The Hop Garden

James Henderson deserves a pile of congratulations for creating the Hop Garden, in a neglected former Greek restaurant in Mt Vic. It looks fantastic, is well equipped and they've had the good sense to stock fresh Racer 5 and West Coast IPA. It's going to be fascinating to see how people patronise it - whether they stay to dine, what time of day they come, what kind of clientele it attracts. But it's instantly my preferred place to drink outside HZ.

It's opening a matter of weeks after the Bruhaus. You could almost get the impression that free houses are taking over Wellington. Wishful thinking I'm sure, or maybe not...

But if I was an exec at DB right now, with their humiliation over Radler a matter of months away, I'd be brushing up the CV.

Black, White and Grey

I think everyone's tired of hearing about the rights and wrongs of official and unofficial importing. So here's a change of tack: pricing.

Of course I'm not remotely neutral here, but I have to say I'm surprised by how stark the differences are. Here are some comparative prices gleaned from the internet and a trip to Thorndon New World. And if it isn't clear, the prices on the right are for the "official" imports:

	Thorndon New World	The Beer Store	Regional Wines and Spirits	The Cult Beer Store
Green Flash Imperial IPA 650ml	$21.95	$19.44		$14.00
Green Flash Le Freak 650ml			$23.75	$16.00
Green Flash West Coast IPA 355ml		$7.97		$6.00
Ballast Point Big Eye IPA 650ml		$13.79		$12.00
Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye 650ml		$16.42		$13.00

Institutionalised Stalking

I'm getting asked more and more often about whether we will take some kind of official position with foursquare (the location service, not the grocer). And of course some time soon Facebook's answer to foursquare will be rolled out in New Zealand and presumably become dominant.

Is it just me or are location services the most insidious and potentially dangerous development in the short history of electronic social networking? It amazes me that people disregard the possible consequences of voluntarily creating their own public, electronic trail for whatever short term benefit it gives them. And facebook's feature that lets other people create your trail for you is even more mind-boggling.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I find the whole subject very troubling, especially since people seem to expect us to embrace the whole idea. (Hashigo Zake was "registered" as a location on foursquare months ago without me being consulted.)

Keen to get feedback....

Roman Beer

This week Hashigo Zake was lucky enough to host a visit by Italian brewer, beer distributor and bar owner Alex Liberati. Alex is a knowledgeable and charismatic evangelist for craft brewing. He was also keen to soak up New Zealand brewing culture and find some candidate beers for his importing business. An improvised tasting was put together with bottles that Alex brought in his luggage combined with a few local staples and one or two experimental ones from local brewers. Then when we ran out of time Alex stayed an extra night so we could continue. In return barman/chef Sam put on a bowl of green lipped mussels that had our guest in raptures.

Next time Alex makes it this way we'll put on something more structured for a bigger audience.

Suspending Judgement

Blogger Martin Craig became a folk hero to many earlier this week when he revealed that he had secretly entered a commercial beer (Ranfurly Station Pale Ale) into the SOBA National Homebrew Champs and... it bombed. It scored 11/50 and was slated by the judges for various faults.

Since then there has been a little reflection amongst those close to the incident with respect to, shall we say, the ethics of entering someone's beer without their knowledge and in doing so breaking the rules of the competition.

Then today Martin's post disappeared. Fortunately for the curious, google has a cache.

It's tempting to jump to the conclusion that corporate and legal forces have been brought to bear on Martin. Or maybe he's taken pity on Ranfurly.

So should those of us who greeted the news of this guerrilla beer judging with glee also pause for a moment? Perhaps yes. I was reminded of the spat that broke out about a year ago when local brewer Stu McKinley harshly commented on a bottle of Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard on realbeer.co.nz. That beer had been imported to New Zealand under circumstances that Stone's President Greg Koch expressly disapproves of and tries to stop. It was "grey market" and had been shipped without refrigeration.

Greg vented on the realbeer forum. Other participants generally disregarded Greg's assertion of brewer's rights, but anyone who has tasted Oaked Arrogant Bastard in peak condition would probably side with Greg.

As an importer and retailer trying to avoid the grey market, and as a fan of Stone Brewing, I naturally took Greg's side in that spat. So to be consistent I guess I have to concede that the brewers of Ranfurly Pale Ale were not treated fairly on this occasion. But in my book brewing bland beer is a far bigger crime.

Now I wouldn't bother with a spiel like this unless it was somehow self-serving, so here goes. Hashigo Zake is about to strike a blow for brewers against the use and transportation of beer in ways that they don't approve of. But the real winners will be our customers. We'll make an announcement at the Hophead's Picnic tonight.

One-a tara, Tuatara

On the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th of September this year, three of Tuatara Brewery’s beers were served alongside many of Japan’s finest, and a number of other imports, at the Yokohama version of the Great Japan Beer Festival. This was surely a first for a New Zealand craft brewery and represented a bold play for a stake in the vibrant Japanese craft beer market.

The origins of the venture lay in an approach from the brewery to Hashigo Zake looking for contacts in Asia that might lead to export opportunities. The subsequent advice from Nagano Trading, Japan’s leading importer of US craft beer, was to exhibit in the GJBF. This was easier said than done. Between the peculiarities of the market and the intricacies of Japanese bureaucracy, the equivalent of months of preparation had to be squeezed into a few weeks before a pallet of kegs and bottles set sail in late August. In the end there were just hours to spare when the beer arrived at the Osambashi Hall in Yokohama on the morning of September 18.

Flying out of the Wellington winter to meet the beer and represent Tuatara’s interests were David Bernard of Tuatara and myself, in my capacity as “the guy who once lived there and knows some people”.

Before we started the hard work of dispensing New Zealand beer, 50mls at a time, there was a free day in Yokohama and Tokyo, spent at as many of those cities’ serious beer outlets as time would allow. There was the Nakameguro Taproom of Baird and the Aldgate and Craftheads in Shibuya and Yokohama’s own Thrashzone. At all four bars the stamp of Nagano Trading was evident. Many taps were pouring immaculately fresh beer from a variety of US brewers, even at the Baird Taproom, which sets aside four of its 28 taps to guest beers. It was eye-opening to see the impact one importing company has had on the Japanese market, particularly in Tokyo, whose beer drinkers might just be the most spoiled on the planet. Not that these treats come cheaply. A US pint glass (474 mls) can cost between 1000 and 2000 yen ($NZ15-30).

Indulgence is certainly the theme at the extraordinary Thrashzone. It starts with the owner, Koichi Katsuki, who indulges his two loves - extremely noisy thrash music and “extreme” beer. He manages to squeeze eight kegs into two kegerators – most of them high octane and highly hopped. A few are local but probably the majority are imports. There’s no concession to anyone seeking a session beer and very little room to do anything except sit or stand, drink and admire the heavy metal videos on the big screen behind the bar. But amazingly when some well lubricated foreigners wandered in late one evening, he willingly agreed to a request to “put some Queen on”.

On the morning of the 18^th we arrived at the venue. The Osambashi Hall is part of a huge, modern equivalent to Wellington’s overseas terminal. It extends more than 400 metres into Yokohama Bay. The hall itself occupies a portion of the terminal, with 2000 square metres of bright, open exhibition space. The exhibitors line the sides, leaving vast open space for festival attendees to mingle. Tuatara are with other imported beers, most of which are American, but we also find ourselves rubbing shoulders with Italy’s Revelation Cat. Curiously one of their taps is pouring a lambic, dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvin.

The paying guests start to arrive and a steady trickle wander up to see what we’re about. On offer are Tuatara’s IPA, APA and Ardennes. Signs are improvised to explain what the beer names signify, and a map appears with an arrow to Otaki. The Japanese seem comfortable ordering an IPA or Belgian Ale and tend to overlook the APA. Fortunately a different dynamic is at work on the other side of the trestle tables and the APA is quickly in demand from our fellow workers. In fact it becomes clear that amongst the plethora of highly hopped and/or flavoured beers from the USA, there are few, if any, classic American Pale Ales.

Overall the feedback is quite encouraging. While Tuatara’s IPA is far too nuanced and moderate to compete in an environment like this with the American IPAs, the APA is fresh and aromatic, has stood up to the sea journey across the tropics and is popular. One influential player stresses the need for original beers showcasing New Zealand hops. While his case is valid and I agree up to a point, he eventually has to concede that the reception has been too consistently positive to ignore.

By the third day of the festival the managers of several prominent bars have been through and expressed interest in getting access to the beer. Our ally says that it’s a matter of waiting and seeing how many calls come to him from bars asking for kegs. But there are extra kegs in this shipment and all the signs are that these will be snapped up by Tokyo bars.

While future orders are far from guaranteed and the hard work of adapting to the target market has barely started, there are signs that Tuatara might have a new export market. This should be great news not only to them but to all New Zealand craft brewers. Between sessions at the beer festival we took several cases of New Zealand beer, naturally including Tuatara, but also Renaissance, 8 Wired, the Mussel Inn and Emersons to an informal tasting for many of Tokyo’s most prominent beer lovers, writers and, well, pissheads. The reception was universally positive. There is little doubt that beers like Emerson’s Pilsner, Captain Cooker, Hopwired and Stonecutter Scotch Ale would gain an instant following if we could simply get a consistent supply of them to Japan.

I’m sure there is plenty of scepticism about the export potential of New Zealand craft beer. We came across it when another local brewery applied for funding to help get to the GJBF too. The dismissive tone of the poorly-informed functionary who turned them down sends shivers down my spine. Even if the craft brewing industry here is small and immature, sceptics overlook the trail being blazed by our hop industry. New Zealand hops are the height of fashion amongst leading brewers like Mikkeller, Baird and Sierra Nevada and are probably being used with little fanfare in many other

famous beers. At the GJBF we found ourselves next door to an Italian brewer boasting about his use of New Zealand hops. Aficionados are desperate to taste beers brewed in the land where these very hops come from. It’s time some of the resources bestowed on cinderella industries like wine, fashion and software were donated to something we have a natural advantage at.

Beer and Loathing, 2010 edition

There was near universal dismay on Thursday when the 2010 BrewNZ awards turned into a benefit for the country's most despised misunderstood brewery - DB. But the results were, in a way, as unsurprising as the fallout. History was simply repeating itself after all - http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU0205/S00270/db-breweries-swoops-up-most-awards-at-nz-beer-cup.htm.

There are two main reasons for DB's seemingly inexplicable triumph. One is the modus operandi of beer judging. Beers are judged according to the style that they are entered against and in a mainly negative fashion - i.e. they are marked down for faults, not up for positive attributes. So for a beer to do well it must fit rigidly to the guide for its style and have none of the technical faults that elude almost everyone except those trained to discern them. So many a fine beer, full of flavour and merit, falls foul of the judges for technical reasons.

But these constraints are well known, if frustrating, and to ignore them is to be out of step with the world of beer judging.

More dubious is the grouping of the 70 or so recognised styles into 17 categories for the purposes of distributing trophies and, presumably, finding the champion brewery.

Some people would be surprised to find New Zealand Draught (dark, minimally flavoured, sweet, caramel coloured lager) is not only a recognised style, but is worthy of a trophy in its own right. Meanwhile European style ales (including innumerable interesting and difficult to make styles) have to share a single trophy.

So DB's Tui is one of two New Zealand Draughts to get a silver medal - a disappointing result considering the style and the beer are almost one and the same - but gets a trophy to boot. While the European-style Ales category yielded four golds and umpteen silvers but just the one trophy.

A similar story emerges if you compare the category of low-cal, low-alc and gluten free beers with that of the diverse and competitive New Zealand, US and International Ale Styles. The net result was a trophy for Export 33.

It's like some weird kind of gerrymandering.

When Three Boys Brewery was announced to have come second in the race for Champion Brewery the cheering and applause were deafening. When DB was announced as overall winner there was muted applause, compensated for by "We Are The Champions" being piped through the PA. Really classy. But outside the Duxton's Ballroom people weren't so polite. I almost felt sorry for DB's dinner-suited boss who must have heard the railings of a prominent SOBA member two feet away at Hashigo Zake later that evening. (But any sympathy went out the door when I heard of DB's latest attempt at intimidation of SOBA over the Radler farce.)

The outstanding question remains why the Brewers Guild allocate trophies the way they do. Could it be a relic of these awards' history? They were instituted by the large breweries themselves under the guise of the Beer Wine and Spirits Council. Or is it some kind of appeasement? One insider commented that DB's success was down to Lion's failure to provide a foil by sharing the honours in these relatively craftless styles. If the intention was for the industrial brewers to cancel each other out and leave room for a plucky small player like Three Boys to come through then it was a tragic miscalculation.