Top quality on show at awards judging

Parrotdog's "boring beer". Ripper IPA from McLeod's. Anger forces bottle shop to drop Afterpay. Fancy a soak in a tub of beer. Why big breweries matter. Where's Welly on the list of best beer cities?

Hey beer lovers,

Welcome to the latest edition of Friday Night Beers, your wrap of the latest beer news from here and around the world.

There’s an IPA focus in the recommendations this week, one of which you’ll have to be quick to get your hands on. There’s also a discussion around the role big breweries play in our lives and I take aim at one of those “best cities for beer” lists.

Just a reminder that if you’re a free subscriber you can take advantage of the 7-day trial to see the full newsletter. And subscribers also get a free copy of Pursuit of Hoppiness delivered to their door every two months. And that works both ways. If you’re already a magazine subscriber you can get full access to this email so just let me know and I’ll upgrade you.

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This time next week, you will be reading all about the annual Brewers Guild of New Zealand beer awards, which will be announced on Thursday night.

There are still tickets available to the live presentation events around the country, and there will also be a live stream to watch.

Ahead of the event, Pursuit of Hoppiness correspondent Tim Newman went along to the judging on a brisk Christchurch morning to find out what the judges were thinking.

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Parrotdog take the boring route

I wrote recently about the power of collaborations in the form of Reebok partnering with Harpoon brewery to do a “lifestyle” beer that came in a shoebox.

Well, my eye was drawn to the latest cross-industry collaboration found at the intersection of two very hip products: beer and oat milk.

Parrotdog and Boring Oat Milk have teamed up to produce an oat milk hazy IPA. The pair have doubled (trebled?) down on that by sponsoring gigs by Dunedin band Soaked Oats — at The Hollywood in Avondale, Auckland, tonight and Parrotdog bar in Lyall Bay tomorrow. (As an aside I’d never heard of Soaked Oats until now but they are quite cool).

And of course the venues will be pouring the collab beer, a juicy hazy made with Boring Oak Milk and called …

Boring Oat Milk founder Morgan Maw told The Spinoff that it felt like a natural partnership. “Here was another New Zealand brand that had really strong values and a good sense of community, and for us that’s super important.”

She had seen a few breweries in the US using oat milk to create hazy beers — oats are already used in the production of hazies — so brought the idea to the team at Parrotdog. After sending them a few jerrycans of Boring’s “secret sauce” oat base, she let the brewers do the rest. The collaboration has given Boring an opportunity to branch out of the morning space it’s typically confined into.

“The majority of people experience Boring Oat Milk in a breakfast setting at the beginning of the day. And we’re always just thinking about ways that we can be part of people’s lives in more ways than just at the breakfast table.”

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Beer of the week No 1

I managed to get my hands on the Beer Hug box of some of the best entries from the New Zealand IPA Challenge at Smith’s Craft Beer House in Queenstown last month.

The box didn’t have the winner, from Good George, because it wasn’t packaged in a can. But the 13 beers (there were two 330ml cans from Urbanaut) have proved exceptional so far. I’ve been impressed with Lakeman’s Hop Trial, which uses three trial varieties from NZ Hops (NZH-101, NZH-102 and NZH-105). NZH-102 seems to be a got-to hop at the moment and I’m sure it’s commercial release cannot be far away. Also impressive were Bach Brewing’s Bad to the Cone, Epic’s AJ Hackett Bungy Jump collab IPAAH, and b.effect’s Social Experiment. I’ve got a few more to work my way through but so far the pick of the bunch has been McLeod’s Southern Paradise.

For me this “can’t-go-wrong” combo of Riwaka and Nectaron delivered what I can only describe as cigars soaked in fruit juice. Dank, citrus, lush, smooth — it’s divine and on my shortlist for one of the most enjoyable beers I’ve had this year. While it’s sold-out from the source at McLeod’s online store, there are some available in retail and I’ve just checked and seen Beer Hug still have some boxes of the IPA Challenge beer. It’s a good box.