End of my Bar tending career, beginning of brewing business

Hi awesome people who read my blog.

There is so much to talk about and so little time (trying to squeeze this into the 45 mins before heading to work). So a week ago I handed in my two weeks notice to the Fork and Brewer. It is something I have been contemplating for some time now. For those of you who are not on my facebook (people I don't know read my blog apparently, that is pretty cool) or don't follow me on twitter ps @tall_ales, follow me for all beer and non beer related things, then you would not know I am going to be a travel consultant for Flight Centre. So are you giving up on your dreams? why did you not go back to legal work? Well for me I am a people person, I think I would make a good sales person, I am passionate about travel, hopefully use those skills to make a decent amount of money. This will be money that I put into my brewing business. So a week today I will have my last day at the Fork and Brewer, have 4 days off then off to start training for my new role.

So as I reach the end of point in my life as a bartender, being the beer geek behind the bar. I want to share with you some of the great things about life behind the bar. I have gone over some of the negatives in great detail. But one of my co workers told me something about this type of work that most office work will just not provide you with.

1) Dealing everyday with something you are passionate about. I love beer, I love it, I make it, I drink it, I talk about it, I research it, I hang out at other beer bars when not at my own, it pretty much influences a large proportion of my life. I get to impart my knowledge, get people to broaden their harizons. I have someone nearly every day (or at least several times a week) that come up to me and shake my hand and say it was great to meet me and thank me for introducing them to the wonderful world of craft beer. I have to admit that makes me feel pretty dam good.

2) The people you work with. Working behind a bar you get to know the people you work with really well. With people with all sorts of backgrounds and skills, from people who tattoo people (sometimes beer logos onto other staff members), people who are brewers who are passionate musicians, people who come from other countries and give you interesting insights, to people who work in the kitchen and are.... some interesting people, I could write a whole blog on them but I wont. One of the best things is when there are no customers, no loud repetitive music and you and your co-workers, no matter what has gone on during work, just sit down have a beer and just chill out and talk shit, have a joke and a laugh and get to know each other. It is a pretty cool thing and something that I shall miss a lot

3) Meeting people from the industry. Working at a beer bar you get to know people at other beer bars, really cool people, be it people from Little Beer Quarter, Hasigo Zake, Malthouse orTaphaus or any other beer bar it is cool to get to know people who work behind and run other bars. Even if you like the bar you work at, it is still work, so sometimes finding an outside sanctuary is essential. Meeting brewers, reps, marketing people and all other kinds of people I have found incredibly helpful in trying to start up my brewing business.

So maybe this is not how I imagined my time at the Fork and Brewer would turn out, but hey it was an experience, I will take what I have learned there and I believe good things will come from it. At the end of the day that is what is all about. So I look forward to my next step in my journey of owning a brewing company. I will keep you all informed about how it goes.

As I have promised in earlier posts I will tell you about my Wellington in a Pint entries very soon. I finished bottling them last night, took a loooong time. I have to do the write up for them in the coming days (I wrote this instead of some of them).

So until next time.

Andrew

Beer Festivals

Mmmmmmmm beer festivals. Now let me begin with I have been to many beer festivals over the years. I have always greatly looked forward to them months in advance. I remember the first beervana I ever went to was at the Wellington town hall. This is the first time I ever tried the Emerson's Taieri George Spiced Ale and fell in love, it is a hotcross bun in a bottle, think cinnamon, nutmeg, citrus zest, it is slightly different every year, it ages amazingly (it is the only beer I have ever kept for 18 months before drinking).

That same year my second favorite beer was the Martinborough White Rock Wheatbeer from the now defunct Martinborough Brewing Co, I loved such lovely yeast spice characteristics.That brewery was completely inconsistent and when it was good it was good and when it was bad it was bad.

Now there have been many other festivals over the years. Brief overview: worst beer festival experience was a NZ beer festival at Waitangi park. It was pissing with rain, drunk people were sliding in the mud, it was nuts! the bad part was only when afterwards when I myself was not the most sober, I was tackled into the concrete by someone and I bruised the cartilage under my knee cap, putting a rather large damper for the 10km race I was training for, took about 3 months of physio to fix. 

Now the best ones! Everyone that I have volunteered at! all two of them. Beervana 2011 was awesome, I got to be the first person to pour an 8-wired the night after they won best brewery in New Zealand. So I was quite a busy man. Of course the free session afterwards was great, amazing beers, good people and of course amazing beer. What was great about this year is that the food was INCREDIBLE! which was a great  change from previous years!

This came after I had volunteered for the awards night the night before, pouring pints. The funny thing was that there were some quality craft beers we were pouring then there was a Monteiths Black (owned by the big and quite evil DB) and only 5 or so beers from the whole keg was drunk, this was free beer, great to see.

Two weeks previous to this I volunteered at the judging for the BeerNZ awards. Two days of incredibly tiring but furfilling work. Both pouring beers for the judges, washing glasses, running up and down stairs, carrying kegs etc. I look forward to doing it again this year.

This bring me to The Matariki Winter Ale Festival. I worked on the food stand. It was quite literally a life changing night. The food was made by the hop garden. Lovely food. At the end we got to try some amazing food. This night I told a influential beer person/well known beer drinker around town that I wanted to make beer my life. She promptly volunteered me for the events just talked about above. So the reason for this post is so I could talk about and post some pictures from Marchfest in Nelson this year. This is a picture from very late in the evening (Im pretty sure that is David Wood, one of my most favorite of beer nerds pretending to chock me out).

Anyway I went with Simon Cook. Simon works at Little Beer Quarter, one of my very favorite beer bars, that place has the vibe that I would want if I was to open a Brewpub. Simon is a keen homebrewer and likes making some crazy brews like I do, he has started the Massy University Brewing Society and all round GC. He had won an a bunch of free tickets so we just needed to pay for the ferry and a nights accommodation. This trip turned out to be well a little bit nuts. First of one of the dude we were going with slept in. Missed the ferry and have to fly to nelson. We got to one of the sunniest places in New Zealand and the weather was shit. But we started the trip with a couple of homebrews from each of us on the ferry.

We got to the beautiful Founders park and it was like being in Wellington, all the beery folk were there. I got there and had a Moa Smoked mussel stout, it was beautiful and inspired me a little for my Paua Stout (was going to do it anyway but a bit of smoked malt would be a nice touch). Turns out the brewer was behind me and said, its good you should get a full pint. But we found that the half pint was the more economical way to do it, which is the case with most festivals.

Soren from 8 wired talking about brewing

We went to several talks about brewing and beer in the media. Was good to see the difference between brewing scale and techniques between Moa and 8-wired. Good to hear and comment about beer in the media (I may have become a bit more opinionated after having a few me-thinks).


But was definatly not as opinionated/ really rude as one drunk brewer who shall remain nameless. So the festival was great despite the crappy weather, there was a competition to name all the secret ingredients in all the beers, that lasted about 30 mins until we got too busy drinking and chatting to people. The lines were crazy long but me and a couple of other people found some good line shortening techniques.... *they underestimated my sneakiness*

After we ran out of tokens/had tried everything we wanted to try. Some of us headed to the Sprig and Fern Brew pub. They brew an incredible amount of there own beers, I had an oatmeal stout which was great and scotch ale which was really a more sessionable version of the stonecutter scotch ale. Talked to some Tuatara folk and Hasigo Zake folk then it was off to the freehouse... now this is a beerpub! wow! a converted church which additional space for the yurt in the front yard.... great local beers, beer on hand pump that you would never expect to see there. Everyone was very merry by this stage (some other people will off getting into trouble else where which makes for a great story, but not one to be put online haha).

Dave Waugh and me, geeez Dave haha

So I will leave you with some photos of the day. I will talk about the awesome X-ale festival in another post then well I have heaps to write about, I should write this thing more often but well, I am too busy doing the things that I am write about to write about them. But there is a lot of big things to talk about so stay tuned.

Man love at Sprig and Fern

The Awesome Freehouse

Paul and Johnny at the freehouse

Johnny and Steph 

Mmmm imperial Pint

A happy man

Inside the Yurt

At the stoke brewery the next day, we took our own brewery tour, we missed our ferry but just got one an hour later, no biggie

Simon about to chunder, ok he didnt in the end, long night, I think the $1.50 pies helped  ;)

I'm still back.... Fridays!

Hi everyone. Today another Friday. Friday.... the only day of the week that has "thank god it's" in front of it on a regular basis. Well not for people who work behind a bar usually. I do find my self saying, dam I used to like Fridays. Working in a Government department we felt that working all the way till 5pm was a some super human effort. Off to the pub/boardroom for a drink or many before heading to town to meet friends. Now well I start at 5pm today which is not bad, you just walk into the beast of suits thirty for the taste of end of week freedom. If we are not crazy busy I usually ask how their day has been. The response, better now. Then you just smile back and think dam I will be here till midnight.

Have only been once in Sweden, was ok for a chain

But last weeks blog was the moaning blog. This week I will attempt to catch you up on some of the awesome things that have happened. For one thing I moved to an awesome place in Hataitai in Wellingtons hills that look over the sea and out to Shelly bay, home to an old army base. I have a small room but lots of room upstairs. We have 2 balconies, a fire place, a kitchen island (very helpful for brewing purposes). Cool flatmates, at the moment 3 English people, friends and a new random, all awesome people. You open a cupboard you will likely find some form of beer or brewing equipment in there. Since I work more nights than days I am often at home and able to read, brew, or spend too much time on facebook. So what has happened in the last 6 months that has been cool?

1. Christmas and new years was great to get a decent amount of time off work to catch up with family, went to my aunties farm in Masterton, hung out with the family for a few days, did some brewing, chilled out and did some reading. Was very nice.

2. Brewing, brewing and more brewing. Had some good feedback on a few of my brews and have had a lot of ideas of stuff that I will wont to make commercially one day. This is a good place to come to were I left off last time in a list of brews that I have made over the last few months. Here we go

• New Czechland Pilsner 5.3% : My first ever lagered beer. They are not easy to do, they take ages, but I have had many good comments about it. So the name comes from it having half Czech Saaz hops which give it spicy, earth characters and half New Zealand Hallertau Aroma hops. It has lagered for nearly 2 months and the fermentor even moved flats with me. What I liked about it is the clarity, nearly perfect (it is the beer I am holding in the article written about me). It was crisp and easy to drink, decent bitterness, but had a slight caramel flavors which are not really to style, it also had little nose as I did not at hops to the fermentor (dry hop). So with a few tweeks and a few more batches I think I can make a very enjoyable pilsner that people would be willing to buy.

•  5 Min Mot, pale ale 3.5%: My first attempt at a low alcohol beer. You know what some people have thought it is my best one yet.... I tried to make it come in at 4%, did not really turn out that way. It has Motueka hop additions every 5mins in the boil. I has good bitterness but amazing stone fruit flavours and aromas. You could enjoy great hoppy flavours all day long and still be able to not slur your words and faceplant on your way to the bathroom. Defiantly an interesting idea of something to do more of in the future. Everyday I have someone tell me that they do not make enough lower alcohol delicious beers. 

•  No New Pope imperial stout. 10.4%. This is a peated,smoked imperial stout. This was a mish mosh of different grains and sugars... you are allowed to put sugars in an imperial stout. This is used to boost the body without boosting the body. Well I have only tried one of these because it is so big and peaty that it needs to age for between 6months to a year before it is ready. It has a lot of toasted oats to increase the body. Would I make it this way again? no. A bit too much peat and not enough smoked malts. I split the batch and put half of it in with toasted oak that had been soaked in laphroaig whisky. So it is a smoked, peated, oaked oatmeal Russian Imperial Stout... a mouthful. Anyone get the name of the beer? well when the pope dies and they are voting on who the new pope will be, if there is no clear decision black smoked is released from the chimney. Well I thought it was cleaver haha. 

Ok so this took longer than usual. So next post will be on the amazingness of some beer festivals I have been to this year. I will also talk about some of my Wellington in a Pint beers. All going to plan there will be 13 of them.

Until next time. Enjoy your friday be you drinking working, or volunteering at the Great Australian beer festival. Dam I would love to be there now.

Andrew Childs BCA/LLBeer geek