Septermber 3rd, 2015

Speakeasy's New 50L Cans

Cans are emerging as the next evolution in the packaging of many of our smaller brewers. They have quickly shrugged off their negative connotations created by the bland beer of the duopoly, with striking packaging and education on the advantages of cans over bottles.

This same revolution happened a few years back in the U.S. with most major "craft brewers" (whatever that means) releasing their main brands in the handy little mini-kegs.


The latest of our U.S. brewers to get into cans is San Francisco's Speakeasy.

Instead of shifting their core range beers to cans, Speakeasy has opted to create a new series of beers released exclusively in cans (and kegs, but kegs are just big cans) - The Session 47 Series.

The first beer in the Session 47 Series is a lower-alcohol or 'session' version of their flagship beer - Baby Daddy.

In can form Baby Daddy comes in what is possibly the best piece of beer packaging I've seen. It's great design all around, but the kicker is the pitch black top complete with speakeasy eyes on the pull tab.

Thankfully the beer inside is great as well, conveying the distinct hop character of Big Daddy in a lighter bodied pale ale.

The next two beers in the Session 47 Series - Suds Session Ale & Pop Gun Pilsner - will be arriving in subsequent shipments.

For now though these beauties are in the fridge, and tomorrow we'll be putting one of a few 50L cans (also known as a keg) of Baby Daddy on tap with a couple of its buddies.

Also making its tap debut tomorrow is Speakeasy's Tallulah XPA. A light and super-fruity pale ale featuring the new El Dorado & Calypso hop varieties weighing in at 5.4%. We've had this in bottles before but it'll be great to try this fresh on tap.

Also on tap tomorrow is Untouchable, an IPA featuring our very own Nelson Sauvin hop. A lot of U.S. brewers struggle to use NZ hops, because if you use them like US hops you risk getting some pretty nasty flavours.

Speakeasy have nailed using Nelson Sauvin here, they even get the name of the hop right - in their marketing they name it "Nelson Sauvin" instead of most US brewers who opt for the lazy truncation "Nelson". Nelson is the CITY and Nelson Sauvin is the HOP American brewers! Jeez.

The upshot is from midday tomorrow all three of Baby Daddy Session IPA, Tallulah XPA and Untouchable IPA will be on tap.

Spitfire Live

If you went to last year's PBE wrap party you'll know how much fun Spitfire is.

With their funked-up covers ranging from Britney Spears and Katy Perry to Ernest Ranglin and The Shadows, Zuccollo, Manzanza & Clarke always show the lounge a good time.
The fun kicks off at 9.30pm, with no admission fee as per usual.

Über Berliner

Tiamana and Wild & Woolly have shared a brewery in Mt Cook for months, but are yet to collaborate on a beer.

That's going to change on Tuesday with the launch of Über Berliner.
Über Berliner came about almost by chance. After sharing a stand at Beervana both Tiamana and Wild & Woolly had partially full kegs of their respective Berliner Weiss'.

Llew and Annika had a brainwave, and tried a blend of Tiamana's Meister Wald Woodruff Berliner Weisse with Wild & Woolly's Basilisk Thai Basil Berliner Weisse. The result was greater than the sum of its parts - so a larger scale blend was done with the two partial kegs to create the Über Berliner.

Funnily enough, I've never had a woodruff and Thai basil sour wheat beer... So I'm very much looking forward to this being tapped at 5pm Tuesday so we can all find out.