Inside the New World Awards
NZ Hops CEO quits, beer price outrage, a revealing IPA insight, Lion tightens belt, Trappist brewery shuts, India's craft growth, a Tale of Two Sawmills, plus three weekend beer recommendations.
This past week is one has been one the busiest of the year for me with the announcement of the New World Beer & Cider Awards.
Disclaimer: as chair of judges for the event I have a natural bias but I think the annual Top-30 is worth celebrating for the diversity of beers and ciders on show and the way it allows otherwise small players to have a moment in the sun.
This year that includes the likes of The Theoretical Brewer, Southpaw, Mount Brewing, Beer Baroness, Brave, Bootleg, Rhyme X Reason and Volstead.
There are regulars that feature nearly every year — Garage Project, Sawmill, Bach, Panhead, 8 Wired, Epic, Behemoth — but this year Garage Project did something unprecedented and had four (FOUR!) beers in the Top-30.
Once again, Panhead Port Road Pils is in the Top-30. Panhead might get all the kudos for Supercharger but this is the beer that just keeps purring along for them. It’s won a gold medal six times in the seven years I’ve been involved in the New World competition and appeared in the Top-30 this year after taking a trophy at the Brewers Guild Awards last year. It — and the judges across two competitions — are very consistent. The year it doesn’t get a gong you’ll know something went wrong, either with the beer or the judges!
Every year I get asked about my “favourite” among the Top-30 and that’s just way too hard (they’re like children, c’mon) but for you good people I will go out on a limb and mention a handful of beers that I feel very happy about.
The first is 8 Wired’s A Fistful of Raspberries. I think this is one of the most intriguingly complex beers I’ve had this year. Admittedly I’m a sucker for raspberries but this is way more than that. Also, this has a kind of rarity to it. Because it was a “vintage” beer there are only so many cases of it — enough to go around the New World stores and that’s about it, after that it’s done. So grab it while you can.
Another one I loved seeing in the Top-30 is one of my all-time favourite NZ pale ales: Brave Brewing Bottle Rocket. I first had this on a holiday to Hawke’s Bay not long after Brave had set up and when the Hawke’s Bay brewing scene was a fledgling magpie. It was one of those beers that stopped me in my tracks, or in this case, my cycle tracks as I’d just finished decent pedal on a hot afternoon and this hit the spot.
If you want to read more about Bottle Rocket, this is a good story with the lovely Matt and Gemma Smith, the couple behind Brave.
Finally, I have to acknowledge Emerson’s Weissbier. It’s the first time New World have named a supreme champion and what a classic style of beer to win that honour.
You can read my take on it here: Supreme Champion named at New World Awards
And, also, shameless self-promotion alert, I had a visit from the NZ Herald to talk about tasting beer.
NZ Hops loses CEO
The other big news this week is that Craig Orr has stepped down as chief executive of NZ Hops Ltd after two and bit years. Orr, brother of Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr, oversaw quite dramatic change in his short time, including a rebrand and a huge push into North America, plus the launch of the Nectaron hop. A search is on for his replacement.
Beer of the week No 1
I might be leading you up the garden path with this one as I’m not sure how widely available it is … this one came with a membership box from the amazing team at Craftwork and it might be one of those hard-to-get beers. Many years ago the sadly defunct Invercargill brewery did a great beer called Boysenbeery … it was nothing like this. And what is this? It’s like a Framboise (rapsberry lambic) except done with boysenberries (the second best berry after the raspberry). Bizarrely I had this beer with a piece of boysenberry cheesecake and while I don’t always like flavours that might cancel out each other this was a gem of a match, as the acidity works nicely against the creaminess of the cheesecake. I put a wee boysenberry filter on this pic just for the fun of it, my kitchen is not lit like that!
What’s the story with IPA?
You may have noticed there’s been a lot of hand-wringing and opinion-airing about the state of IPA at the moment and whether we’ve seen the back of truly bitter, old school West Coast IPAs (BTW, check out Sawmill’s West Coast IPA in the New World Awards to see reports of it’s demise are exaggerated: what a great beer!)
Anyway, the vibe is that these style of IPA are somehow institutional (my emphasis there), that they are synonymous with craft and deserve to some kind of protection, like an historic building. Sometimes to fully understand the present (and the future?) you have to look back. And the following is a highly recommended read from Lisa Grimm about the incredibly recent arrival of IPA in America (and therefore even more recent arrival here). Her research shows that American-style IPA wasn’t even a thing until the every end of the 20th century and didn’t truly gain prominence until around 2007. The question then becomes whether big, bitter IPAs are truly an institution, or more a blip on the wider radar of beer history. And what does that mean for hazy IPA????
“$18 for a freakin’ beer?”
Anyone who knows me, knows I’m a big fan of golf and I’ll be tuned in each morning over the coming three days to watch the US PGA Championship from Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it tends to get very, very hot. And when it’s very hot, you need a beer right? Well at $US18 ($NZ28) maybe water is just fine. Turns out the $18 for a can is for a 24oz can (700ml) of Michelob Ultra, but still, it’s worse than a fancy Ponsonby bar. Fans were naturally outraged, especially as those size cans usually retail for a couple of bucks and you can get an 18-pack of Michelob (12oz) for $US17.
Leading American pro Justin Thomas was as perplexed as anyone when he replied to an Instagram post with:
“$18 for a freakin beer?????? What does it cure cancer or something!!????”
The good news? For $19, fans can upgrade their beer selection to a Stella Artois of a similar size or a Michelob Ultra organic hard seltzer 😆.
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