World Beer Cup

I'm still absorbing the news of Baird Brewing's success at the World Beer Cup. To be tied with Ballast Point for the most gold medals in the competition is staggering. And as luck would have it our shipment of Numazu Lager (best American-style Amber Lager) went on sale today.

Melbourne

Four days in Melbourne created an opportunity to catch up with the local beer and bars. There was no shortage of highlights, starting with the Little Creatures Dining Hall in Fitzroy and the nearby Lambs Go Bar. Then a long day being shown around by Adam of Boutique Beverage Distributors included visits to the Hargreaves Hill and Mountain Goat breweries and a couple of damned good bars whose names elude me right now. Later on I made it to the Local Taphouse in St Kilda.

There's no doubt that some extremely good beer is coming out of Victoria and the scene is thriving generally. I'm particularly looking forward to more chances to taste beer from Hargreaves Hill and Jamieson.

There were plenty of annoyances too. Do any bars there post their opening hours? And minimum charges to use EFTPOS? (Actually I can see the attraction of that for an operator but it's hardly putting the customer first.) And being prompted to tip was like being back in the UK or US.

Going Full Time

We've been meaning to extend the opening hours for a long time and tomorrow's the day. A new sign for the door is being printed now, proudly stating our opening time as noon. Not that anyone ever paid any attention to the old sign saying that we open at 4pm.

Anyway it's another really satisfying milestone for us, given the dire predictions that were being made liberally all last year.

Sharing the Love

One week in and the off-licence is working just as we hoped. A few customers are going out of their way to pick up modest orders of Rogue, Mikkeller and Flying Dog bottles. And we've had the odd rigger too. Some come in purely for a takeaway order but quite a few are deciding to take an extra bottle home after they've had a couple in the bar. No trouble, no debates, and certainly no "pushing booze on children" or whatever it was that the hysterical Bernard O'Shaughnessy predicted.

But the time to take things to the next level is approaching. Following a suggestion by a regular customer (thanks Ben) we found shopify, a web application that lets small operators like us come up with an online store with little effort. And as long as we handle issues such as shipping, pricing and payments in the simplest way possible, cultbeerstore.co.nz should be in business within days.

I should elaborate on those three issues a little because I'd like to invite constructive feedback.

1. Shipping. This will be by courier. We have to get back in touch with the courier company that we planned this with several months ago to confirm pricing. They gave us a complicated menu of pricing that takes into account weight, volume and destination. This is probably far more complicated than we can achieve with our simple website, so we will just simplify these down to a couple of prices and absorb the differences.

2. Pricing. For now, pricing is based on our bar prices, discounted 20%, which is what we've been doing with takeaway sales in the bar. The results still resemble bar prices as much as bottle store ones, so there's potential to drop them. In fact shopify will let customers claim a percentage discount using a code. At this stage we plan to let people do exactly that if their order is sufficiently large. And trade pricing can be enabled the same way.

3. Payments. We're looking into using payments gateways but it is actually possible to go live without one. The solution is to invite customers to make bank deposits using (in general) internet banking. I think this will actually prove acceptable to most people. I assume that trademe customers use this method regularly. It must be more cost-efficient than using a credit card. A payments gateway may not be too hard to implement and we may even have one by the time we go live, but I'm tempted not to just to see how acceptable direct credits will prove.

Shopify has proven pretty powerful so far. From what I gather there is an API that developers can use to make it perform tasks more complicated than its generic capabilities can be manipulated for. It would be good to hear if anyone has experience with it.

Nuisance Dealt With For Now

This came in the mail last week.

So Mr O'Shaughnessy and the forces of [insert mocking phrase here] have been defeated for now and we can sell takeaways.

More info will follow, but for anyone interested, you can now come in between 4pm and 11pm and buy anything off the beer menu to takeaway at a discount.

It's an ill wind

At least Bernard O'Shaughnessy has helped us score some free publicity... http://www.capitaltimes.co.nz/article/2741/Publicnuisance.html

Food

We kicked off our 2010 tasting programme tonight (the 26th) with a matched beer and food evening. The event was proposed by our regular customer "M", who happens to be the executive chef at a Wellington restaurant that will remain nameless, but which most of us will never get to dine at. Chef M looked at our grill-less, oven-less, extraction-less kitchen and decided he could make it work. He and I picked some beers that he could work with and he figured out a menu. I expected some shortcuts here, some stuff out of packets with a bit of garnish there, and maybe one serious, thought out dish. How wrong I was.

Chef M and his assistant turned up with an array of prepared portions, sauces, garnishes, a couple of extra domestic appliances and a plan and got to work. They were ruthlessly efficient, cleaned as they went, never raised a sweat and did things with certain kitchen devices the manufacturers never intended. Without extraction we had strong food aromas spreading through the bar and our normal cooking methods are designed to avoid this, but as a one off the glorious seafood and red meat aromas could be tolerated.

The results were stunning. It was a real eye-opener for us beer geeks who struggle to turn out passable meals and snacks from our primitive equipment. The full menu is below.

• Nelson Scallop & Tauranga Prawn Duo on Coriander & Carrot Mousse with Three Boys Wheat
• Venison with Black Pudding Crumble, Rhubarb Compote, Kumara Porridge with Mike’s Organic Ale
• Nori-wrapped Salmon with Pickled Cucumber & Raspberry Balsamic Glaze with Baird Angry Boy Brown Ale
• Bacon Wrapped Angus Beef Fillet on White Bean Cassoulet with Rogue Chipotle Ale
• Kikorangi Blue Sandwich with Sea Salt Chocolate Canache served with Renaissance Craftsman Chocolate Stout
• Banana Tarte Tatin with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream served with Eisenbahn Bier Likor

For the record, the most popular dish of the night was the Angus Beef Fillet, the most popular beer was the Baird Angry Boy Brown Ale and the most popular match was the Banana Tarte Tatin with Eisenbahn Bier Likor.

Many thanks to everyone who participated and especially to our chef and sous-chef.