December 5, 2013

Rogue Liberation... Beer Without Borders... Double Pumpkin... Saturday Soul... Summer Sommer 2013... Big Bad Christmas...

Rogue Liberation

As mentioned last week, we recently received our biggest shipment of Rogue beer yet. Thanks to the kind people who attended Santa Session, we now have plenty of space in our fridge for beers from this shipment. Look out for the striking yellow 750ml bottle of Rogue Honey Kolsch, and 355ml bottles of the bizarrely delicious Hazelnut Brown Ale.

Liberty is also helping fill all that fridge space, with two new 330ml bottles - the well known ‘Oh Brother’ Pale Ale and brand new ‘Halo’ Pilsner. These are both crafted at their new Auckland brewery, and are excellent value for money. Halo Pilsner uses the recipe Jo Wood and Martin Townshend thought up for their wet hopped pilsner ‘Oldham’s Tap’, using regular pellet hops instead of wet hops straight from the vine.

Beer Without Borders

Some big news was announced this week with the wholesale department of Hashigo Zake becoming its own company, Beer Without Borders. You may have seen an article in the paper or on Stuff detailing the new arrangement. This won’t change anything at Hashigo except for what’s written on the tiny ‘imported by’ stickers that we spend hours applying each shipment, and the red room should look less like an office during the day.

Double Pumpkin

Speaking of Beer Without Borders - their latest shipments from Baird and Rogue contained a new pumpkin ale in each - arriving just in time for the traditional pumpkin beer drinking season to be over.

A sensible bar would spread these out, but what the hell. New Release Tuesday this week, features Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale and Baird Country Girl Kabocha Ale. Kabocha is technically a Japanese squash, described as ‘elegantly sweet’. Baird’s Country Gurl bucks the trend of adding spices to pumpkin ales, letting the flavour of the squash speak for itself. Rogue’s Pumpkin Patch is a classic American Pumpkin Ale, with all the spices you’d expect to see in a pumpkin pie (ginger, cloves, vanilla bean, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg). Interestingly, all of the gourds used in both of these beers were grown by the breweries themselves. Baird Country Girl Kabocha Ale and Rogue Pumpkin Patch Ale will be on tap this Tuesday from 5pm. Anyone providing the staff with pumpkin pie may have a glass of each on the house...

Saturday Soul

This Saturday’s live act sees songstress Kirsten Te Rito team up with James Illingworth to funk up the jazz and ground the soul. Live in the lounge from 10pm Saturday, tickets are available nowhere, because it’s a free gig as always!

Summer Sommer 2013

When we brought Nøgne ø brewer Kjetl Jikun to visit NZ in 2011, his first collaboration was carried out on Garage Project’s 50L plant, which was all they had back then. The resulting cøllab

was a strong golden rye ale with Pohutukawa honey called Summer Sømmer (video here). Last year it was scaled up from 50L to their full sized kit, and now the 2013 edition of Summer Sømmer is here.
We’re launching Summer Sømmer on the auspicious date of Friday the 13th December, from 5pm. All proceeds from Summer Sømmer will be donated to charity. The GP guys said they’d ‘see what’s knocking about’ as well, meaning some GP rarities will possibly be accompanying it on tap.

Big Bad Christmas

Time is running out to book your place in our final beer degustation of the year. Sam has been working with the chefs from Big Bad Wolf to create some amazing matches like Captain Cooker with Paua smoked bacon terrine & Nogne O Underlig Jul matched with Christmas Ham.

Tickets are $90, and are available from cultbeerstore.co.nz