richard Emerson perfected the recipe with the 1995 version and the name stuck. Old 95 benefited from the Richard being able to access proper English malt via David Cryer’s then-new Cryer Malt. David recently announced his retirement after 30 years in the business, so it was a neat circular tie-in.

It was also good to see Kainui back in the limelight. The Far North brewery went quiet for a few years after bursting on to the national stage at the New World Beer & Cider Awards in 2018. They are officially back with their Rose Saison winning in the Fruit & Flavoured category, plus they were named Champion Microbrewery (for production under 50,000 litres).

But the big winners were Garage Project, who took out the Champion Beer with Chance, Luck & Magic. The trophy went to the 2020 vintage of this blend of spontaneously-fermented ales (and it was one of my beers of the year last year, so it’s only got better it seems). The 2021 vintage also took a gold medal, so expect it to win next year perhaps?

GP also claimed the Champion Large brewery title for the second year in a row. Behemoth were champion medium brewery, Three Sisters stepped up a category and won the champion small brewery award.

Three Boys won the much-coveted Champion Exhibitor, the award for the brewery that shows the best consistency across a variety of categories. For Ralph Bungard and his team, this is a richly-deserved award. Three Boys probably don’t have the national footprint that they used to, but Ralph is a strong advocate for “local” and the brewery has really drilled into on their patch and are super-proud of Christchurch.

Shameless plug: The Beer Media Award went to myself. So you know you’re getting quality content, right ;)

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Beer of the week No 1

Coming out the Smith’s NZ IPA Challenge, Sprig + Fern’s Oast House Party really impressed reviewer Tim Newman this week:

Named after the oast house, a building where freshly harvested hop cones are dried before heading away for processing into pellets,  this IPA was brewed with cones that were dried, but not yet processed, so call it a new hop release, if not a fresh one.  Those hops are Waimea, known for its citrus and pine characters, and it’s pine that certainly jumps out on the nose, along with white grape and funky gooseberry.  More resinous pine drives a crisp and supremely bright palate, with a bitterness that really bears its teeth on the rapid finish.  A tightly-focused, superbly drinkable NZ IPA (6.5% ABV) , created for the Smith’s NZ IPA Challenge, this is akin to some of the best American West Coast examples.

That’s it for the free subscribers, there’s plenty more for paid subscribers behind the paywall.