Parrotdog want your money

A new direction for IPA ($). Surviving on 15 standard drinks. Small Gods release a Brett Pilsner (in a can!). NBA star makes "recovery beer" a thing. CO2 crisis deepens. Mike's mistake.

Welcome to 2023 beer fans.

And welcome to the many new subscribers who found Friday Night Beers over the holiday period. Before we start, and because there are so many new subscribers, just a quick note on how this works. Basically, free subscribers get a small taster each week, while paid subscribers get a full pint, a jug even, of news, views and reviews.

You can take a look at last year’s archive of posts here.

A full subscription is just $50 per year, or $1 week (given I take a couple of weeks off). Plus, if you sign up for this newsletter you get a complimentary subscription to the Pursuit of Hoppiness magazine, home-delivered.

So, to start our 2023 journey, I wanted to share one of my resolutions. I’ve never actually made a proper New Year resolution before, but this year I’ve decided to do a wee experiment and see if I can stick to the Ministry of Health’s recommended alcohol consumption level of 15 standard drinks per week (10 per week for women).

Almost two weeks in and … it hasn’t been that easy! Not helped by a January 2 party with friends where a few imperial pastry stouts from Derelict were sampled. Like trying to do 10,000 steps per day I’m going to give myself some leeway and aim to average 15 standard drinks per week. I will keep you updated on the degree of difficulty associated with this exercise, but I think it will result in more judicious drinking decisions.

One of the little helpers along the way in early January was Garage Project Fizz Palace. I was a big fan of this 1.1% kettle sour when it came out last year in a limited run. It’s back again and in new packaging and I can’t say enough good things about it. It’s tart and hoppy and gets the Phantasm treatment for a flavour boost that compensates for the low ABV. I had this AFTER a Red IPA (I wanted to have it with my fish n chips) and it still held its own on my tastebuds. Like many low-ABV beers, it works really well food, notably those greasies.

Beer of the Week No 1

Regular paying subscribers might remember that at the end of last year, I noted that New Zealand’s No 1 Untappd-ranked brewery, Derelict, had a fantastic box of their complete selection. Of course I ordered it and this email could be taken up with Derelict recommendations. One thing I’ll say here is that delivery from rural Canterbury to Auckland was super impressive, taking just a couple of days in the lead-up to Christmas. This kind of speedy delivery is essential for beer fans who freak out at the thought of their beer hanging around a hot warehouse for days on end. Anyway, you wouldn’t call it a summer beer but since summer is having a break, I thought I’d recommend Derelict Opulence. Super high chocolate, lots of coconut and what reminds me of a boysenberry coulis. It’s a stunning beer and at $8.99 for 330ml of 8.2% gooey goodness, it’s reasonably priced I reckon. According to my amateur interpretation of Untappd’s complexity, this beer needs 26 more check-ins to reach 150 ratings, which is the minimum number to be included on the app’s “top-rated” list. Given Opulence has a current rating of 4.46 (almost perfect by the harsh standards of Untappd users) if it got another two dozen check-ins it could bump Sunrise Valley off the No 1 Kiwi spot. But also … I have no idea how Untappd does these things, so who knows.

BTW if big pastry stouts are not your thing, the other beer that really grabbed me from Derelict over the summer was Talus All About It. This New England-style Double IPA is, like so many Derelict beers, intensely good, with loads of sweet citrus, some earthy-dank notes and a mellow juiciness holding it all together.

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Parrotdog want your money

Speaking of popular beers, Parrotdog make so much Birdseye Hazy IPA they are struggling to keep up and it’s one of the reasons they’ve decided to go down the crowd-funding route for the third time.

Parrotdog raised $2 million in a frantic two days back in 2016 when that seemed like a HUGE amount of money. They followed up with another mil a year later when they decided to bring their sales and distribution back in-house following a brief liaison with Moa.

Six years later they are looking to raise further capital to expand production (from 3 million litres per year to 5 million).

You can register your interest at Snowball Effect and when the offer goes live we’ll learn a bit more about what the Lyall Bay team are planning.

In their Snowball Effect preview offer they note: “Consumer demand for their product regularly exceeds production capacity, with Birdseye Hazy IPA 6-pack the #1 selling independent craft beer SKU (by value) in New Zealand grocery.”

Given Behemoth raised over $3 million last year in their third capital raise, I expect Parrotdog will be looking for a similar level of investment, if not higher, given how popular they are.

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