NZ brewery wins two medals at World Beer Cup
New brewpub brings great beer to Parnell. Man escapes drink-drive charge as his body is an "auto-brewery". Timaru's Ship Hop rescued & sailing again. Heineken's phone launch.
Welcome to Friday Night Beers, friends.
We start this week with news that Garage Project won two medals at the World Beer Cup in Las Vegas yesterday.
It’s the first time a New Zealand brewery has won two medals at the most prestigious and competitive beer-judging event in the world, where only three medals are awarded in each of 110 classes.
In a repeat of last year, Garage Project again won a silver medal Belgian-style sour category with Chance Luck & Magic 2020, proving this beer is aging beautifully.
They also took home a bronze with Engeltjes Pis in the Belgian-style strong speciality ale category. Engeltjes Pis is a Flanders Red aged in a mixture of wine and whiskey barrels.
Previously, Garage Project medalled with Cockswain’s Courage, a barrel-aged porter, while Monteith’s Black won bronze in 2000 and in 2014 Speight’s Triple Hop took a silver.
Throughout 14 sessions spanning seven days, a panel of 280 judges hailing from 37 countries (including NZ) evaluated 9,300 entries from 2,060 breweries across 50 nations.
Twofold open in style
The launch of Auckland’s most anticipated new brewpubs — with Twofold bringing craft beer to Parnell’s famed restaurant strip and continuing a surge in recent openings in the country’s biggest city.
With former Alibi brewer Bernard Neate at the helm, Twofold is sure to draw beer fans to the Parnell Road venue that was formerly home of acclaimed restaurant Woodpecker Hill and before that The Bog — an Irish bar, that Neate remembers well.
“I had my first pint of Guinness here when I was 17,” says Neate.
Neate needs no introduction for beer fans, having built an amazing reputation with Alibi Brewing and before that Governor, in Auckland’s Arch Hill. At Alibi his beers won both critical acclaim and industry awards, with the Waiheke Island outfit winning the champion brewery title at the 2021 New Zealand Beer Awards.
He’s joining forces with John Austin, an American who married a Kiwi and moved to Wellington before landing in Auckland a few years ago.
Austin has worked for both the leading keg companies in New Zealand, Kegstar and Konvoy, and was also a prominent member of the now defunct Society of Beer Advocates — successfully running that organisation’s Winter Ales festival in Wellington.
The brewpub’s name, Twofold, reflects the fact there are two families involved in the business with the four shareholders being John and Alice Austin and Bernard and Erica Neate.
The bright modern space they’ve created is set against the backdrop of an 800-litre brewery, boldly on show right next to the bar.
They opened with two house beers which were contract-brewed while they waited for the brewery to be installed — a Czech pale lager brewed with Sam Williamson at Pacific Coast and an IPA made with George Duncan at Duncan’s.
The opening night tap list also featured beers from Pacific Coast, Duncan’s, Urbanaut, and a cider from The Alchemist. There are tap cocktails and a limited wine selection because the focus here is fully on the beer.
The lager and IPA will be part of a tight core range that will also feature a German-style Pilsner. The tasty, creamy lager — at $14 for a 500ml pour — represents great value for money and the West Coast IPA was one of the best I’ve had this year!
There’s a link to a longer story below, but I wanted to drop in a line from Bernard that I thought summed up the current context that beer finds itself in.
Neate calls it a “post-hazy” beer culture in which Twofold’s range will veer towards traditional and traditional-with-a-twist — styles that reflect the owners’ personalities.
“In the post-hazy IPA era brewers are allowed again to create their own personal style and brew what they want, and they’re allowed to be a bit different I feel, and the beer will be about who we are and what we want to do.”
More than great beer needed to succeed
Bernard’s point about a post-hazy world is reflected in comments made by Bart Watson in a keynote address at the Craft Brewers Conference currently underway in Las Vegas.
Watson, the Brewers Association chief economist and VP of strategy, said great beer is no longer enough in craft because everyone has great beer now.
Much of craft’s decline in America of late is due to demand, which has followed a “textbook” S-curve pattern of increasing rapidly a decade ago, to now becoming static as good beer is easily accessible and no longer new. From 2012 to 2019, the number of craft drinkers was growing an average of +3.5% annually. From 2019 to now, that growth has compounded to +1.6%.
To restart growth means breweries getting new customers and/or creating more occasions for their brands, Watson said. Both pathways require breweries to lean into what makes them different in a sea of choice across not just beer, but all alcohol.
“It made a lot of sense in that era of rapid growth to stick close to the herd, to do what was working, to make the styles that everyone else was making, to have the industrial chic warehouse taproom that everybody you would expect with craft. That said, in an era of incremental growth, that's not going to work for everyone collectively.
“To find those new customers, win those new occasions, we're going to need companies to find different paths, find their own unique paths.”
As I say, see above!
Beer of the Week No 1
For me this is a contender for the fresh hop of the season — admittedly the short-list is getting very long because there’s so much good beer out there right now.
Sticky Buds from Bach Brewing stands out for me because it’s one of those beers that manages to be — to paraphrase the movie — everything, everywhere, all at once.
There’s sweet fruit and grassy astringency, dankness and bright citrus, a resinous palate weight yet it’s also light and dry. It’s like aromatherapy in a glass, with a full-on flavour burst to follow, a textural treat and a palate-cleansing delight.
Looks amazing too!
Ship Hop rescued
Timaru’s only microbrewery has been saved, with new owners taking over Ship Hop.
Ship Hop decided to close last year. Former co-owner Hadley Rich said that while the intention had always been to expand the business into a full brewery, circumstances had changed and he and the two other owners made the call to close.
Stuff reports another group of three friends has since decided to take the plunge and buy the business.
Patrick O’Toole, Matthew Herbert and Cameron Carter-Foster were chiefly motivated by their desire to see the brewery continue.
“We thought it was a shame to see Ship Hop go,” O’Toole said.
“We are nervous and optimistic at the same time. This is the first time we have run any kind of business.
“I know it’s going to be a steep learning curve, but the three of them [the former owners] have been awesome to us and will help us through the transition period and help us hit the ground running.”
O’Toole said the plans and ideas they had in store would be implemented slowly.
“We would love to see a tap room and hopefully provide an opportunity for people to come in and sit down and have some light bites.”
Dusty’s Beer of the Week
Liberty Invictus lives up to its unconquerable name in this 5.2% hazy with maybe the highlight hop combo of the green season — Nelson Sauvin and Nectaron team up to throw down punches of vegetal herbaceousness backed up by ripe pineapple, tart guava, greeny grape on a vibrant mouthfeel and bone-dry finish! Banga!
Heineken’s phone — has big beer jumped the shark?
Heineken this week has launched a phone. Not just any phone, they’ve made a “boring” phone: i.e. one without apps. I’m no design guru but it looks terrible, but maybe that’s the aesthetic they’re going for.
The marketing team created some blather about a phone without apps, maps and cameras being important to friends getting together and having a conversation over a beer and not being distracted by their phones.
“To give people a release from smart tech, and access to better nights out, Heineken partnered with Boston-based streetwear curators Bodega. Founded in 2006 as a conceptual retail space for street culture and contemporary fashion, Bodega has evolved into a global tastemaker. Who better to drop a flip phone with?”
To me, the only reason you’d buy this phone is to show people you’ve bought a Heineken-branded phone, which makes it a distraction in and of itself. Though I guess it’s a conversation starter, after all, here I am talking about it! In essence, it’s just another piece of merchandise — no different to branded t-shirts and caps. But in this case, they are selling merchandise as if it’s meaningful.
Tim’s Beer of the Week
Miramar brewers Double Vision have been one of the standout producers of fresh hop beers in recent years, and Hop Hunter, a 6.6% NZIPA, continues the trend. While it pours a deceptively (and beautifully) crystal clear, get ready to smell the colour GREEN the moment you get in range of the glass. Fresh Riwaka and Nelson Sauvin fuel this mighty aroma of gooseberry, sauvignon blanc, lime and crushed herbs. Passionfruit and rockmelon play on the palate, while the juicy, gently bitter finish ends with a big rev of that late-in-the-harvest fresh hop diesel.
It may not be one of the most poised or elegant of the season’s fresh hop releases, but it is definitively one of the ‘most’ fresh hop releases. Bold, powerful, and gratuitously green. — Tim Newman
Belgian man’s “auto-brewery” drunk-driving escape
A man in Belgium has been acquitted of drink driving because he has an extremely rare medical condition, according to his lawyer.
The 40-year-old Bruges man has auto-brewery syndrome, in which his own body produces alcohol.
Also called gut fermentation syndrome, it's a condition whereby fungi or bacteria produce ethanol via fermentation in the mouth or gut.
Most people who have it report a high-sugar, high-carbohydrate diet, according to the US National Institute of Health.
The man's lawyer, Anse Ghesquiere, said earlier this week it was an "unfortunate coincidence" the man also worked at a brewery.
But Ghesquiere added three doctors who've examined him independently have all confirmed he has auto-brewery syndrome.
In previous years, the man was caught driving with alcohol in his system several times - telling Belgian police he had the rare medical condition, according to The Brussels Times.
He was arrested for drink-driving April 2022, and again the next month, after crashing into lamp posts. And in 2019, he was charged with driving under the influence.
But on all three occasions, the man said he was confused because he hadn't been drinking.
Authorities were sceptical of the man's story at first but his official diagnosis with the syndrome forced the court to consult a forensic physician, who found he did indeed have it.
This may not wash with the courts here, so to be safe, don’t drink and drive!
Beer of the Week No 2
Sunshine Brewing didn’t get a fresh beer to market last year because of Cyclone Gabrielle but they’ve returned in style this year.
Plush with loads of Nelson Sauvin this is another example, to me anyway, of this year’s Nelson Sauvin harvest bringing out different flavours to the traditional dollops of white wine.
There’s a definite marijuana-meets-wine gums vibe with the dank-lolly aroma, but there’s also some spicy jet fuel character in there.
It’s sticky and resinous with long, rolling bitterness and the hop oils make it feel like a bigger beer than it’s 6% ABV.
A full-on fresh hop experience.
Benchtop brewery launched
I love the idea of a benchtop home brew kit, but I have doubts about how well it will work.
A few years ago, I recall writing about the Pico Brew kit but it seems like these hyper-micro brew kits have come a long way in terms of both design and functionality.
The latest one to hit the market is comparing itself to a benchtop coffee maker — and it certainly looks the part, with a great design.
The kit brew goes into a 5 litre mini-keg where temperature and pressure are controlled. To me, it’s like super-mini version of the original Williams Warn fermenters that came out around 12 years ago.
If the shipping costs to get it to New Zealand didn’t double the $US750 price tag, I might be interested.
Beer of the week No 3
Spritz, a berry sour from Shortjaw in Westport came as some welcome relief in the midst of fresh hop season.
Just 3.3% ABV and brewed with West Coast-grown blueberries and tayberries, this is a totally South Island-brewed beer, with hops from Eggers in Nelson, and malt from Gladfield in Canterbury.
Looks a million bucks in the glass and delivers a lovely light berry aroma that carries over into a palate before finishing with bright, cleansing acidity. In short, it lives up to its name.
Ancient beer myths busted
I’ll leave you with a great story about recreating a 16th-century beer in Ireland and what a team of researchers discovered in the process.
As part of a major study of food and drink in early modern Ireland, funded by the European Research Council, the team recreated and analysed a beer last brewed at Dublin Castle in 1574. Combining craft, microbiology, brewing science, archaeology, as well as history, they labelled it “the most comprehensive interdisciplinary study of historical beer ever undertaken”.
Among the things they discovered were: that beer was not an alternative to contaminated water; that it was used as payment; unique skills were needed to make it; and that it was often quite strong.
Five things our research uncovered when we recreated 16th century beer — theconversation.com
That’s me for another week. As you read this I’ll be moving house and the beer at the end of the day is going to taste amazing!
