Who do you love? Top beers for 2023 revealed
A sneak peek inside the New World Beer & Cider Awards. Heyday wins Rare Beer Challenge. Calls for a "level playing field" with Australia. What is a Bright IPA?
Happy Friday Night Beer Lovers
I’ll start this week by holding a mirror up to you. If you’ve been on social media this week you will have noticed some breweries posting about their “community awards”.
This is a new, and welcome, feature from Untappd, where they post the top three beers in every style category in every country. It’s a dense and eye-tiring job to scroll through all the categories but I have done the heavy lifting for you and can reveal some key data points.
The top beers in New Zealand last year, as ranked by you (if you use Untappd) were as follows (with scores out of 5):
Liberty Prohibition Porter 2023 — 4.509
Craftwork Plum Dubbel — 4.486
Garage Project Beast Mode Imperial Stout — 4.399
McLeod’s Forty Acre Fresh Hop IPA — 4.393
Garage Project Yakima Valley Hazy IPA — 4.324
A score of 4.509 out of 5 for Liberty Prohibition Porter is close to perfection so hats off to them!
I did some more scrolling and data-collection to see how many times various breweries scored a No 1 ranking.
This is probably no surprise to anyone paying attention but they were as follows:
16 — Garage Project
9 — Alibi
8 — McLeod’s
5 — Derelict, Small Gods
4 — Bootleg, Three Sisters
3 — Duncan’s, Urbanaut
In total, there were 96 style categories listed (beer and cider) and for Garage Project to take out 16.67% of those is stunning. But also, Alibi’s effort, given the smaller number of releases (by some margin) is perhaps even more impressive.
You can check out all the results here.
New World Beer & Cider Awards
This week I had on my judging hat, as chair of judges for the New World Beer & Cider Awards. And while I can’t say anything at this stage — the results are out on May 20 — I will say the standard of beer and cider on display was the best I’ve seen in my nine years of this event.
In particular the Hazy & Juicy category was stunning — so many good examples, including one of the best I’ve tried in recent memory. And the number of outstanding fruited sours was unbelievable.
If you want a little look behind the scenes, here’s a chat I did with Newshub.
Beer of the Week No 1
Parrotdog are best known these days for the ultra-successful Birdseye Hazy IPA, which is their top-seller by a country mile. But the team at Lyall Bay, in Wellington, are aware that the haze-craze has a flip side: there are plenty of people who still want a crystal-clear beer, but one with all the same flavours you might get in a hazy. Enter Thunderbird Bright IPA. It’s worth noting that “bright” is not a formal style descriptor for an IPA, it’s more an adjective, an indicator that this is not hazy/cloudy.
Parrotdog lead brewer Matt Warner says the tag is for those punters who want know in advance their beer is see-through. “Not to take anything away from hazy beers but this is just giving a leg up to those who desire clear, filtered, bright beers,” he told me.
This beer certainly sparkles in the glass, and the flavours are very similar to a hazy: soft tropical fruit on the nose, low bitterness and a juicy texture to the mouthfeel. I know it’s not the done thing to talk about “smashing” beers, but I made short work of the six-pack I picked up: it’s an extremely drinkable, high-flavour beer.
And if you want to read more about WTF is a Bright IPA. Jump into this:
Parrotdog Betting On A Bright Future | Pursuit of Hoppiness
This is available in select New World stores, your home of craft beer — and huge supporters of what we do here at Friday Night Beers.
Rare Beer Challenge
As you were reading this email last week, Heyday Beer Co were taking out the Rare Beer Challenge for the second time at Fortune Favours in Wellington.
They won the title with Jockey Club Mint Julep Reserve Ale in what was the most hotly-contested iteration of the annual event yet.
Judge Denise Garland says the standout entries were an amazing 1.5% stout from Emerson’s, a 2% super-sustainable mild ale from Mean Doses, and an entirely vegan chocolate milk stout from Fork & Brewer.
Heyday’s 11% take on a mint julep cocktail took out the title, impressing judges with its complex mint characters and smooth vanilla and bourbon notes. The award also takes into account how a brewery links their entry to rare disorders and Heyday’s strong marketing campaign pushed it ahead of the pack.
They created buzz around the event with a strong social media campaign, taking inspiration from a reminder that had been hammered into doctors since it was coined in the 1940s: “when you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras”. As a result of that thinking, many who have a rare disorder remain undiagnosed for years. Heyday took that idea and turned the Rare Beer Challenge into a horse race in their marketing, assigning each brewery a race number and race colours, and asking followers to “bet” on the “horse” they thought would take out the 2024 race. Heyday’s “jockey” wore a zebra print jersey on the race card.
Waitoa came second with their pomelo radler, which was named Wadler to avoid any trademark issues. They went to extraordinary lengths to brew the beer, doing it almost entirely with pedal power! They set up several specially-designed bicycles at its Hataitai brewpub which were then used to generate power to brew the beer by anyone who wanted to join in – even including child-sized bikes for a family-friendly brew day. The result was a super quaffable, pale pink, juice-like 2.8% radler.
Hosts Fortune Favours were third with 5% New Zealand wild ale, The Bush Walk, which included foraged manuka tips, kawakawa and horopito in spicy and sweet wild ale.
This year was also the first year the Rare Beer Challenge introduced a People’s Choice Award, for the brewery which sold the most beer over the bars at Fortune Favours and its sister venue 16Tun in Auckland. Three Sisters took that title with their 6.4% Patchwork Hazy IPA, made with the still water of Juno Gin’s 2024 Summer Gin creation.
While many of these beers are so rare you will struggle to find them outside of this event, some are brewed at a reasonable scale and can be found in bars – or even packaged – outside of the rare beer venues. So if you manage to track down any of this year’s entries you will be rewarded with some unique flavour experiences, and maybe even wowed.
Dusty’s Beer of the Week
Mosaic is one of the best examples for a single hop brew with its kaleidoscopic flavour profile, the proof is right here with a fresh tin drop from McLeod’s Brewing. Blue Water is a 5.5% unfiltered pale ale which has an abundance of citrus up front, followed by notes of blueberry and mango, there's a greeny bitterness to the mouthfeel with a juicy finish tying together a crushable pale.
And if you want to see what Dusty enjoyed over the summer, have a squiz at these fantastic photos:
Instagratification: Dusty's Picks March 2024 | Pursuit of Hoppiness
Beers to try before you die
Of course I was going to click on a link which said 24 Beers To Try Before You Die. I wasn’t disappointed with the list and feel I’ve tried enough of them to die happy. But I will ask the question: Where the f*&% is Pliny The Elder?
And on the subject of lists, Dish magazine did a recent non-alcoholic tasting and while I question the mixing in of beer and wine it’s not bad list if you’re looking for something else in the zero department.
Beer of the Week No 2
Which leads me on to the latest non-alc beer to grab my attention. Waitoa’s Brightside pours a very similar colour to Garage Project Tiny Hazy, and the aroma on the nose is not dissimilar either, but perhaps — dare I say it — a tad cleaner. But it skids off in a different direction on the palate, with this being quite dry and definitely more bitter than Tiny. I thought it was very good, excellent even. And it got high praise from the numero uno consumer of non-alc beers in our household, who is also a loyal Tiny fan.
Do we need a “level playing field” with Australia?
I am intrigued by the latest column on Stuff from Mike O’Donnell, a businessman, writer and chair of the Garage Project board.
Mike has great insights into the industry and the points he makes in his recent column are very good in factual terms, but they’re also missing a beat, in my view.
His argument is that New Zealand craft breweries are not getting a “level playing field” when it comes to exporting to Australia.
That’s because Australian breweries don’t have to pay excise tax on the first 150,000 litres of beer produced. As he notes this is a “sweetener for craft beer companies and a meaningful leg up to a growth trajectory”.
This same treatment for an excise tax remission is not available to New Zealand manufacturers selling into the Australian market, which he argues should be available to Kiwi brewers under the Closer Economic Relations (CER) treaty.
“It’s also inconsistent with the wine industry where Australia operates a wine equalisation tax for anyone selling wine. New Zealand vineyards can claim a rebate worth up to A$500,000 a year,” he wrote.
“Since this wine rebate was made accessible to Kiwi vintners in 2005 under the auspices of CER, we’ve seen substantial growth in New Zealand wine exports to Australia to the tune of 200%. It’s also allowed us to compete meaningfully on price as well as quality.”
There’s no arguing with the logic, but … have you seen the state of the Australian craft brewing industry at the moment?
There’s talk of a craft Armageddon and I don’t think they’d welcome a bunch of Kiwi breweries getting a leg up in their market and further cutting into their revenue streams.
I’ve recorded a lot of what’s gone on in Australia but it’s worth sharing the latest doom and gloom piece for context.
And the irony is that the story I’ve linked to, contains a quote from the Independent Brewers Association CEO Kylie Lethbridge:
“It's a very uneven playing field in regard to how Australia's alcohol is taxed. Wine is taxed differently to spirits and beer and it doesn't generally provide a fair playing field.”
Abandoned open new taproom
Abandoned Brewery have opened a new taproom with a stunning “under a bridge” theme.
The decor is so good …
A reporter from The Post went for a visit on the official opening last week in Jackson Street, Petone.
'Like drinking under a bridge'; New bar offers a beer in a gritty setting | The Post
Beer of the Week No 3
First up, I’m apologising for the picture … the beer looks a little flat and that’s on me, because I left it open too long before taking a photo!
I bought Mentor Mentor from Duncan’s Brewing a while back and had been waiting for a group occasion to share it, because there’s no way I was drinking 750mls of 12.5% barrel-aged pastry stout on my own!
But. What. A. Beer.
This is just stunning work. There’s bourbon-spiked coffee, vanilla, milk chocolate, and chocolate-coated raisins.
It hides the 12.5% ABV with implausible grace. It’s a steal, I reckon, at $30 and there’s still some available when I last checked.
Non-alc beer’s growing relationship with F1
I’ll leave you this week with a look at the growth in non-alcoholic beer brands sponsoring Formula One motor-racing teams.
It used to be that cigarette brands and oil companies were stamped all over these cars, but with Heineken 0.0 as the global sponsor and Ferrari and McLaren, respectively, doing deals with Peroni Nastro Azzurro 0.0% and Estrella Galicia 0.0%, there’s a new message coming through.
One thing I noted in the story was that F1 fans “over-index versus the general population” when it comes personal healthcare tech and consumption of health foods and supplements. Never would have picked that!
Catch you next week for more beer news and reviews
