Ok I say this all the time, but I should have written this ages ago. But really all these crazy/amazing things happened all at once and I have been well.... exhausted. So let me start from the beginning. One of the coolest thing of course being Winning Wellington in a pint along with 3 other people. It was a great honour and now my winning beer the Celia Wade Brown Ale will be produced my Yeastie Boys one of my favorite New Zealand brewing companies. As another part of the prize, Clemengers BBDO will be doing the marketing for my businesses beers for me. Very exciting times. The Celia Wade Brown Ale is a Brown ale named after the Mayor of Wellington. A woman of green politics so it has plenty of green hop flavours and a hint of organic coffee beans. I personally really enjoyed this beer, so much so that I entered the last few bottles of it as I and others had drunk them all. Very happy it won and look forward to it being released for sale.
So in total over 160 different beers were entered into the competition by over 80 different brewers. Some have said that I was going to well with thirteen entries, the most anyone entered. But apparently the person who entered the second most with 10 entries did not even get any into the top 30, made me better. So apparently I got 4 beers into the top 30, the only person to get 2 beers into the top 16, ie the next day's judging. I have to say I was waiting with baited breath to see if I had made the final round. When I found out that the 2 had made the finals I was stoked! (and happened to just be walking into the Fork and Brewer at that very moment).
I brewed thirteen beers for Wellington in a Pint. Excessive? Maybe. Did it work? well yes! Some in my own humble and often self deprecating opinion some of them were really good and a couple of them were average and one or two of them were bad to down right horrible. So here is the list I promised last time with some.
So without further ado here we go with my own comments on what I honestly thought about the beer and what was good and bad about them and their underlying concept:
On a good day blond ale 4.9% - This beer was based on what Wellington is like on a good day, a botanical beer, originally based on a botanical blond ale where I was going to grab a bunch of herbs and other plants from the botanical gardens. But well I ran out of time and just used rosemary from the back yard as this reminds me of walking through wellington as there are many of these plants around. So the verdict? too much rosemary, I used 7 grams for 20 liters, it was too much, it is still drinkable, but if I was ever to do anything like it again it would be scaled back significantly. It had a certain soapiness about it that was just too much. But I think I know how I would counter this in the future.
Malty cultural 4.7%- This beer was meant to represent the the melting pot that is Wellington. Instead it represents my first truely unpalatable beer ever. I have made one beer that was too sweet for my liking before but nothing like this. Ok so this beer really was a bit of a piss take. How many different malts can I easily get my hands on? Turns out that number is 21 different types, so thats what I used (in different quantities), the result was an astringent browny/red ale that is just astringent and horrible. Really it was by far the worst beer I have ever made. It is still alcohol though, so who ever wants it, take as much of it as you like. Please get in touch and take it off my hands!
Latte Lout 4% - This beer, I really enjoyed making. I also enjoy drinking it. It made it to the top 30 apparently, it was originally going to be called flat welly white, but well it aint flat, it aint white. Also I had always wanted to do a play on lager lout, or even call a lager, lager lout one day maybe. So this beer is a 4% milk porter (milk=lactose in this case which adds sweetness and body to the beer. I think the judges wanted the beers to be a wee bit stronger. The version I entered had cold infused Havana 5 star coffee.
This is a really good time to thank the great people at Havana Coffee who gave me a huge amount of different beans to play with. Ok I did not use them all for brewing, but the coffee I made did keep me awake, and allowed me to brew. I LOVE Havana Coffee!. I also dry beaned (put whole beans into conditioning) most of the batch of this coffee which gives it a bigger coffee taste but takes away from a lot of the other subtle chocolate and roasted flavours of the beer. Note to self, dont dry-bean again.
 |
| Me and 2 different versions of the Latte Lout |
Red rocks IPA 6%- This red IPA represented the rugged wellington coast line. It fermented at too high a temp and resulted in some undesirable flavours, but most people who drunk it (its nearly all gone from the party I had) liked it a lot. It had lots of caramel flavours and used a good combination of NZ and US hops but was not overly bitter. Overall was ok for the fermentation issues that it had.
Buzzy bean stout 5.9%- This was my original idea for Wellington in a Pint. A beer that has coffee because as we all know Wellintonians are caffeine addicts through and through. It has honey to represent the beehive, has vanilla beans and cocoa beans. It was also a blend of styles oatmeal stout, milk stout and mead. This beer I used 5 different beans from 5 different countries and dry beaned each of them, each giving slightly different flavours, but a certain tannin from having the beans in there too long. Friends who like coffee still really love this beer though.
Coffee Snob Stout 5.9%- This one is for Jeremy LeBlanc. Formally of Fork and Brewer DM fame all around good guy who won a Tshirt by coming up with one of the winning names from the first round of wellington in a pint, really it is the above bear with a different type of coffee bean.Cuba Street Car fire 8%- This beer has definatly got me a lot of feedback. Not only did it make it to the final 16 but I hear it made it to the top 6, which I am very stoked about and am thinking of doing this one commercially in the not to distant future. So it is named after the crazy guy who set his car on fire in Cuba Street last year, what a nutbar! So it is a chilli rauch beer, using a lot of smoked malt (german rauch malt) and chipotle and cayenne pepper to make smoke and fire. Ok so I should have not put in the cayenne, they added too much heat and little to the flavour, but they were in the backyard and I wanted to use them. Next time, even higher percentage of Rach malt and only chipotle chillies (I can taste the burn of one I finished 15mins ago still).
Smoke and Mirrors Lager 8% - Blantantly just the above beer with no chillies nice strong smokey lager that has enough sweetness to balance out the smoke, but to hell with that I want more smoke, so thats what I want to go for next time, not a bad beer though.
Paua to the People - Smoked Rye Paua Stout 6.5% - There is the Three Boys Oyster Stout, the Emerson's Claim Stout. Why not a Paua stout? I totally stole the idea from a very beery gentleman named Ian. He did a 3.5% version a year ago, I was really impressed with it. Now 3 people entered paua beers into Wellington in a Pint, I got to try the Chipow, Chilli Paua beer, I loved it!...Mikes has just made a Paua Porter that I thought was pretty good. As for my beer. It has taken a lot of time to condition and is now one of my very favorite beers I have ever created. The paua was put in 15 mins to the end of the boil many thanks to my old flatmate Kevin who supplied me with the Paua. It has a slight briny smell and a briny aftertaste, there is a good smokey linger and slight spiciness from the rye. It would be very hard to do this on a large commercial batch but would love to release say 100liters of this beer at some point.
Dodgy Diplomatic Rye IPA 6.5% - This beer has many other names. Originally the Amerikiwi dozen (it is made with 6 varieties of NZ hops and 6 varieties of American hops). But this was not wellington enough. So the dodgy diplomatic is about getting Wiki-leaked hops from the states. This beer has a slight spiciness and according to one friend it tastes like peaches and cream, it has a lot of complex hop flavours, lots of piney/tropical and stone fruit flavours. I plan on making this beer as Chateauneuf du hop. The house of the hop! Name was from a crazy chef friend of mine. Chateauneuf du pope is a red wine that uses at least a dozen grape varieties. Now we have the beer version, an exciting beer that I look forward to trying to perfected.
Courtenay nights Black IPA 5.2% - This was my first Black IPA, all I can say is that it is friggin unique.... I pretty much had a bunch of different grains left over to make a malt base. A bunch of different NZ, US and Czech hops. It was strange, hoppy, and tasted like..... Celery! it doesnt taste bad, but unlike any beer I have ever tried.
Blanket man brown Ale 5.9% - the oaked version of the Celia Wade Brown Ale. A bit astringent like the man himself. But a really great beer, nice oaky, nutty, lovey beer I thought. According to some nicer than my Celia Wade Brown Ale. Love playing with oak.... Yummy.
Celia Wade Brown Ale - The winning beer! The final beer will taste different to my home brewed one. But I cannot wait to try the final version. To be released in a few weeks time. Exciting times ahead :)
 |
| The Mayor Celia Wade Brown and I |
Thats all for now, its been a big weekend.... I think that is a whole other post.
Cheers!
Andrew
The beer guy
